Applications of Service Marketing (Chapter 11) 215

11.6. SPORTSA D ENTERTAINMENT SERVICE

• ENTERTAINMENT
11.6.1. Introduction
Sports and entertainment marketing is a big industry providing number of products and services. Individuals
and families who are busy in their routine life must be careful while selecting sports and entertainment activities
ensuring that they will enjoy it with their restricted time and resources. Sports and entertainment products
marketers must estimate consumer demand, market competition, and value of their offerings. The fundamental
standards of marketing and the marketing mix must be carefully taken into consideration by marketers while
establishing marketing strategies for sports and entertainment products.

A wide variety of activities constitute sport marketing ranging from sports, entertainment, course management
and merchandising to managing media, corporate events, social events, etc. For example, Brandon de Souza
Management Services (BDMS) has been a frontrunner in organising and managing gated residential golf course
communities. It began with consulting on large golf properties with associates like DLF group. BDMS has
managed to put up some of the exquisite shows in the entertainment world. It has paid tributes to icons like
Elvis Presley and the Beatles and is also involved in vigorously promoting famous stars like Usha Utthup and
Gary Lawyer. BDMS together with the Times Group has come up with three special coffee table books on golf
including Tea off with the Times. They have also done an exclusive publication for BOC India. BDMS have
also been active in organizing various seminars, workshops, golf tournaments and employee incentive
programmes in the corporate world. They have an all-ranging tabulate of corporate gifts such as fashion
accessories, clothing, home items and office desktop items.

A wide range of job opportunities are produced by the entertainment services. Sports organisations are a part of
services including hockey, baseball, soccer, basketball and automobile racing. Sports marketing have been
witnessing a powerful growth in employment. Various arts form like music, theatre, ballet, opera and museums
are also part of entertainment services. Inspite of the non-profit status of many of these organisations, they
frequently employ marketers. Amusement parks, circuses, special events and festivals are some other
entertainment services. A number of marketing positions are offered by big entertainment service organisations.
These entertainment services fulfil the social and recreational needs of the people. For example, movie
theatres, amusement parks, motion pictures and television production offer diverse entertainment services in
recent times. A number of and diverse entertainment services are accessible today. Retailers of the
entertainment industry experts encounter different issues and challenges with respect to domestic market
segmentation, emphasising on identifying and then fulfilling the requirements of their specific target audience.

11.6.2. Marketing in Sports and Entertainment Services

Refining their entertainers' performance competencies is one of the many focus areas of successful
entertainment services. Their other concerns include marketing their services in addition to practicing the basic
business principles that enable the service to be a success and profitable for the organisation. This makes it
necessary for entertainment services providers to find greater opportunities at domestic/home communities,
besides establishing strong communication links with other business houses. Good entertainers need not
necessarily be successful business managers and this is the main reason for the collapse of many entertainment
businesses. The idea of running a successful entertainment company requires the capability to convert the
excitement and competency to entertain people into a well-founded and reasonable strategic plan.

Developing an entertainment plan provides makers their own strategies in addition to exploitation of their
motion pictures and other content, global distribution and arrangement of funding. This strategy provides
capitalists and industrialists slate project management, risk and net return review. Entertainment services
equipped with an efficient marketing plan provides them with well-founded business principles and systems,
which are exercised by the entertainment industry's most renowned and successful producers, international
distributors, entertainment banks and studios.
The audience or viewers of sporting events are probable customers of a wide range of products right from food
items, clothing, and athletic equipment to automobiles. Sport audiences have many things or attributes in
common besides the sport namely; age group, gender, marital status, education level, income level and ethnic