Collegiate Sporting Events Attendance: Reaching Students through Social Media

Collegiate Sporting Events Attendance

1. There is a wide range of factors that can potentially impact the attendance of the basketball game within the university. However, there is a series of the key factors that have the major influence on the issue. First of all, it depends on the image of the event that can be created through a proper observation of the future basketball game made within the social media. The image of the entertaining, popular, exciting and topical event will play for the improvement of the number of people that will attend the game. In addition, such details as the special price for food and drinks, free T-shirts or other attractive offers that are properly advertised can have an impact on the amount of the audience.

2. Talking about the significance of a unique culture, it is essential to see perspectives and advantages of its creation. In our university, the creation of a unique culture is highly desirable as our students are extremely open-minded and active, and the creation of the collegiate culture that promotes sport competitions, especially the ones that involve our sport teams together with raising the patriotic feelings towards the institution, will work for the growth of number of students and their families and friends that attend basketball games. Social media can also serve as a perfect tool for the creation of a unique culture as the majority of contemporary youth face the highest influence of the information they receive through this type of networks.

3. The main benefit of including social media in the marketing campaign is that universities receive the most effective tool to create a proper image of their sport teams and games that are about to take place within the institution (Fischbach, n.d.). A substantial amount of information shared through social networks gives universities the ability to meet the demands of contemporary youth that present the perspective audience of sport games. On the other hand, there are also dangers that have to be taken into account when working with social media. The main danger is multiple approaches and views on the information that might occur within social networks and that have the ability to immediately distribute within the particular social group. The negative image of sport players, the last game that was lost or unpleasant situations that took place during the game can get to social media as well and that will also impact students. The facts that are traditionally considered to be positive and improving the image of sport games can be seen in the negative light, and the immediate spreading of this information, even if it is fake or incomplete, can potentially play against the rise of attendance of the university sport events.

4. To gain student awareness, a sports marketing director can implement a series of specific attractive entertainments for the attending people that will take place during the sport game. For example, the growing popularity of flash mobs can be used to raise the popularity of university sport games (Fischbach, n.d.). They can be connected by the proper organization of advertisements in social media, and the image of the event that will make it interesting for the audience. The involvement of the mobile marketing is also an essential tool that should be used by the sports marketing director as this type of communication helps various companies in making any new event a real sensation. The more people talk about the event, the more of them will come to see the game. Not only the game, sportsmen and flash mob, but different special offers for food and drinks, free souvenirs and special guests, such as well-known sportsmen and celebrities of any scale, should also be used to attract people. All of these techniques, when properly implemented by the manager, will gain student awareness and improve the attendance of sport games within the institution.

5. The differences among various kinds of sports that are being represented within the university define diverse venues for each of them. To improve the attendance of sport events, the university has to take this factor into account and implement any innovative advertisement, while paying attention to specifications of the particular sport type. The disadvantage of this aspect is that the difference in the amount of people attending the event can be extremely diverse; therefore, approaches and techniques used in these cases have to be unique and refer to specifications of each sport game. For example, working on the improvement of attendance of the golf competition requires less concentration on mass factors such as flash mobs or the high level of popularity of the sport games. It has to be more exclusive, for instance, it is effective to provide people with the information about special guests. In contrast to that, the same situation within basketball or football requires more attention directed towards special offers for big portions, different flash mobs, the topicality of this kind of sport and the joy that the audience will receive attending the event. Thus, the highest attention has to be paid to the speed of sharing of the information through social media.