Custom essays on Sports marketing agents

Sports marketing agent works in the marketing sphere, being an agent for an athlete, a sport team or company. His main task is to promote the athlete’s career within sport, to make good contracts with advertising companies, so to say to make an athlete a “a big star”.
This means that the sports agent is responsible for meetings, negotiations and making agreements, as well as picking the best contracts for the athlete that he represents. Much of a sports agent’s day he spent in networking, talking and negotiating, that usually means hot working time-table, travelling a loy and doing few works at the same time, that requires certain personal skills, abilities as well as good motivation.
Sports managers should have strong knowledge in different spheres as:
1. Sports knowledge (philosophy of sport, sport psychology, sociology of sport management in sports education, management of school sports, management of free time, control athletes).
2. Management in business (marketing, economics, law, consumer behavior, strategic management, financial and personnel management).
3. Communications (journalism, public relations and media, advertising, broadcasting).
4. Social sciences (personal relations, cultural knowledge, labor market knowledge).
To be a good sports marketing agent means to be well informed about the particular sport and the trends in the sport, to stay up-to-date on sports events and sports advertising. But it is also important to have good business skills and knowledge about: business management, financial and risk analysis, investment analysis as well. Excellent communication and negotiation skills are so important for this position, and good language and foreign languages knowledge.
The work activities of a sports marketing agent include:
• Meeting with athletes, team owners and managers, and constant networking with them;
• Making contracts and negotiating agreements, promoting the athlete with the best possible options for advertising contracts;
• Providing marketing and financial analysis on various contracts, providing this information to the athlete and interested companies;
• Traveling to different regions and countries to represent the athletes and commands to the interested companies for the contract negotiations.
• Being well-informed about the latest events in the world of sport, as to the current trends in different kinds of sports;
• Recruiting and marketing advertising services to the sport commands, athletes, sport organizations and sport events to get new clients.
Sports agents are often employed by a special agency, that provide the promotional and sponsorship service in the needs of sporting events, teams, and individual athletes. For example The Sport Marketing Association (SMA) is a company that develops a beneficial relationship between professional practitioners and academicians engaged in the business of marketing sport.
Some sports marketing agents work for a sports team, for the organizers of sporting events (like competitions and tournaments). In this case agents are responsible for promoting the team or event for which they work, providing necessary radio and newspaper advertisement, news about upcoming games to encourage their attendance. Additionally, they may sick for outside sponsorship by selling advertising space, including spots on game-time overhead screens, advertisements on scoreboards and collectible cups, and so on.
So why does so many companies want to advertise their products with the help of sports marketing?
A successful advertising campaign in sport, as in any other field of marketing, is based on the ability to identify the key benefits of a sports product and explain to consumers why do they need it. In the sports marketing the following promotional themes are used: health, emotions, fear and pleasure.
Emotional techniques are often used in sports marketing. In this case, it is important to understand how emotionally the consumer perceives this, for example, some sports fans even see themselves as a member of their favorite teams. An example of an emotional reception can be considered in the slogan “Excitation of victory and the agony of defeat”, which was used for advertising several years ago. Fear is used in advertising primarily in order to emphasize the negative consequences that may arise, if not used or misused the product. Manufacturers of bicycles and motorcycles are often appealing to fear in advertisements, pointing to the terrible consequences of accidents caused by lack of head injured helmets.
Athletes do actively participate in promotional materials, companies are using the fact that they are credible for a wide audience. Although in recent years the confidence in the professional athlete’s advices decreases: people understand that for the positive words about a particular product they receive a decent fee. However, the most well-known athletes – Michael Jordan, Arnold Palmer, Tiger Woods – has established themselves as a reliable source of information.
Another advantage of showing athletes in advertising is their attractiveness. When you want to emphasize this feature in the video or picture then put emphasis on physical beauty of an athlete, his lifestyle or a high level of intelligence. A good example of using this technique – advertising “I want to be like Mike” with the participation of Michael Jordan and Nike ads with the slogan “I am – Tiger Woods” in which children of all races and ages trying on shoes of Tiger.