Sports jobs in marketing
Anyone with an interest in sports and the marketing of related products will encounter an interesting job market. Sports jobs in marketing offer lucrative conditions, far beyond the financial. After all, combining sports and a career is not only very future-proof, but also a dream combination for many fitness enthusiasts.
The sports business is a multi-billion euro market. Year after year, new sales records are set, in sports sponsoring as well as in the trade with sports articles, sports rights, with tickets or in the merchandising area of the clubs. This results in a high demand for labor. The SPOAC Sports Business Study 2016 already bemoans a growing shortage of specialists, for example in the fast-growing area of internationalization. Experts will therefore continue to be in demand in the future, not least in the core segment of the industry: sports marketing. Secure language skills and experience abroad are also becoming increasingly important in sports marketing.
Marketing as the key to success
Very few employees in the sports business make a living from their earnings as an active athlete. Professional athletes are flanked by hundreds of thousands of jobs in sales, design and product management. Marketing is one of the largest and most interesting areas. The success that a professional athlete or club can achieve always depends on many components. However, marketing always takes a key position.
Broad market, diverse job opportunities
There is no such thing as a fixed job description for sports jobs in marketing - and that's exactly what makes it so attractive. Depending on the type of sport, area of application and employer, different tasks await and different skills are required. The opportunities for entry are correspondingly diverse - from classic business studies to studies in sports marketing or sports management to lateral entry for ex-sports professionals or sports journalists.
To get an idea of the variety of sports jobs in marketing, a selective look at the possible fields of application helps: Event marketing, sponsoring, ticketing, social media support, merchandising, market and brand research, brand development, rights marketing, B2B marketing, advertising, internationalization, etc. More detailed information is available, among others, from DISM (http://www.sportmarketing-institut.de/index.php), the German Institute for Sports Marketing, founded in 2012.
Sports marketing - image building or image transfer
For all the differentiation of tasks and sports jobs - sports marketing pursues two major objectives: On the one hand, it is about the optimal marketing of athletes, sports, sports clubs and sports organizations; on the other hand, it is about the marketing of products and services from other industries with the involvement of sports. In other words, it's about image building or image transfer, with the foundations in the "how" being laid by communications and economics as well as market research. Even more than in other industries, emotions of potential customers play a role in sports marketing, which the marketing team must understand, loyally serve and direct.
Sports Jobs in Marketing - Requirements
Summarizing the above points, the main requirement for applicants is as follows: they must have a high affinity for sports and be able to represent a specific brand or sport and portray it in a value-driven way. This requires discipline and creativity.
For their part, sports companies will take care to tie their employees to the respective brand in order to generate maximum honest sympathy and loyalty. It makes no difference whether we are talking about the marketing intern or the marketing director.
Sports jobs in marketing - nationwide offer
The wide range of sports jobs in marketing has another advantage for applicants: the variety of locations. Agencies for sports marketing have settled in all metropolitan areas, from Hamburg to Berlin and Düsseldorf to Munich. In the Marketing & Retail sector, applicants can find jobs in almost all German cities. Adidas and Puma, two heavyweights in the sporting goods industry, are located in the Franconian city of Herzogenaurach. The DFB as an employer is headquartered in Frankfurt, and the clubs (not only in the soccer business) are spread across all German states. This also applies to the business schools and academies for sports marketing, which are ultimately not only trainers but also employers. For example, the Cologne Sports University alone, the only sports university in Germany, employs almost 900 people.
