Sports and Entertainment Marketing

About This Course

The bright lights. The roaring crowds. The chants and cheers and applause. If you are drawn to the electricity of large events and the challenge of making events successful, a career in sports and entertainment marketing may be for you! In this course, you will trace the development of these industries, dissect their dual nature, and discover what it takes to pitch, promote, and deliver on these services. You ‘ll also explore the necessary steps to chart your own career path from among the professional roles that these industries need to operate. Let’s get off the sidelines and hop into the primetime of the sporting and entertainment worlds! Prerequisites:  None

Course Objectives: Upon completion of this course, students will be able to...

• Identify the structure of the sports and entertainment industry
• Define and distinguish between marketing, sports marketing, and entertainment marketing
• Connect historical developments to both current and future trends in sports and entertainment marketing
• Explain how target market, market segmentation, and the marketing mix relates to and impacts consumer purchasing decisions
• Identify all the variables in a sports and entertainment product
• Recognize the importance of branding and its impact on service quality
• Define the stages of a product life cycle
• Determine why some new products fail or succeed
• Determine the strategies for communicating information through promotional presentations
• Describe public relations and publicity, and review how a company builds goodwill and public awareness through community relations
• Identify elements of a press release, a press kit, and a press conference
• Define media relations, and examine the unique partnership media partners have with the sports and entertainment industry
• Define each element of the promotional mix
• Compare different promotional strategies for different events
• Determine the design elements of effective promotions
• Identify and describe how digital marketing impacts the fan experience
• Understand challenges that retailers face in a free-enterprise system
• Review approaches and methods used to understand and sell to the retail sporting goods consumer
• Complete sales and payroll-related transactions by analyzing pricing techniques and payment strategies used in retail marketing
• Examine how sports and entertainment events contribute to tourism and impact the economy
• Recognize different sports and entertainment marketing career paths
• Develop a plan of action for researching potential career paths
• Identify available resources to search for potential job leads
• Determine the essential elements of a career portfolio
• Identify the characteristics of successful entrepreneurs
• Define and compare different types of business ownership
• Research market opportunities in the sports and entertainment industry
• Establish the base components of a successful business plan
• Identify the fundamental functions of a business
• Explain how supporting roles contribute to fundamental business functions
• Interpret the two financial statements legally required of all businesses

Course Outline:

Unit 1: The Big Ideas of Sports and Entertainment Marketing

Unit 2: Product and Service Central

Unit 3: The ABCs of Business Communications

Unit 4: Principles of Promotion

Unit 5: Money and Marketing

Unit 6: Career Investigation and Planning

Unit 7: Entrepreneurship 101

Unit 8: The Big Picture of Business

Resources Included: Online lesson instruction and activities, opportunities to engage with a certified, online instructor and classmates, when appropriate, and online assessments to measure student performance of course objectives and readiness for subsequent academic pursuits.

Additional Costs: None

Scoring System: Michigan Virtual does not assign letter grades, grant credit for courses, nor issue diplomas. A final score out of total points earned will be submitted to your school mentor for conversion to their own letter grading system.

Time Commitment: Semester sessions are 18-weeks long: Students must be able to spend 1 or more hours per day in the course to be successful. Summer sessions are 10 weeks long: Students must be able to spend a minimum of 2 or more hours per day, or about 90 hours during the summer, for the student to be successful in any course. Trimester sessions are 12-weeks long: Students must be able to spend 1.5 or more hours per day in the course to be successful.

Technology Requirements: Students will require a computer device with headphones, a microphone, webcam, up-to-date Chrome Web Browser, and access to YouTube.

Please review the Michigan Virtual Technology Requirements: https://michiganvirtual.org/about/support/knowledge-base/technical-requirements/

Instructor Support System: For technical issues within your course, contact the Customer Care Center by email at CustomerCare@michiganvirtual.org or by phone at (888) 889-2840.

Instructor Contact Expectations: Students can use email or the private message system within the Student Learning Portal to access highly qualified teachers when they need instructor assistance. Students will also receive feedback on their work inside the learning management system. The Instructor Info area of their course may describe additional communication options.

Academic Support Available: In addition to access to a highly qualified, Michigan certified teacher, students have access to academic videos and outside resources verified by Michigan Virtual. For technical issues within the course, students can contact the Michigan Virtual Customer Care by email at customercare@michiganvirtual.org or by phone at (888) 889-2840.

Required Assessment: Online assessments consist of formative and summative assessments represented by computer-graded multiple choice, instructor-graded writing assignments including hands-on projects, model building and other forms of authentic assessments.

Technical Skills Needed: Basic technology skills necessary to locate and share information and files as well as interact with others in a Learning Management System (LMS), include the ability to:

• Download, edit, save, convert, and upload files
• Download and install software
• Use a messaging service similar to email
• Communicate with others in online discussion or message boards, following basic rules of netiquette
• Open attachments shared in messages
• Create, save, and submit files in commonly used word processing program formats and as a PDF
• Edit file share settings in cloud-based applications, such as Google Docs, Sheets, or Slides
• Save a file as a .pdf
• Copy and paste and format text using your mouse, keyboard, or an html editor’s toolbar menu
• Insert images or links into a file or html editor
• Search for information within a document using Ctrl+F or Command+F keyboard shortcuts
• Work in multiple browser windows and tabs simultaneously
• Activate a microphone or webcam on your device, and record and upload or link audio and/or video files
• Use presentation and graphics programs
• Follow an online pacing guide or calendar of due dates
• Use spell-check, citation editors, and tools commonly provided in word processing tool menus
• Create and maintain usernames and passwords

Additional Information: None