Marketing > The Music and Sports Industries in Terms of Marketing

Similarities of the Music and Sports Industry

1. In terms of marketing both sectors rely on famous personalities whom can be used to carry advertising messages to the wider audience. Examples are Michael Jordan or Brittney Spears; both of them are very popular among advertisers.

2. Both sectors market themselves on the global marketplace, meaning not only in the US, but in Europe and in Asia as well. Many teams are just as well known to the rest of the world as they’re to the US audience.

3. Major revenue sources are the live performances and games. These are of course not the only sources of revenue, but the most significant ones.

Differences:

1. The major difference in how the two sectors market themselves is that the music industry caters to a younger audience typically, while sports targets I think every age group.

2. In sports the next major revenue source is the TV rights. In music I’d say it’s the CD sales.

3. Sports arenas are also sponsored by companies, while music performances are always on various stages all over the world. The Continental Arena is a good example.

1. The entertainment and media industries are very important to the American and global economies. These industries are major revenue sources for countries.

2. As a matter of fact entertainment is the number two export, the only industry in the US that has a trade surplus and not a deficit.

3. These industries create thousands of jobs, which will lead to a lower unemployment rate.

4. They serve a very important purpose -- entertain the population, and this is very important to the general well-being of the people.

5. These two industries can create awareness to problems in the world, especially documentaries.

6. Revenues from these two industries translate into more tax revenues for the local economies.

Sports has continued to grow in sales and importance, no question about it. I think one of the reasons is that players now rose to the status of movie stars. Another reason is that people like to identify with popular players, and they are appropriate role models for kids as well. Sports players, such as Michael Jordan even get to play in movies, creating further awareness for sports. In today’s health conscious culture people like to get involved in sports, but also like to watch it. There are now individual stations on TV and Radio to serve the sports-lover market, such as ESPN or YES. There are even Pay-Per-View programs that sell a game for as much as $40, and can be played in homes as well as in sports bars across the country. Sport is now highly accessible to every one, and this is one of the main reasons for its popularity.

To be a movie or sport star means lot of dollar coming to their pockets. They are the perfect vehicles to carry advertising messages. They not only promote their own movies or games, but are used by marketers to promote various, often seemingly irrelevant products. There wouldn’t be entertainment industry without stars. Even TV shows are able to create stars, and these stars in turn attract millions of viewers, bringing advertising dollars to the networks or cable providers. In publishing there are also stars, such as star authors. Every time Stephen King publishes a book, it’s a sure hit among his fans. If a movies is made from one of his books, it’s also a sure hit among his fans. So there are many cross-promotional possibilities when it comes to entertainment and stars.

I think that the most important technological advantage in the history of cable is the cable line itself. In the times of aerial antennas, often times the reception was less than perfect, but thankfully engineers started to experiment with running cables directly to TV sets, resulting in a much better picture quality. Soon cable gained popularity among the wider audience. The next important step is the appearance of the premium cable channels and Pay-Per-Views.

In sports, the important technological advances include the internet, cable television, video games, cell phones etc. I’ll describe the video games industry here, which is not the biggest revenue source, but I think is very interesting. Games such as NBA, or NFL imitate sport games in a very life-like manner. Players get involved with teams and players, and are more likely to watch games on television or in live as well. Games are not only popular among kids, but I think among an adult audience as well.

In publishing the internet has played a very important role among others. I especially like that the purchase of magazines and newspapers are no longer needed in order to get the information from them. We can just go on www.nytimes.com and read the whole paper, even to get articles stored in their archives. Same stands for books. There are number of online libraries containing thousands of titles. Another aspect is the appearance of online booksellers such as Amazon, who delivers basically any book to our doorsteps.

In music, technology enables us to listen to the highest quality of music possible. The development of the compact discs moved music to the next level. Of course, the internet also plays an enormous role in the music business. Now we can download music to our computers, often illegally, causing big headaches to the music industry and artists.

a. The four different forms of publishing and their revenue sources are: books - one time sale; magazines and newspapers – one time sale, subscription, advertising; and electronic – advertising, subscription and revenue sharing.

b. The first pay cable channel was HBO, and since it was the first channel that people had to pay for, they were very selective in their programming offers. Only first-run movie shows were played, and marketed themselves and the TV for the whole family. Later what they did is, they offered many other HBO channels with different genres of films to appeal to smaller niches. HBO also provides original programming, meaning they produce their own contents. One of the most popular original HBO series was the Sex and the City.

c. TiVO and Replay are very valuable to the TV viewer, because we don’t have to watch anymore commercials. We can record any show we want, and watch it at our convenience. We can pause, rewind or stop any show any time we want to. These two products are of course a major problem for advertisers, because we can just skip thru them without seeing one.

d. Cable channels have a strong interest to provide quality programming since they rely on subscribers. One of the tools they have is to show successful or less successful movies that appeal to their target market. This market can be a small niche, such as the market of IFC, or could be a larger market such as that of HBO. IFC of course caters for the independent film fans, while HBO, I think is to the more general audience. IFC often shows films that weren’t a huge box office success, but through their programming they can provide an additional outlet for these films. Film makers at the same time have an additional revenue source. HBO is a film producer in itself in addition to showing first-runs. After Pay-Per-View, premium cables are the ones to show movies.

Video games are excellent tools for marketers in the sports industry, but in other industries such as music as well. I think that sports fans, especially the younger ones like to try out the games imitating their favorite sports. But this works the other way around. My favorite games are the car racing games, especially rally or NASCAR games. Playing with these actually made me watch some races on TV as well, even though until then I was never interested in them. A video game is a brand in itself. Some games are even made into movies; Super Mario for example became a successful movie.

The fastest growing genres in the music industry include Christian music, Latin music for the increasing Latino population, and finally the movie soundtracks that further popularize a successful movie.

Christian music is gaining even more popularity among religious people, especially on the South. The style of these songs closely resembles pop songs, but their lyrics are there to praise God.

Latino music is very popular among primarily the Latino population in the US. This is the fastest growing minority in the country, and they are not ready for utter assimilation in the new culture. They like to listen to music from their homelands, or music in their own languages.

Soundtracks are very popular among movie lovers. Often times when we watch a movie we notice the music in it too, and we are willing to purchase CDs containing that music.

 

 

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