Sports marketing at Cornell University

Cornell Sports Marketing

The business situation: problems and solutions

The problem Cornell Sports Marketing is currently facing is that of low attendance at sporting events, even popular money drawing sporting events such as basketball and football, the former of which Cornell traditionally excels at. This is causing a correspondingly low level of revenue for the organization of Cornell Sports Marketing. The organization must create a greater revenue base by increasing attendance, creating a greater social perceptiveness of the attractiveness of the sporting events, and expanding the populations of the organization's target audience.

Objective of the plan

The objective of the plan is to increase attendance and revenue at popular spectator events specifically by targeting a new and potentially lucrative and interested population, that of incoming Cornell freshman. This population is ideal because it is young, fresh to the organization and full of potential school spirit and offers four potential years of attendance at the organization, without any comparative prices in their minds of games past. The sporting venues offer ideal places for freshmen to socially congregate, and to create social networks that they will hopefully continue after they graduate.

How the organization plans to meet its objectives

The specific targeting or segmenting of the Cornell audience is key to the success of the plan. The concentrated location of the freshman on the North Campus of the institution makes the freshman an ideal market that can be the object of a great deal of advertising, from posters to staged publicity events, with a relative minimum of cost. Entertainment and the social aspect of Ivy League sports can be stressed, given that parties and other celebrations of victory or defeat can spill over into this area of the campus, and also because traditionally, the communality rather than the athletic excellence of League athletics is the main reason for attendance at games.