engleski

Evaluating success of promotion campaign for major sports events: the case of FIBA EuroBasket 2015, Croatia

Major sports events with a long tradition, established reputation, and international media profile like FIBA EuroBasket have been drawing attention of both domestic and foreign visitors for decades. More visitors, and hence greater consumption, lead to lasting economic benefits for the host regions. For this reason, cities and countries compete for the right to host these events, understanding the important role of well targeted and planned promotional activities. The sports event promotion is a determining factor in the number of sold tickets. It directly helps strengthening the event's brand and influences the event attendance rate, its media representation and brand exposure. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to analyse the promotional mix of FIBA EuroBasket 2015, and visitors satisfaction with the event’s promotion. Although the competition took place in four different countries, precisely in Croatia, France, Germany, and Latvia, the paper focuses on the promotional activities of EuroBasket 2015 held in Zagreb, Croatia. The first part of the study deals with the descriptive analysis of promotional mix elements, i.e. advertising, personal selling, sales promotion, public relations, direct marketing, corporate image, sponsorship, guerrilla marketing, and product placement. The second part of this research makes part of a wider empirical study involving more than 700 domestic and international visitors. The data were collected in Zagreb during 5 days (from 5th until 10th September 2015) and 15 matches. The results of this part of the study show that respondents evaluated the overall promotion of the championship with a medium grade, while the city preparation for the championship was ranked slightly higher. In doing so, it can be noted that international visitors are more satisfied with both indicators than domestic visitors. The paper also emphasizes the importance of promotional campaign planning and timely preparation as a key to success in attracting large numbers of visitors, and achieving positive economic results. This paper can be prelude to entire FIBA EuroBasket 2015 analysis of promotional activities, while further researches could be directed towards comparative analysis of promotional activities among hosting countries, as well as the success of each promotional campaign.

Croatia ; FIBA EuroBasket 2015 ; major sports events ; promotion ;

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