Assignment 25A - What's Next for Louis' Sponsor Venue?

EXISTING MARKET

Whats next: The next step in my business is talking to potential sponsors and establishing relationships with them so that when I start actually marketing my business to customers, I can have some options to present to them. This means that I need to get in contact with different businesses in the South Florida region who could possibly be interested in my idea, and present it to them. After that, I can start organizing these different sponsors into packages and see what type of clubs they would be willing to sponsor and how they want to situate their relationship with those clubs.

Interviews: The main response that I got from customers is that I should simultaneously be working to establish relationships with both sponsors and clubs. I never thought about this because I assumed that I would be able to find clubs interested in any financial adjacent support that they could get, but now it makes sense that there are certain needs which they would first prefer. Some of the customers stated that they would prefer equipment support in the form of cleats, shin-guards, etc. for their players so that they do not have to spend that money for themselves. Others stated that sponsored local/regional tournaments would be more beneficial because of how it would help with player development and exposure. The next step which they suggested was to help provide financial support to help the clubs grow in stature but I do not know if that is realistic. I would have to further research into how I would have to integrate that into my business model.

The future: I think that as my business grows, we have to begin targeting larger possible sponsors and maybe even bigger clubs. I know that might seem counter-intuitive since the bigger clubs would most likely already have their own sponsors but I think the possibility exists that they could need more. I say this because there are fairly big clubs situated in lower-income neighborhoods, or those clubs who at least target lower-income families with their membership prices.
I once played at a relatively medium sized club and we would often have issues with coaches not being able to show up to certain practice sessions because they put their outside jobs first. I think that with more sponsorship, they could increase their revenues and turn coaching or managing at these clubs to be their number one priority. This works in the same way that it will put more focus into developing the players and possibly increasing the competitions which they play in.

NEW MARKET

Shift: A possible new market for my club is to target large scale academies and clubs situated in affluent neighborhoods. 

Creating Value: I see value for the academies in more affluent clubs in the relationships that my business will have with the smaller clubs. I think that there exists the opportunity to connect the bigger and more affluent clubs/academies with the smaller and lower-income ones to use them as talent pools and development clubs. It would work with those bigger clubs also providing the smaller ones with financial incentives and other benefits in order to secure the relationship.

Its also possible that the smaller clubs would be against the idea because it relegates them to a position where they will never grow in comparable stature to the bigger clubs but I think I could convince them that this is already unlikely to happen because of their location. Eventually, those players would have tried out for the bigger clubs or get scouted by them at some tournament so they might as well get something out of it.

Interviews: I talked with an academy representative which I talked to earlier in the course, as well as a club located in a more affluent region of Central Florida. They first raised the concern that they could scout those players themselves or that the truly talented and confident players would seek them out and prove their worth. I then explained that this might not be possible given their financial situation but they stated that it was a risk they would be willing to take. Given that information, I then inquired into the possibility of their support contingent on the success of my original business idea and that got more approval from them. This means that the smaller clubs could be used as talent scouting pipelines to the bigger clubs given that they are sufficiently compensated.

     Reflection

I think its natural that there are perhaps more requirements to working with a more affluent market than there are to work with a lower-income one. A lot of the possibilities of me working with the more affluent market is contingent on my success with the original market which I identified. This makes it all the more important that I succeed with this idea because my credibility and subsequent ideas will be related to it. Surprisingly, I do not feel much pressure given these circumstances because I am more interested in the process and what I can learn from it.

I also feel that the requirements of the more affluent clubs and how they would like to use the smaller clubs are not necessarily negative ideas. I say this because giving the players the opportunity to progress into larger clubs and academies is objectively a good thing. The connection between these bigger clubs and the smaller ones also increases the connectivity of U.S. soccer as a whole and that can also be considered a positive.