Anytime a sports organization sets a goal, it needs to be specific and measurable. For example, if we’re saying we want to increase ticket sales, we can measure whether we’ve increased them, but we also need to be specific, saying that we want to see a 2% increase this year. An important lesson in your sports management education is that when we set measurable goals, we can always assess whether we achieve them.
There are several ways that organizations can collect data now to measure whether they’ve achieved what they set out to achieve. They can also measure specific activations and sponsorships through a lot of different data. Everything that’s happening right now in the sports industry is very data-driven. For example, when you’re sitting in an arena, and you see that Coca-Cola logo all around the stadium, there are organizations and partners for organizations who are measuring how many people attended that game, how long that specific logo was shown, what type of value the team is getting from that, and what type of value the sponsor is getting from that.
Additionally, with all the customer data that we have nowadays, we can measure specific things about our sales, and we can point to things like a demographic that bought more tickets this year. Or we can look at purchasing patterns, like, “This specific segment of our fan base is buying their tickets five days before the game, on average, whereas this other group is buying them a month ahead.”
As a result of this info, we can have a better idea of when we should run certain promotions. And if we know a little bit more about different groups in terms of their media consumption, then we can decide things like which groups are likely to respond to promotions on social media and which markets we should probably target with more traditional media buys.
All these types of data are helping to reshape the sports industry. They’re making teams and organizations much smarter about the way they’re marketing to different groups to ensure that they’re hitting people when they want to buy and where they’re going to see these messages. You’ll find out more about how data is changing the world of sports, as well as many concepts surrounding sports management and global sports trends, in your online sports management education.
