Marketing, Communication and Management

Traditional sport remains one of the most widespread and successful entertainment media nowadays.

One of the most crowded sports events with 100 million spectators has been renamed this year as «Cryptobowl».

Women’s sports have traditionally been left behind compared to men’s sports. How can visibility help attract more viewers? Are numbers improving?

Tom Brady, the perfect example of a long-standing athlete we have been seeing in the last decades, retires. At age 44 he has competed in twenty top level NFL seasons. When a legend’s career comes to an end, collectibles related to him/her increase their value. And one that has reached its highest value is, precisely, tickets for his last game. The match between Buccaneers and LA Rams. It is a non-fungible-token kind of ticket. With Brady’s retirement, this NFT becomes a valuable collectible. In fact, one fan is selling the ticket on eBay for 9,900 dollars.

What better guarantees the success of a stadium, an outstanding architecture or a good adaptation to the business plan? This is the never-ending debate among club managers, architects, and stadium project managers. Spectacular facades tend to be photographed, and recorded, and have a great online presence. This can improve the team’s image of success and modernity. However, this does not guarantee success. Especially, if the rest of the architecture design is ignored.

Sport technology used to mean connected stadiums, wearable trackers, performance analytics and software for player management. During 2020, the COVID pandemic drove the uptake of online fitness and health with the rise of Peloton, Zoom based fitness and yoga classes. With this new trend towards “connected fitness”, how should traditional sports clubs prioritize their investments in sports technology?

Until the arrival of internet and the viral phenomenon it was enough with a photo created by the iconic stadium. It usually happened to be its exterior façade. Today, new stadium architecture searches for visibility adding details that not only meet their main end, but also are able to have an impact on online channels.

Marketing specialists claim that from 2022 it will no longer be useful to plan sports sponsorship taking the fans as a benchmark. This is because of a change the pandemic has accelerated: the relationship of the public with the teams, sports and sports events. Today, only 25% of the population claims to be followers of a team. The proportion goes up to 50% when considering the ones who follow a specific sport instead of a club. But it only occupies the mass percentage of the old fans, 80%, in the general category of sports fans.

Experts agree: when the pandemic is finally over, fans will return to the stadiums as motivated as they were before. Even more motivated, especially at the beginning, if they feel the need to regain their lost leisure time. The experience will not have big changes, but it will develop tendencies that have already been growing before coronavirus. Therefore, stadiums will not radically change. They will only move forward in their transformation.

In a Ypulse study on consumer habits in the United States after COVID-19, the results showed that basketball was the favorite sport and most followed by Generation Z and millennials. Older generations preferred the NFL, American football. Meanwhile, in what is known as the world’s second basketball center, the NBA is the most followed competition in China. Its penetration into the new generations through streaming, social networks, and local blogs is successful. Still, it is also that, according to studies of physical habits, after walking and running, basketball has become the most popular exercise across the country.