CONSULTANTS

MARKET ANALYSIS
College athletics is important to the culture of higher education, and the
population of athletics as a whole has not shifted. Collegiate sports draw in millions in
revenue to colleges and networks. The entire market is college athletics, which can be in
other states around South Dakota. The market is narrow in terms of seeking attendance
be special to the college. If we look at an overall market of college athletics, USD is a
small percentage of that market. Collegiate sports is very demanding and competitive
among consumers, and other events such as March Madness work around them to add
to the consumer’s demands. The market covers students from other areas who may be
interested in attending events as well. While the events as a whole are as important to
the consumers as ever, it is the participation with the events directly that has begun to
see problems. Coyote Consultants will focus on creating a campaign that will draw in
more attendance to the University of South Dakota.
Market Segmentation
Coyote Consultants will focus its marketing activities on reaching the student
population at USD. We are using the demographics of young students ages 18 to 25.
These students must be sports fans who are willing to attend events but regularly
choose not to. Coyote Consultants will cater to the students desire to be socially
connected to their peers and the university. We can also focus lesser markets as
community members of Vermillion who go to games to seek outlets from boredom.
Faculty and staff also participate to support the students and the university. These
groups are the most likely to be convinced to participate in the events themselves.
Market Potential
In recent years there has been a large decrease in student attendance at football
for their athletic events have begun seeing a decline in attendance. According to Jon
Solomon on CBSSports.com, “72 percent of the top 25 attendance leaders experienced
increases or remained the same…but only 48 percent of the remaining schools
maintained or increased their crowd average, and many schools in smaller conferences
continued to decline” (Solomon, para. 5). The primary reasoning for this is higher social
media and television usage which makes watching games easier. Looking at television
contracts for college sports in 2013, ACC (ESPN/Raycom) held $3.6 billion and Pac-10
(ESPN/Fox) was at $3 billion. The NCAA Intercollegiate Athletics Report for 2013 showed
that the largest revenue reported for Division II athletics was $13,769,700 (Fulks, 17).
This is a large drop from the highest reported in 2012, which stood at $34,311,500
(Fulks, 17). Our market needs to compete with these other networks.
Individuals will seek out and receive information that controls their reasons to
attend games. Our research shows that students prefer to hear about games over
social media and word-of-mouth than other communication media. A problem for
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