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- All Subjects: sports marketing
- Creators: Eaton, John
- Creators: W. P. Carey School of Business
- Creators: Becker, Alexander Daniel
- Member of: Theses and Dissertations
This thesis seeks to analyze the changes in how current stadiums are being funded, the public’s reaction to and perception of those financing plans and what the future might hold. Research showed that tax dollars are increasingly unpopular and teams are moving away from using public money to fund sports venues. Gathered for this report, survey data of 815 Arizona State University students supported anecdotal evidence that people within a community are relatively unhappy with the idea of their money being used to partially subsidize wealthy sports organizations’ infrastructure. Altogether, recent evidence suggests that multi-use facilities funded in majority by private wealth are more popular and generate greater economic impact for the municipality than earlier in history, when heavily subsidized venues allowed teams to take advantage of local government and created fan mistrust.
certain fan segmentations of Phoenix valley residents, at the WM Open. In 2012, Professor Michael
Mokwa, Professor John Eaton, and Professor Bradley Fay of the Department of Marketing at Arizona
State University’s W.P. Carey School of Business, conducted an Economic Impact Study and a Study
regarding Attendance at the Waste Management Phoenix Open. It was a joint research study with the
ASU W.P. Carey School of Business and the Center for Competitiveness and Prosperity Research, and
the studies were designed to 1) demonstrate the overall economic impact of the tournament on the
Phoenix area, and 2) identify the specific market segments and audience of the Waste Management
Phoenix Open. I used this study as base research to conduct further analysis of the fan segmentation of the
Waste Management Open. I completed two projects: an ‘Initial Project’, and a ‘Secondary Project’, which
analyzed different aspects of fan groups and average fan spending figures.
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The goal of this report is to draw upon the fan clusters (outlined in the initial report) to further
characterize the six unique groups of Phoenix valley residents, calculate out how much revenue each fan
group is responsible for generating, and link the potential return on the investment of WM Open
advertising. This study added the average spending figures (collected by the ASU 2012 Economic impact
study (Mokwa, Eaton, Fay 2012)) and habits to the established market segments. With further analysis, it
was possible to link the advertisement efforts and determine if the current advertising and marketing
strategy fits the different fan segments that attended the tournament. The analysis includes the average
spending of each fan segmentation, critique of the current marketing and advertising efforts, and an
overall study of the WMPO marketing model using the 2016 Advertising and Marketing report along with
sales figures from Communication Links.
In the early years of the National Football League, scouting and roster development resembled the wild west. Drafts were held in hotel ballrooms the day after the last game of regular season college football was played. There was no combine, limited scouting, and no salary cap. Over time, these aspects have changed dramatically, in part due to key figures from Pete Rozelle to Gil Brandt to Bill Belichick. The development and learning from this time period have laid the foundational infrastructure that modern roster construction is based upon. In this modern day, managing a team and putting together a roster involves numerous people, intense scouting, layers of technology, and, critically, the management of the salary cap. Since it was first put into place in 1994, managing the cap has become an essential element of building and sustaining a successful team. The New England Patriots’ mastery of the cap is a large part of what enabled their dynastic run over the past twenty years. While their model has undoubtedly proven to be successful, an opposing model has become increasingly popular and yielded results of its own. Both models center around different distributions of the salary cap, starting with the portion paid to the starting quarterback. The Patriots dynasty was, in part, made possible due to their use of both models over the course of their dominance. Drafting, organizational culture, and coaching are all among the numerous critical factors in determining a team’s success and it becomes difficult to pinpoint the true source of success for any given team. Ultimately, however, effective management of the cap proves to be a force multiplier; it does not guarantee that a team will be successful, but it helps teams that handle the other variables well sustain their success.
This thesis is a marketing plan for a theoretical, potential expansion franchise that would be in San Antonio, Texas and be a part of the National Football League (NFL). There were five topics of marketing features which assist in planning an expansion franchise joining a professional sports league I wanted to cover: competitive analysis, customer analysis, target market identification, external environment, and SWOT analysis. In relation to the five topics, I was able to construct a Qualtrics Survey from a few hundred business students from the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University. This was necessary to determine demographics and collect data on what a random group would think of the five topics I chose in relation to an expansion team and the effects the expansion team could theoretically have in correspondence with all factors of a professional sports franchise. In conclusion, I was able to determine San Antonio would be able to sustain and have a NFL franchise whenever the time would be right to do so.