Sports Essay identification: maintaining and increasing the golden attribute

Sports Essay identification: maintaining and increasing the golden attribute

Identification. It’s a word and a concept I’ve been trying to drill into your heads since day one in this class. Highly identified fans of sport organizations react as if the the organization in question is an extension of their own psyche. We exult in the thrill of victory when our team (yes, our team) wins and wallow in the agony of defeat when they fail. Highly identified fans are also apt to do some crazy things with their wallets, like spend hundreds and thousands of dollars in support of said sport organization in an effort to maintain and strengthen that connection with their favorite club.
-For the last Quickfire, I asked you to identify some of the connection points that bonded you to your favorite team, sport, or athlete. This time for this Quickfire, I’m asking you to step in the shoes of the other side. How does your favorite team, sport, or athlete (or any sport team, league, or athlete) build and maintain identification, which we’ve identified as such a crucial part of keeping a sport organization viable in the long run?

Here are some areas you should address for this Quickfire:
1. Situational Involvement – Wakefield notes of sports organizations struggling with bringing in fans as repeat customers. These so-called variety-seekers may just be seeking out promotions and may not be apt to return on a consistent basis. Instead, Wakefield recommends reinforcing team identification by marketing around rivalries and key matchups. Does the team you’re writing about opt for marketing around gimmicks and promotions, or do they try to build more through matchup and rivalry marketing?
2. Enduring Involvement – Simply put, how does the organization you’re writing about increase fan knowledge, which by turn increases enduring involvement and thus increases identification. Table 2.1 in Wakefield Chapter Two should help you out.
Performance – How important is performance as an attribute to be touted in your selected club’s marketing campaigns? I.e. Is your selected club always bragging about being a winner? Has this backfired in the past when said club has had an underperforming season on the field of play?
3. Attractiveness – How does your chosen club make itself a more appealing proposition to fans? Does it position itself as a “team of the people”, representing the ethos of the city it plays in? Does it attempt to provide opportunities for close interaction with fans?
4. Social Prestige – Wakefield mentions that people may tend to drift to teams that earn them the most social capital. He also offers up ways such as stadium improvements and elite customer service as ways to increase said prestige for fans when things aren’t going well on the field. How has your chosen team/league taken steps to increase its social prestige?
5. Distinctiveness – Think back to Spoelstra and Marketing Outrageously. Setting yourself apart from your competition is a key of winning the race for revenue and prestige, a concept echoed by Wakefield in this chapter. As such, a successful team, sport, or athlete should be able to make itself distinct from its competition with its marketing. How does your chosen sport entity accomplish this?

-Please remember to use in-line citations and APA style citations for your reference page at the end if you’re gathering research to back up your points (as you should). Also remember that I’ll be picking a handful of you to explain your QA in class the first class after the due date, so be prepared to speak about your QA for a few minutes. As always, I’m available to answer any questions by e-mail or through office hours.