Budget, Investment and Evaluation - Melbourne City Football Club - Example

Sponsorship proposal Name: Instructor: Course: Date Cover letter Melbourne City Football Club, Melbourne, Victoria To Metricon Homes Victoria 501 Blackburn Rd Mt Waverley, VIC 3149 Dear Sir/Madam. Ref. Sports Sponsorship  Dear Sir/madam, on behalf of Melbourne City football club (MCFC), I hereby submit this application letter with regard to sponsorship opportunity as mentioned in the reference section of this letter. The club is looking for potential organization to sponsor away trip accommodation of players and club accompanying staffs for one night for the whole period of the forthcoming regular season 2016/2017. The club has a total of 12 away matches that are played in the regular season. The club is seeking for sponsorship to a tune of $40,000 for the entire period. In return for the sponsorship, the plan will allow the potential sponsor to negotiate marketing activities with the club. Marketing is the main strategy that the plan intends to use in return for the sponsorship offered. However the club is willing to listen to any other proposal that the sponsor might have and it is very willing to accommodate such proposal as long as they fall under the objectives of the club. For further information about the club’s sponsorship strategy and any other relevant information, please refer to the proposal attached herein We are looking forward for a positive response from your organization; you can contact us any time using our daytime telephone number 03-94571765. It will be our pleasure should you consider our request. Sincerely, Sponsorship, Melbourne City Football Club. TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. Executive Summary……………………………………………………………………3 2. Sports Property…………………………………………………………………………4 3. Target Markey………………………………………………………………………….5 4. Promotional Plan……………………………………………………………………….7 5. Benefits…………………………………………………………………………………8 6. Creative Leverage………………………………………………………………………9 7. Budget, Investment and Evaluation…………………………………………………….9 8. Marketing Plan………………………………………………………………………….9 9. Inventory Assets……………………………………………………………………….10 Executive Summary (MCFC) soccer club plays in Australian premiership league. The club has been playing in the competition for the last six consecutive seasons since its first inauguration into the A-league in 2009. It first participated in the league during the 2010/2011 season. Current owner of the club is City football group (CFG) in which Manchester city and New York football clubs also falls under. MCFC has posted impressive results over the years and it finished fourth in the just concluded season 2015/2016. Currently the club is looking for sponsorship for players’ accommodation during away matches in the forthcoming Australian A-league competition of 2016/2017 regular season. The club has very generous compensation strategies for the organization that will accept to sponsor it. Especially by marketing the organization. The club has a total of twelve matches that are played outside Melbourne, Victoria other than the Melbourne derby. For the twelve away matches that are played outside the city, the club would like future travels on the match day minimized hence the plan to accommodate the players and accompanying staffs in hotels at a cost of $40,000 per season considering the costs of cities in which accommodation may be expensive such as Sydney. In return for the sponsorship, the club will market the sponsoring organization according to the marketing guidelines and objectives of the sponsor. Among the compensation package for the sponsor is an automatic listing of the company and the logo of the company in the club website and any other print advertisement made by the club. Sports Property Sponsorship objectives of Melbourne City Football Club is to promote a two way partnership in which both the partners mutually benefit from the partnership deal exclusively (MCFC, 2016). The club promotes it sponsorship partners through branding. The club has an objective of fostering business to business culture in Australia by engaging other business organization through connections and other related activities. MCFC also has an objective of fostering the business-to-customer relationship and satisfy the enthusiastic fans of the Hyundai Australian league who are always so passionate. Finally, the club has genuine commitment in engaging in community activities whether in schools or any other area and aspect of the community, MCFC has genuine commitment in harmonizing its existence with the community by participating in several community building activities. It was established in 2009. Melbourne was the club’s name until 2014 when after being purchased by the City football group it changed its name to Melbourne city. It plays in the premiership competition of Australia; the Hyundai A-league. The home city for the club is Melbourne Victoria (MCFC, 2016). The home matches are played at the Melbourne rectangular stadium popularly known as the AAMI Park. The club first participated in the A-league completion in the 2010-2011 seasons and finished eighth. Over the years the club has improved in performance and it finished fourth place in the concluded season of 2015/2016 and participated in the last round of six but was eliminated. The club also produced the top scorer for the concluded season Fornaroli who scored a total of 23 goals out of 27 matches. Melbourne city has continued to improve and post impressive results; the future of the club looks very good indeed. Plans are underway to bring to the club other prolific players come next season. With the high goal turnover of the clubs striker and the possibility of the arrival of key stars in the coming season, Prospects remain very high for the club. Target market Target market is the customer niche that a particular commercial entity seeks to reach by its operations, products or services (Shilbury et.al, 2001). Is represents a group of customers whom the club aims to reach with its merchandize. The major event that the club participates in is the A-league although from time to time the club may participate in international and domestic club friendlies. The club target market considering the league in which it participates in is the domestic club fans of the Hyundai A-league who are indeed passionate. The club already enjoys a massive home support in the city of Victoria though the club has to impress the funs more in order to increase the support base considering that the support of Melbourne victory who had been playing in the league long before they were inaugurated into the Australian league is quit big. This is evident by the massive attendance whenever there is the Victoria derby between the two clubs. Old supporters are a little difficult to change (Fullerton, 2010). Melbourne victory had established its support base long before the arrival of MCFC, but this notwithstanding, the club has been able to gain massive support in the home city and outside and expects to attract even more supporters in future. In recognizing the fact that old supporters cannot be attracted from already established clubs; the clubs main support target is with children particularly for home support base. The club also would attract more supporters from outside the city who are not necessarily children but those who are just impressed by their progress and soccer. The club must position itself strategically. For sports business, it is not always the current profit or benefits that counts but that of the future and the ability to sustain the future benefits (shank, 2002). Considering the fact that that for the last six years that the club has been posting progressive results, it is safe to argue that the club is only headed for a better future, this is why the club as much plans for the success of today, a lot of emphasis is in the near future. With the new development that the club has had including the football academy complex which is located in La Trobe University, the children indeed have to be the major market target for the club. The children are attracted into the club by enrolling into the academy. The academy is set to play a key role in attracting the target customers. Many children in Australia will now want to enroll and become associated with the clubs academy complex and so are their peers. By attracting more children supporters and maintaining good performance, the club is likely to post future returns and sustain them as well. The use children support for sports club marketing is basically engaging the use of psychographic market target (shunk, 2002). The club understands the interest that the children in Australia have for soccer and in response to that, the club developed the academy complex. The marketing of the club also understands how children are interested in the activities of fellow children and they have been able to tap that. Instead of playing in the community grass root football, many children in Victoria will always dream of playing in the academy. This alone creates a sense of attachment and belonging which will benefit the club for a long time should such children get the opportunity to play in the academy. Imagine the attendance of the community from which a child originates from, grows in the academy and subsequently becomes a regular in the Melbourne city football club, and a star for that matter. The use of children as the market target is demographic as well. Demographic market segment is the use of factors such as age or even race to determine the target market. The club does not use much ‘usage information’ to determine the market segment since soccer is basically a service and a game that does not need tutoring or explanation on how it works. It is a decision that a customer makes and the team which one supports is exclusively one’s choice. In this respect the club can only tap into the imagination of such consumers and try to meet such imagination by attracting talented players that can at least fill in the imagination of the supporters. Promotional plan To promote the major sports events, the club will mainly rely on advertisements with television and local radio channels (Irwin et.al, 2002). There are several local television channels that have broadcasting rights to air the games. This particularly is important for the home supporters who cannot travel to watch the team play way games in different cities. Billboards will also be used to promote major sports event by the club. Towards the start of the coming season, the billboards will be placed in strategic locations such as city entrance and exits and also within the community near the AAMI stadium to promote local supporters attendance. The fixtures of A-league will be published in local newspapers and magazines first for the whole season before it commence and weekly for every MCFC. In the fixtures published in the newspaper and magazines, ticket values, venue and any other relevant information will be provided. The club will consider sponsoring some local sports bar within specific areas in the community nearby to obtain big screens that will attract customers who cannot make it to the stadium. Benefits MCFC will be a great benefit for Metricon. The club will offer Metricon a rejuvenated identity considering that Metricon has been in the Australian housing industry for over 40 years. Some people are always skeptical. New things always are attractive to the eyes of many. Several construction companies have come up in Australia with big capital and cut age technology which has given Metricon a run for its money. Though Metricon itself has not been left behind in adopting technology and attracting highly qualified staff, it still needs that rejuvenated look. MCFC offers the perfect opportunity for Metricon. The club will offer Metricon naming rights, on top of that. Every new customer for Metricon whose worth is more than $10,000 will tickets to attend all the games of MCFC for the whole season, both home and away. It would serve Metricon a great deal to partner with the club Creative leverage In the face of stiff competition especially in the modern world, right advertisement has become a major concern for companies. MCFC will offer Metricon an extra and superior platform for the company to reach many consumers in different geographic regions and cities through branding rights offered by the football club. Every merchandize of the club will always have the list of sponsors and by having its name in such merchandise, Metricon will be able to reach and appeal to more customers than other rival companies in the market. Budget, Investment and Evaluation The total cost for the accommodation sponsorship that the club is seeking for is $40,000 annually or for a single season. The club is looking for a sponsorship that lasts for three years but this is subject to negotiation with the willing sponsor. The funds will be channeled to the clubs sponsorship accounts and will be used effectively in accommodating players for all the away games that they will be attending. The sponsorship will mainly benefit through marketing related activities by the club. There will be no financial entitlement to the sponsor in any way. Marketing plan The club will employ several marketing strategies. Among the strategies includes brand bulls eye. This basically means identifying the customers of and placing the brand according to the customers’ needs (Bullin, 2000). The customer becomes the focus of developing the brand, the focal point upon which the brand development evolves (stotlar, 2001). The club’s customers are the soccer supporters; soccer is enjoyed by different individual in different ways. Whereas some will only enjoy goal scoring moments, others enjoy the fine details of soccer such as passing skills, defending skills and other elements in the pitch. As a result the club seeks to develop a football brand that takes care of every need of the supporters. The club has therefore has set in motion plans to recruit key talented players in the forthcoming season to achieve the brand of soccer that appeals to all. In developing the football brand mentioned before, the club explores the strengths, weaknesses; opportunity and threats (SWOT) of the strategy (Pitts et.al, 2002). The club already has the capacity to attract very talented players to its side. Consider Manchester city in England and New York City football club in the U.S. these clubs have been able to attract big names to their sides. Currently Manchester city has secured the services of Pep Guardiolla to be their coach starting next season. Guardiolla has literally had success in his coaching career by winning almost every trophy with Barcelona and Bayern Munich. In essence the club has the financial capacity of attracting quality to its side. The weakness lies in the fact that many big and talented players of world class naturally wants to compete in highly competitive leagues such as EPL, UEFACL, la liga, serie A and so forth. The same is the situation with successful coaches. As a result it is very difficult to secure the services of such big time coaches and players. However, there is an opportunity, with the establishment of the sports academy by the club. The club will have the opportunity of nurturing talented players who will eventually graduate to the senior team. But this has its threats as well since such players once they have been nurtured and molded may become attracted to other competitive clubs and end up not playing for the club. Inventory of Assets Assets for the football club can either be human assets of physical assets. The human assets include the players and the support staffs. Other assets of the club include the sports academy which is located in La Trobe University. The club has a total squad of 27 players with an average age of 26 years. Among the 27 players, four are foreign players (14%). The club has one manager whose contract expires in 2017. The club’s home stadium has a capacity of 30,050 seats. The total worth of the club other than the sports academy and the stadium is €8.7milliom, but the club is just a conglomerate of the City football group which is very rich. In the A-league, Melbourne city is the richest club. References Graham, S., Neiratti, L.D., and Goldblatt, J.J. (2001). The Ultimate Guide to Sport Marketing. McGraw-Hill, New York. Fullerton, S, (2010). Sports Marketing. McGraw-Hill, New York. Irwin, R.L., Sutton, W.A., and MC'.Carthy, L.M. (2002). Sports Promotion and Sales Management. Human Kinetics, Champaign, Illinois. Melbourne City Football Club (MCFC, 2016). All the latest Melbourne city FC news, results video and tickets. Retrieved from www.melbournecityfc.com Mullin, B.J., Hardy, S. and Sutton, W. (2000). Sport Marketing. Human Kinetics, Champaign, Illinois. Pitts, B.G., and Stotlar, D.K. (2002). Fundamentals of Sports Marketing. Fitness Information Technology Inc.: Morgantown, West Virginia. Shank, M.D. (2002). Sports Marketing; a Strategic Perspective. Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River. Shilbury, D., Westerbeek, H., Quick, S. & Funk, D. (2009). Strategic Sport Marketing. Allen & Unwin, Crow’s Nest, NSW. Stotlar; D.K. (2000). Developing Successful Sport Sponsorship Plans. Fitness Information Technology Inc.: Morgantown, West Virginia. Stotlar; D.K. (2001). Developing Successful Sport Marketing Plans. Fitness Information Technology Inc.: Morgantown, West Virginia. Read More