Hi, my
name is Forrest Owen and I'm a junior at St. Michael's College. As part of a
marketing class that I'm taking, I'm creating this blog with the hope to
educate people about marketing. In this post, I'm going to be talking about the
effect that marketing has on professional sports and outdoor pursuits. I’m
on the varsity tennis team as well as an instructor for the SMC Wilderness
Program. I have a strong passion for both of these pursuits and I’m going to be
doing plenty of research on these fields as well as incorporating my thoughts
about how these programs aid or hinder many companies marketing practices.
In
almost every sport that is televised today, athletes, teams, or organizations
have sponsorships with certain companies. With many sports, those sponsorships
aren’t broadcasted through the players. For example, the Boston Bruins have a
lot of companies that pay the TD Garden for advertisement space on the boards. A
few hockey players like Alex Ovechkin who had endorsement deals with CCM for a
long time before he switched to Bauer.
In
tennis however, the players are the individual who have a relationship with the
company. Similar to Alex Ovechkin’s endorsement deal with CCM, many of the top
players are sponsored by companies like Nike, Adidas, Wilson, and Head, to name
a few. Throughout an athlete’s career, most professional tennis players change
the companies they have endorsements with.
One of
the prime examples of this is Novak Djokovic. Currently, Djokovic is the top
tennis player in the world and just won his 10th Grand Slam title. During
the earlier days of his career, Djokovic was sponsored by Adidas for his apparel
and footwear. In November of 2009, Novak Djokovic signed a 10-year deal with
Sergio Tacchini for his apparel effective on January 1st, 2010.
Djokovic’s deal was short lived though as he moved on to a 5-year sponsorship
in 2012 with UNIQLO, a small Japanese company who provided his apparel as well.
 |
| Ad for the new Barricade 7 Novak Pro |
Throughout
his switches to and from apparel companies, Djokovic was still sponsored by
Adidas for his footwear. Just before the 2015 US Open, the last Grand Slam of
the calendar year, Adidas released a line of tennis shoes which Djokovic endorsed
called the “Adidas Barricade 7 Novak Pro”. After winning the US Open wearing
these shoes, I can only imagine how this will immensely help Adidas with the
sales of these shoes.
Under
Armour is a brand that is rising in tennis. At the start of 2015, Andy Murray,
the top tennis player from the United Kingdom, signed a 4-year deal with Under
Armour for apparel. Since Under Armour is still developing their tennis line,
they don’t have a lot of tennis specific clothing. For this reason, I believe,
you don’t see a lot of people sporting Under Armour clothing on the tennis
court at tournaments or big tennis events.
Recently,
Under Armour has been working with Andy Murray to create a pair of tennis shoes
which he can endorse. At Wimbledon, Murray wore Under Armour’s test shoes for
the first time where he made it to the 4th round before losing in a
tough match with Kevin Anderson. A lot of people prefer Under Armour brand
clothing to that of Nike, including myself, because the quality of Under Armour
is significantly better. I think that once Under Armour releases a pair of
tennis shoes to the general public, they will have a big break-through in the
tennis market and will start to gain some ground on the competition where they
will be able to really compete with Nike and Adidas for the top tennis market
shares.
Sports
Illustrated wrote an interesting article around the time of Wimbledon about the
design of Murray’s tennis shoes (http://www.si.com/tennis/2015/06/30/andy-murray-custom-under-armour-shoes)
No comments:
Post a Comment