Movember

Movember started when four guys at a bar decided to grow mustaches for a cause they felt needed to be heard. At that time growing a mustache was not something many people were doing, so when they only had a small amount of people growing mustaches, many people thought they were odd because the movement had not spread. The speaker had  a good message about persistence. They could have easily given up after they did not get as many people grow mustaches as they wanted to. Instead, they decided to keep it going, the next year trying to get more people to grow mustaches then the previous year, which they did. This can be translated to any challenge in life. If you give up early, you will never have a chance to make something out of it. Movember persisted through their challenges to get the word out, and because they did this they became the number one donors for prostate cancer, one year raising more than 77 million dollars.

Guest Speaker - Oct 31

Neil Ravin, a graduate from Scarborough High School, came into our Sports Marketing class to speak to us about his job and how he got to where he is now. From reading his rather impressive resume and listening to what he had to say, I could tell he was a very motivated and determined person. Not many people can say they know exactly what they want to do for a job, but he had a very good idea of his future goals and how he would accomplish those goals. He also had a helpful message about how to approach the job market, and life in general. He said you should always be prepared, and that goes for any situation. You never know what something might lead to, and even a call to someone that doesn't seem like it will amount to anything might get you somewhere completely new. I also liked when he talked about keeping social networking professional because that can relate to everyone in the class. If you are posting inappropriate things on Twitter or Facebook, the person who may hire you will see that and deny you. It is good to keep things professional, because you never know when someone is seeing what you are posting. He was a very nice guy, and I liked to see that he enjoyed his job, which is why he was willing to take so many unpaid internships to do so.

Stadium Staffing

In our next lesson on Virtual Business, we were in charge of stadium staffing for football games and concerts. More specifically, we had to hire ushers and stadium security so the fans could make it to their seats and stay there, as well as making sure there is no food thrown on the field or any people forming a mob in front of the concert stage. Our goal was to have nobody move seats and no fan violence, while spending a maximum of $200,000 on staffing. This lesson was significantly harder than the previous, as it was hard to find the correct amount of staff while staying under the $200,000 cap. Also, the attendance for different events would frequently change, making it hard to set the staffing for each event. I thought this lesson did a good job of teaching us how staffing has to do with maintaining a sports franchise. Staffing is very important because if you do not have good staffing, you will have less attendance because the fans will act poorly.

Ticket Pricing

In an attempt to grasp the knowledge required to run my own stadium, our Sports Entertainment and Marketing class ran a virtual business simulation in which we were in control of stadium prices for the Storm, the fictional local football team. We had to test out a few games, making the prices very low the first game, them very high the second game. By watching the ticket sales in those game, we then had to make our own prices based on the section the seats are located. This simulation gave me the opportunity to learn about yield management pricing, and how different ticket prices per section affect the amount of people that go to the game. I also learned that once sponsorship is available in the sim, I will make much more money. I like this part of the simulation because it reinforces the idea we have been talking about how effective sponsorship are in the sports marketing world. I look forward to continuing this simulation because it is fun and it allows us to act as though we are in command of a major sports franchise.

Frank McKinney - Making it Big

This article was very interesting because it struck me as something that doesn't seem like it is possible for a kid as young as McKinney was when he arrived in Miami. If I only had $50 dollars and no help from anyone else I would have no idea how to make a living. Instead of spending that $50, he saved it and got more money by finding a job. I thought it was very smart of him to use his special skills to his advantage by giving out tennis lessons to condominium complexes. It also surprised me how big of a work ethic he had because flipping houses is not an easy job. He had to know which house he could buy, how he would refurbish it to make a profit, and then he would need to know the current housing market and who wants a house. If I heard his story when he was 18 and just getting to Miami, I would have thought it was impossible for him to grow to be one of the best in the business in buying high-end run-down beachfront properties and turning them into expensive mansions. It seemed very risky to go into this field because, as the article says, the real estate business is tied so closely to fluctuations in the economy. If any of the houses that he bought had failed and he could not resell them, he would have been right back to phase one when he first got to Florida. I thought it was very inspiring to see that even though he had no money and no help from anyone, he still kept his morals and held true to the beliefs he had before he left his hometown.

The Civic Center Will Get a New Name

After reading this article, the first thing that struck me was the cost of refurbishing the Civic Center. The total price will be $33 million, scheduled to be finished in 2014. When the Cross Insurance Center was given its name, the deal was $3 million for 15 years. Even though the Cross Insurance center holds only 5,800 seats to the Civic Center's 8,000, they are going to be in some serious debt after the new construction. The same firm that was hired to secure the naming rights for Cross Insurance has been hired to market for a new name of the Civic Center. The Civic Center Board chairman Neal Pratt has said he chose Front Row Marketing Services because of their reputation in creating effective partnership packages, as well as their ability to create effective business relationships. To me this means that the Civic Center will be looking into a long term naming deal. I think the name of the Civic Center will be something local, even though they hired an out of state firm. I believe it will be named after a bank in southern Maine, or a large company like Unum.