The
Elusive Fan:
Reinventing Sports in a Crowded Marketplace
The Definitive
Playbook for Transforming Sports
The Elusive Fan is a groundbreaking guide to engaging and retaining
today’s fragmented, ever-shifting, and demanding sports fans.
The sports industry is booming like never before. At all levels, from
professional and high school to college and club, revenues are reaching
previously unimaginable heights. Sports are now a multi-billion dollar
global business that is on the cutting-edge of entertainment, new media
technology, and communication and marketing synergies. And the industry
will only continue to grow by leaps and bounds into the foreseeable
future.
The bad news: Competing for sports fans has never been more intense and
uncertain.
World-renowned communication expert Irving Rein, international
marketing guru Philip Kotler, and communication specialist Ben Shields
explore the many challenges facing sports today and offer their expert
analysis of the current and emerging market trends that are making it
so difficult to capture the hearts and minds of today’s
sports fans. Using a wide mix of case studies from many of
today’s most successful sports leagues, teams, stars, and
facilities, they show how you can:
- Transform sports products into
strong brands that transcend winning and losing
- Integrate new technologies to
engage fans and maximize revenue
- Build star-powered attractions
to drive sports brands
- Develop enduring connections
with fan markets
- Anticipate and quickly respond
to the competitive and cultural trends that affect the sports
marketplace
- Reconnect fans through a number
of innovative strategies
Today’s sports fan
operates in a world saturated with choices. Traditional sports like
baseball, football and basketball, must now vie for fans’
attention (and dollars) with emerging challengers such as NASCAR,
snowboarding, lacrosse, poker…even paintball. For the first
time in history, the sports industry has to reexamine fundamental
questions about its true markets, product distribution, and how to
handle inevitable crises. The old business formulas, developed in an
age of just three television networks and creaky stadiums with
backless, uncomfortable seats, no longer apply.
Authors Rein, Kotler, and Shields deliver an innovative new business
model centered squarely on fan satisfaction and retention. They give
you the tools for successfully transforming your sports product into an
enduring brand, immune to the vagaries of winning and
losing—flexible enterprises that quickly adapt to changing
market conditions and consistently deliver a unique and satisfying
sports experience.
Whether you are a decision maker for a sports team or league on the
professional, college, or high school level, a marketer, advertiser, or
sponsor of a sports product, an athlete looking to break out into new
markets, a business leader searching for clues to emerging trends, or a
fan who is interested in the past, present, and potential future of the
sports business, this book is a must-read.
Combining expert analysis with field-tested strategies for winning
hearts and minds, The Elusive Fan is your guide to surviving and
thriving in today’s fragmented, ever-widening world of sports.
The Elusive Fan is published by McGraw-Hill. It first shipped to
bookstores and online retailers in July.
Table of Contents
Part
One: Reaching the Elusive Fan
1. The Fan Challenge
2. Sports in
Trouble
3. How Fans Connect
PART
TWO: Connecting to the Elusive Fan
4. Reinventing the Sports
Brand
5. Generating the Sports
Brand Transformation
6. Implementing the
Sports Brand Transformation
7. Communicating the
Sports Brand
PART
THREE: Surviving in the Sports Fan Marketplace
8. Sustaining the Fan
Connection
9. Successful Cases in
Sports Branding
10. The Future of Fan Connection
|