Yes, yet again, Alexander "The Great" Ovechkin has been selected to play in the NHL All-Star Game for the third time in his four years of playing in the NHL. The 23 year old Washington Capital assistant captain will try to lead his Eastern Conference team to victory as they take on the Detroit Red Wing's, Pavel Datsyuk, and the Western Conference. He will not only try to lead his team to victory, but will also try to defend his Breakaway Challenge title in the All-Star SuperSkills Competition. Last year, heads turned and jaws dropped as Ovi dribbled the puck like a basketball on the end of his stick, smacked it high in the air, spun around while the puck came down and took a mighty baseball swing, which won him the 2008 Breakaway Challenge. WHAT A MOVE Eh? Aside from the Stanley Cup finals, the All-Star SuperSkills Competition and the All-Star Game are the biggest and most popular events in the NHL season.
Even though these two events are highly entertaining to the hockey world, think about theses events from a marketing point of view. Promotion and price are key here. Honda will be sponsoring the 2009 Honda/NHL All-Star SuperSkills Competition giving them an excellent opportunity to promote their brand name and image. However, the kicker is that within the SuperSkills Competition there will six events all sponsored by a different company or organization. The events consist of the Bridgestone NHL Fastest Skater, the Scotiabank Fan Fav Breakaway Challenge, the Upper Deck NHL YoungStars Game, the McDonald's Accuracy Shooting Competition, the Cisco Hardest Shot Challenge, and the Gatorade NHL Shootout Elimination Challenge. Wow, alot of promoting going on huh? But get this! This year fans will be the judge of the Scotiabank Fan Fav Breakaway Challenge by voting on there favorite breakaway move via text message through companies like Varizon, Sprint, AT&T, and T-Mobile. Can you say "MORE PROMOTION?" Now lets take a look at how price influences these two events. A ticket to a regular NHL season game can range from 30-90 dollars depending on the seat, venue, and team's playing, but a 90 dollar seat is totally unheard of to get into these two events. As of right now and according to ticketsnow.com, tickets are ranging from $370-$3210. I know, pretty outrageous huh and your probably asking yourself why? Being that these two events feature all of the superstars from around the league, prices are high because the demand to see these stars play is high while the supply of tickets is low making it easy to sell tickets to hockey fans at outrageous prices. Watching it on T.V. sounds good to me! These are just a few examples to get you thinking about how one event can effect the marketing and economic factors in sports.
Read the story at...
Nice man, im liking it
ReplyDelete