#localbaseball

This week saw the group create a ‘Game Day’ program for our sporting organisation. The program consists of team lists for matches, a catchy cover page, a game preview and a page allocated for the promotion of our club’s sponsors (no sponsors available).

The skills that were gained during the creation of the program were centred around the use of Microsoft PremierPro, such as formatting, design and article writing skills. The team lists graphics were designed to be catchy and visually appealing as opposed to using a list format, which could be considered ‘boring’ by fans. Additionally, a game preview was written to provide extra insight to fans regarding their upcoming game, a recent player’s form, or a statement from the coach.

These programs can be produced to be handed out to fans attending live games or be sent out digitally via a club’s mailing list, aiming to better include the fans in the ‘match day experience’. This benefits the club by enabling them to become more closely connected to their fans by allowing for more consistent communication between the organisation and their fans (Yoshida et al., 2014). Sending these programs out digitally to fans allows for a sporting organisation to gain access to the email addresses of their supporter base, giving them the opportunity to distribute information such as club updates, key dates, personnel changes etc (Robertson et al., 2023). Furthermore, dedicating a page solely for sponsors of the club may justify the business’s decision to partner with the club and encourage them to recommit for upcoming seasons, thus strengthening the financials of the sporting organisation.

These programs are designed to keep fans up to date with the progress of a fan’s favourite team, thus facilitating the communication channels between club and supporter. Extra communication channels increase the accessibility of important club information and make fans feel connected to the team’s progress.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EyUqdl-zPcBzCdegYIkPguBVe3xQbleo/view?usp=share_link

REFERENCES

Robertson, Karg, A., Rowe, K., & Raw, K. (2023). "My definition of community is community, and their definition is more around fan engagement": balancing business and social logics of professional sport teams' community activities. Sport Management Review, 26(3), 405–425.           https://doi.org/10.1080/14413523.2022.2087966