Many agencies and businesses sought several strategies to market themselves to people. Some prefer advertisment through sports, while others believe there are more downsides to sport sponsorships. Despite both valid arguements that strengthens their case, i believe that advertising through sports is more advantageous than disadvantageous; however it should not be the main focus.
On one hand some companies prefer advertising themselves through sponsoring sports for several reasons. The most valuable reason in their opinion is that sports is a popular activity with a wide range of various audience. They believe that sales and profit will increase by embedding their logo on sport teams’ tshirts or displaying their logo during or between sport matches on tv since there is at least one member per family that watches sports. Moreover, the companies view sponsoring sports as a psychological technique to relate the customer to the company’s values and beliefs. For instance, they consider that if a well renowned athlete promoted their drink as being healthy, the buyers will, as a result, see that the company produces healthy products based on the claim of the athlete.
In contrast, those who are against sports sponsorship claim that it is one of the most cost ineffective ways to market their products and services. They argue that, in addition to the thousands or maybe millions paid to sports club to display their logo at events or matches, they will be required to pay a hefty amount of money to the popular athletes as well. They view that this money should better be invested instead in creating new services or products or improving the quality of the current ones. Furthermore, they claim that sports are not as popular as they were before the rise of various different forms of entertainment today. According to such companies, some statisctics show that the amount of people attracted to sports declined over the past years, and their focus shifted to fast paced entertainment media on social media platforms.
In conclusion, some business see sponsoring sports as an effective technique to advertise themselves for several reasons such as the popularity of sports among other various activities and the ability of the companies to relate their services and products to consumers; however, others view that it is cost inefficient and that sports are not as popular as they were before. Personally, I believe that sports are not in decline as the other companies claim, since the number of people that watch mainstream sports events and consider athletes as role models are increasing each year. However, I recommend that companies should not merely focus on sponsoring sports for advertisement; instead, they should also consider other trends in today’s generation, such as the music industry for example.