Sport technology used to mean connected stadiums, wearable trackers, performance analytics and software for player management. During 2020, the COVID pandemic drove the uptake of online fitness and health with the rise of Peloton, Zoom based fitness and yoga classes. With this new trend towards “connected fitness”, how should traditional sports clubs prioritize their investments in sports technology?
Until the arrival of internet and the viral phenomenon it was enough with a photo created by the iconic stadium. It usually happened to be its exterior façade. Today, new stadium architecture searches for visibility adding details that not only meet their main end, but also are able to have an impact on online channels.
Marketing specialists claim that from 2022 it will no longer be useful to plan sports sponsorship taking the fans as a benchmark. This is because of a change the pandemic has accelerated: the relationship of the public with the teams, sports and sports events. Today, only 25% of the population claims to be followers of a team. The proportion goes up to 50% when considering the ones who follow a specific sport instead of a club. But it only occupies the mass percentage of the old fans, 80%, in the general category of sports fans.
Experts agree: when the pandemic is finally over, fans will return to the stadiums as motivated as they were before. Even more motivated, especially at the beginning, if they feel the need to regain their lost leisure time. The experience will not have big changes, but it will develop tendencies that have already been growing before coronavirus. Therefore, stadiums will not radically change. They will only move forward in their transformation.
In a Ypulse study on consumer habits in the United States after COVID-19, the results showed that basketball was the favorite sport and most followed by Generation Z and millennials. Older generations preferred the NFL, American football. Meanwhile, in what is known as the world’s second basketball center, the NBA is the most followed competition in China. Its penetration into the new generations through streaming, social networks, and local blogs is successful. Still, it is also that, according to studies of physical habits, after walking and running, basketball has become the most popular exercise across the country.
Any sports stadium has direct and indirect income. The most obvious is the first: ticket sales, rental of facilities, operation of food and drink areas, club shop, tour, and any other income dedicated to entertainment or marketing. The second and no less critical are retransmission rights, commercial rights, and sponsorship. Both are equally important, regardless of the money they generate, because they depend directly on each other. And if the business model is not well designed to exploit them, it will be useless to build the most spectacular stadium in the world.
Initially, the sport’s leading source of revenue was the sale of tickets for live events. Thanks to the technology development, when the television revolution began, broadcasting rights exponentially increased the profitability of these shows. However, the product remained in the same unaltered way.
The Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games will not only be remembered for the coronavirus pandemic. They have also been the most expensive in history, the ones with the lowest audience, and the ones that have increased the rejection of new cities to host them. Although what was new were the arduous negotiations to postpone or cancel them, which have continued to develop until the last minute. A whole lesson for Sports Governance has given more relevance, if possible, to the profiles needed among experts in the decision-making.
The Thai kings gave their enemies white elephants to lead them to financial ruin, an expensive animal to maintain. An animal that also did not produce anything. This is where the expression we apply today to sports facilities comes from, venues that become obsolete after a high initial investment. Or, in the best of cases, to have a deficient level of activity.
Different sales and marketing strategies to engage fans and consolidate fans into “super fans” have appeared throughout history and only very recently have changed radically in format by going digital, but not in essence.