Sports marketing is an incredibly popular strategy for businesses trying to connect with their customers to sell either products or services.

The reason it’s so popular is because sports is a massively popular worldwide passion that happens on every level: local, regional, national and international. As a marketing opportunity, companies can tap into this popularity and passion on any one of those levels. Companies can tap into it on an individual player level, on a team level and on a league level.

Sports marketing works because of the universal passion that sports generates.

All marketing is about the relationship between the company and its product and the consumer. We want to create a relationship that is fun, that is respectful, that is trusted. We want to make a powerful connection so that the consumer – the target audience – feels very comfortable with us and our product.

It’s this relationship that sports can help bridge. Ultimately, we like to hang out with people we like; we like to go places that we like; we like to buy products that we like and feel comfortable with. Sports is a proven vehicle for building this positive, fun relationship.

However, the sports marketing landscape is crowded, complex and expensive. The challenge for companies considering sports as a marketing tool is to optimize their opportunity by making smart, cost-effective, cost-appropriate decisions. The largest companies in the world are the biggest participants in sports marketing. However, poor decisions about sports marketing literally can put companies out of business.