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Marketing College Hockey

Re: Marketing College Hockey

If the in-arena ads are for booze, porn or video games then they will get me to buy their products. Anything else, and I couldn't care less about their advertising.

Then again, maybe I am not their target market...
 
Re: Marketing College Hockey

JF_Gophers said:
If the in-arena ads are for booze, porn or video games then they will get me to buy their products. Anything else, and I couldn't care less about their advertising.

Then again, maybe I am not their target market...
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Alcoholic loner loser? No, probably not.
 
Re: Marketing College Hockey

LTsatch said:
FD08, I do not recall seeing advertising in any of Yale's athletic facilities, most likely a local or Ivy League preference. They do thank sponsors/supporters on the scoreboard though. I recall Dartmouth a couple of weeks ago with a similar setup. Each rink also had deals with local youth and student groups for the concessions, which are used as fundraisers for those groups. I think the demographic info in the article may be flawed when it comes to "old guard" northeastern schools, we tend to retain our older fan base, if it wasn't for students the average age of attendance at a Yale game would be at least 40.
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The recent pictures that DarthBruno put up of Meehan show advertisements, and there isn't any whitespace on the boards at Lynah, so I would assume it is a preference of your school rather than the league.

As for demographics, it's always going to be flawed, because different locations offer different opportunities. Take Colorado College, for example. Their arena is about 4 miles from campus, so the typical supporters at their games are the townies, not the students. Then, take a look at the larger cities with oppotunity, where there are plenty of younger people (mid-to-late 20's). They are likely to be more in touch with their college fanbase, or even know some current students, so that helps matters.

RPI's concessions are run by the various sports teams (lacrosse, soccer, basketball, etc.) as fundraisers; I'm sure there are plenty of schools that do this.
 
Re: Marketing College Hockey

LTsatch said:
You are so coarse that you can't spell coarse correctly! ;)

I like this definition though


Coarse--Lacking delicacy, taste, or refinement; unpolished: "He had coarse manners but an absolutely first-rate mind".
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It was a simple typo, the A and U keys being right next to each other on the keyboard and all.

Okay, so I was off work and hadn't been thinking all day. I wasn't about to start for this place.

goldy_331 said:
Is anyone appreciative of the lowbrow SCSU fans? (other than SCSU fans):confused:
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That's completely beside the point.

We weren't many in attendance, but we sure were glared at as if we were. The Denver fans seated in front of us sat on their hands the whole game. In truth, it reminded me a lot of my first visit to new Mariucci when I was seated in a section with all the blue-hairs back in 2001.
 
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Re: Marketing College Hockey

So, I'm not completely sure that a TV package is the silver bullet for college hockey marketing. This is because most of the games, at least in HEA, are on the weekend. Also, a lot of games are going on at the same time, so if you're a fan of one team, you won't necessarily be able to keep up with the other ones. If an arrangement was made to have Tuesday Night Hockey or something where there would be a featured game of the week in HD, that would be pretty awesome.

I think the best bet probably will be just to keep the prices down, pack in as many students as possible, and arrange fan trips (including student "party bus" tours) between campuses.

More media attention by the papers would be nice too, but I must say I kinda like the fact that ESPN hasn't corrupted NCAA hockey yet.

Oh.. and beer.
 
Re: Marketing College Hockey

I can't speak about other schools but the Tsongas Center at UMass Lowell is all about advertising. The ribbon boards show everything from Coors Light to the local Pizza Place. When Lowell is on a power play it is called the "Fred C Church* power play"

We even have a premium seating/exclusive club called the LowellBank Pavilion.

*Fred C Church is a local insurance company.
 
Re: Marketing College Hockey

RPI also recently started sponsoring their power plays, the law firm E Stewart Jones is doing as such. We tried to get the Alex C Dell law firm to do it, but that might create a conflict of interest. :eek: (he's also an ECAC ref)

I can see some white on our boards, though, so there's certainly more room available.
 
Re: Marketing College Hockey

FlagDUDE08 said:
RPI also recently started sponsoring their power plays, the law firm E Stewart Jones is doing as such. We tried to get the Alex C Dell law firm to do it, but that might create a conflict of interest. :eek: (he's also an ECAC ref)

I can see some white on our boards, though, so there's certainly more room available.
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Have you tried to get Hoover or Oreck to sponsor your powerplays? :)
 
Re: Marketing College Hockey

Gainzo said:
I can't speak about other schools but the Tsongas Center at UMass Lowell is all about advertising. The ribbon boards show everything from Coors Light to the local Pizza Place. When Lowell is on a power play it is called the "Fred C Church* power play"

We even have a premium seating/exclusive club called the LowellBank Pavilion.

*Fred C Church is a local insurance company.
Click to expand...


I can't believe nobody has sued for separation of Church and state.


Sorry, couldn't resist
 
Re: Marketing College Hockey

As a marketing major two months away from a degree and a shot at a top 25 MBA degree, this is a subject I have pondered often.

At least at NMU there are two easily distinguishable sectors of college hockey marketing: the university based marketing and the NCAA based marketing.

The university based marketing is the most effective, although NMU's athletic department has a marketing budget that is so low it doesn't really have the chance to become a serious force in the local environment, albeit small.

The demographic informations that you cited earlier is about as irrelevant as information can get, in my opinion. Statistics in this sport as far as crowd don't matter.

For example the average fan at a game in Madison or Minneapolis is probably around 10 years younger than a fan in Marquette or Houghton. This tells us that the promotion necessary across the college hockey spectrum is going to be vastly different per school, although it doesn't mean that a centralized marketing and PR program like College Hockey Inc is worthless; they are just promoting different things.

Hockey Inc is promoting college hockey to current stakeholders and what they target as future stakeholders, such as potential schools for new teams and markets.

So while demographic info is fun and interesting to look at, it couldn't be much more irrelevant to look at.
 
Re: Marketing College Hockey

LTsatch said:
FD08, I do not recall seeing advertising in any of Yale's athletic facilities, most likely a local or Ivy League preference. They do thank sponsors/supporters on the scoreboard though. I recall Dartmouth a couple of weeks ago with a similar setup. Each rink also had deals with local youth and student groups for the concessions, which are used as fundraisers for those groups. I think the demographic info in the article may be flawed when it comes to "old guard" northeastern schools, we tend to retain our older fan base, if it wasn't for students the average age of attendance at a Yale game would be at least 40.
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And if not for all the kids running around, the average age of a fan at a Yale game is about 65. I've never seen so many old people in a college barn at one time.
 
Re: Marketing College Hockey

Wildpantswilly said:
The demographic informations that you cited earlier is about as irrelevant as information can get, in my opinion. Statistics in this sport as far as crowd don't matter.
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They do if you're trying to convince a company to put up an ad inside your arena. Which is what I thought this thread was about.


Powers &8^]
 
Re: Marketing College Hockey

I think that schools set in an urban area - BC, BU, Northeastern come to mind - are at a distinct disadvantage. There is so much going on in Boston beyond college sports that men's hockey will never, ever be the #1 attraction. Even at BU, which has no football team and a mediocre basketball team in the worst D1 conference in the country, there are probably only 2-3,000 students (out of, what, 25,000) at a game. At BC, I think hockey outdraws basketball for most games, despite the fact that the school is in the ACC. But at neither school has college hockey captured the imagination of the vast majority of the students.

In rural areas I'd like to compare and contrast my school, UNH, with its rival, Maine. Putting aside the relative merit of the programs today, I would have to say that Maine has run rings around UNH in terms of support state wide. As much as I had issues (to say the least) with Shawn Walsh, when he got to Maine one of his missions was to sell the program to not only the students and alumni, but the state as well. Winning helps obviously, but I would have to say that during Walsh's tenure the state as a whole was, for the first time, aware of college hockey.

Contrast that with New Hampshire which, by and large, is considered a Seacoast University. My wife is from North Conway (1 1/2 hours north) and I have good friends who live in Keene (2 hours west). I can tell you that in those far reaches of New Hampshire, the UNH Hockey brand doesn't reach. The team gets a pretty decent following from Concord and somewhat from the Manchester area, but the brand just doesn't seem register statewide, even in places like Nashua and Salem, both of which are less than an hour from Durham. From my way of thinking the school missed their opportunity several years ago after the Whittemore Center opened and the team first got national recognition. Of course, UNH sells out most games, or at least they did, and I am sure the administration is fat and happy about that. But the chance to sell the brand statewide has been lost in my way of thinking.
 
Re: Marketing College Hockey

LtPowers said:
They do if you're trying to convince a company to put up an ad inside your arena. Which is what I thought this thread was about.
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The general demo's are still irrelevant. If you tell a local business owner that nationally the average age of a college hockey fan is X yrs old, why would he care?

He's going to ask for a typical ROI of current investors, the amount of alumni, the number of students, and the number of community members typically at a game, and how advertising there will help their company.
 
Re: Marketing College Hockey

A different type of marketing, but something that caught my eye and attention. I am not a season ticket holder to Yale hockey games but I attend as many as I can and usually order my tickets by mail at the beginning of the season. I do not subscribe to my local newspaper the New Haven Register because I can read it at work on weekdays. Every once in a while and very randomly the New Haven Register newspaper appears on my driveway, printed above the front page byline is "Courtesy of Yale Athletics." It is that courtesy that reminds me of what I enjoy about Yale sports tradition.
 
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