Business Level Strategy (Australian Football League) - Essay Example

Business Level Strategy and Conclusion College Business Level Strategy As the oldest league in Australia, Australian Football League (AFL) has adopted various business strategies to improve its operations and yield more revenue. It has been recorded that the league has significantly grown its revenue from $340 million in 2011 to $450 million in the year 2013. As stated in the AFL.com.au (2015), its revenue increase is accredited and associated with the adoption of a differentiated strategy for the league’s services.

Differentiated business strategy refers to an approach that is used by companies to give them a competitive edge over their competitors through making their products or services unique (Casile and Wheeler 2005). Casile and Wheeler add that differentiation makes an organization thrive due to the flexibility of using its substitutes. For instance, the Australian Football League has increased its game intensity. For a sports industry, this is vital to maintaining high spectators’ appeal for the game (Watson and Wooldridge 2005).

The AFL players are expected to carry out sprints repeatedly despite their positions in the game as compared to the previous years. Therefore, it has enabled the players to be more competent thus giving the league a competitive advantage (Nandakumar, Ghobadian and ORegan 2010). Moreover, the company uses the GPS technology to predict the movements of their players thus avoiding unnecessary injuries. That is because managers can select players during pre-match and analyze the fatigues gained during post-match to prevent inequalities during competitions.

The process technology provides to the league a unique cost leadership strategy that will revive it through the competitive world (Massingham 2004). The AFL has also expanded its services to other states around the globe. When the league was established in 1897 as Victoria Football League, it only hosted competitions for teams based in Australia state of Victoria. However, this has transformed over the years and currently the competition consists of eighteen professional teams with Victoria State having contributed ten of these professional teams.

That, therefore, shows that the league has adopted the playoff structure to differentiate its capabilities and services (Huo and McKinley 1992). All these strategies have enabled AFL to be the favorite sport for most individuals in Australia despite the state having a broad range of sports preferences such as cricket, soccer, and rugby. Conclusion In conclusion, it is apparent that the AFL has had great success over the past years despite its threat of substitute products. That is because the league is the highest level of professional sports competition in Australia that has moved towards financial management directions so as to enable the survival of its clubs.

Besides, the football league is also the largest sports in Australia that has incorporated its initial clubs to compete even if they were its amateur bodies at first. Moreover, the league has continuously used the differentiated business strategy to make its services unique so as to have a competitive advantage over its competitors. However, the strategy has not effectively worked since the league continues to face various challenges from its closest rivals NRL and A-League. Besides, the league has also had other competitors in the football world such as Hawthorn Football Club that has a strong corporate branding and solid brand name.

It is, therefore, evident that for the league to succeed it needs to develop a well-managed corporate strategy that will help it to manage its current challenges and also its future threats. Besides, that will also enable the league to grow and maintain efficient operations in the sporting industry. Bibliography Casile, Maureen and Jane V. Wheeler. 2005. "The Magnetic Sentences Industry Game: A Competitive In-Class Experience Of Business-Level Strategy." Journal of Management Education 29 (5): 696-713.

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