Part 1: Marketing Analysis for the NFL
In today’s world of professional sports the National Football
League is one of the leading competitors in the industry. The organization is the governing body for America’s most popular spectator sport, acting as a trade association for 32 franchise owners. The NFL is a business service company that competes with leagues such as Major League Baseball, National Basketball Association, National Hockey League, and various other sporting companies. Current trends and developments within the NFL include expanding to foreign markets and reaching a wider range of consumers. Growth in the media industry along with using new marketing techniques has helped work toward these goals. Sponsorships have always been an essential part of the sports and entertainment industry and with an increase in endorsement deals the NFL hopes to reach new markets and consumers.
Along with being the governing body, the NFL also promotes the game of football, regulates team ownership, and markets and sells apparel. Most of the revenue the company generates comes from the marketing sponsorships, licensing merchandise, and selling national broadcasting rights to games. The teams in the league operate as separate businesses but share a percentage of the leagues overall revenue. In the early days of the American football the best-known teams were college teams from the Northeast. In the working-class manufacturing towns of the Midwest, teams from athletic clubs played hard-fought games against one another. In order to gain a competitive edge over opposing teams, clubs began to pay players to recruit the best players to their teams. Then in 1920 the American Professional Football Association was founded and became the National Football League two years later in 1922. Fourteen teams started the American Professional Football Association, later expanding to 32 teams, making up the current NFL program now. The NFL’s mission statement includes the...