SCC FFL 2024: Sports Marketing Challenge #1 Recap & Scores

The 10th annual SCC Fantasy Football League sports marketing competition is now underway, featuring a mix of new participants and returning champions. The first challenge tasked students with developing a marketing and business plan for an expansion professional football team. The next challenge will introduce a more competitive element with a new rankings-based scoring system. Students will focus on branding the new franchise, and bonus points will be awarded based on rank. The top submission will earn ten bonus points, down to the 10th best, which will receive one point.

Here’s a quick recap summarizing the top-performing schools and highlighting where points were earned or potentially lost in the first sports marketing challenge. We’ll address specific requirements, what we saw, what we liked, and where some teams out-paced others.

City Selection:

While the choice of a city didn’t directly impact scores, the justification of that choice did. For example, did your plan show how a smaller city or an international market can build a local fanbase? If not, did you include a strategy to attract visiting fans to keep the stadium full and boost local businesses?

The students at Blacksburg High School nailed this by picking Guadalajara, Mexico. They backed up their decision with research, highlighting that it’s one of the biggest NFL markets outside the U.S. They pointed out the area’s huge population, the local culture’s love for sports events, and the lack of major sports teams competing for fans. Plus, they noted the appealing climate, which would draw visiting fans to the stadium while boosting the local economy.

Report Organization:

The highest-scoring teams submitted well-organized reports addressing each requirement outlined in the sports marketing challenge overview. Points were deducted from submissions that lacked clarity and flow, making it difficult to find the critical information required for the challenge. Additional points were deducted for multiple spelling or grammatical errors or if ideas and concepts were missing or misplaced.

Mission Statement and Executive Summary:

While most teams met expectations with the mission statement, there was room for improvement in some executive summaries. Some submissions were too brief and didn’t effectively convey their purpose, while others were overly lengthy and lacked focus.

Top-scoring teams crafted mission statements and executive summaries that clearly defined their franchise’s purpose and direction. Concise yet impactful summaries set the stage for the most effective marketing and business plans submitted by students at this stage in the competition. For instance, teams that tied their mission statements directly to their strategic objectives, including the financial play, have already created a roadmap for the success of the franchise.

SWOT Analysis:

An expansion team must recognize and understand the franchise’s market position and situation. This area of the report should have been prioritized, and the top submissions addressed the SWOT analysis in detail. The best-performing schools were thorough and realistic in each area, identifying multiple strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats facing the franchise in its inaugural season.

Economic Impact:

Many teams fell short in this area of the first sports marketing challenge. Economic impact reports that provided specific details on how the local economy would benefit both directly and indirectly—things like job creation and visitor spending were rewarded. The top entries went further by recognizing the importance of conducting an economic impact study to show where their data came from. This demonstrated a deeper understanding of the concepts covered in the textbook.

Marketing Goals and Strategy:

Top-scoring teams set measurable marketing goals by citing specific metrics and objectives for their franchise’s first season. For example, they aimed to boost social media followers by a specific number or planned to sell a certain number of season ticket packages to meet identifiable revenue projections. Additionally, several groups tied their marketing goals directly to their financial plans, providing a clearer picture of revenue objectives using metrics like attendance figures, ticket sales, and sponsorship sales.

The most effective plans also included a comprehensive marketing mix. For instance, students at Capital High School in Montana provided an excellent roadmap for their franchise in Salt Lake City by addressing each component of the marketing mix in detail and setting themselves up for success in upcoming challenges.

Financial Plan:

It was fun to see some creative things teams did with player payroll and hiring a coaching staff. Explaining your decisions is always helpful, and it was great to see several teams recognize the importance of putting together a quality product by investing in players and coaches. Two teams—Capital High School and Grant High School—even suggested they’d try to lure Bill Belichick out of retirement at the right price. They recognized the potential visibility it could bring to the franchise if they could reach an agreement that wouldn’t break the bank.

It was important for students to communicate a sound plan for generating revenue while balancing that against expenditures. We wanted to see a realistic approach to profitability in year one. There were no right or wrong answers here; whether the team felt it could be profitable in the first year didn’t matter as long as they justified how they arrived at that projection.

The top-scoring teams offered detailed explanations to support their projections. For example, choosing to play in an existing stadium instead of building a new one could increase the likelihood of profitability in the team’s first season. On the flip side, building a new stadium from scratch without public financing (using taxpayer dollars to fund the project) would undoubtedly strain the organization’s ability to turn a profit in year one.

Additionally, schools that recognized and researched revenue sharing and national media revenue—and their impact on a franchise—were rewarded. Since these have become a pro football team’s most significant source of revenue, understanding the significance was something we wanted to see in this challenge.

Overall:

Overall, students did a great job in the first sports marketing challenge. We’re excited to see what students will come up with for the branding project, as this is where creativity will really start to make some schools stand out.

Read more: SCC FFL 2024: Sports Marketing Challenge #1 Recap & Scores

SCC FFL 2024 STANDINGS AFTER CHALLENGE #1