National Football League Marketing Mix

The National Football League is one of the largest corporate organizations in the United States. The league has been around since the 1920s but did not start becoming popular until the 1950s. In the 1950s the NFL embraced television to show games nationally. As the popularity of the sport grew throughout the decade another football league was born in 1960 called the American football league to compete with the NFL. In the 1970 season the two leagues unites as one because of the costly war over players in the 1960s almost derailed both leagues (mmbolding, na). After the league joined forces the National Football league became the National Football Conference (NFC) and the American Football League became the American Football Conference (AFC). In addition, the Super Bowl was created because of the merger of the two leagues. The Super Bowl has become one of the most anticipated games to watch in sports entertainment. The NFL used the marketing mix to become successful and stay successful over the years. The purpose of this paper is to describe the elements of the marketing mix. In addition to describing how each element of the marketing mix affects the development of the NFL’s marketing strategy and show how each element is implemented into the NFL’s marketing strategy.

The marketing mix consists of four elements. The four elements are product, price, promotion, and place. Product is defined by Kerin, Hartley, and Rudelius as a good, service, or idea used to satisfy a costomer’s needs (Kerin, Hartley, & Rudelius, p.11, 2011). The NFL produces a product made purely for entertainment. The product is professional football. The product is made up of 32 teams scheduled to play professional football against each other fighting to have the best record in their division after 16 weeks of play. After the 16 weeks of regular season are over the best four teams and two wildcard teams from each conference enter the play offs. The six teams in the NFC and the six teams AFC play against each other in their own conference until one team from each conference is left. The two teams left play each other in the Super Bowl.

The NFL is unique concerning price on the product. Price is the second element in the marketing mix. Kerin defines price as what is exchanged for the product (Kerin, Hartley, & Rudelius, p.11, 2011). The NFL does not charge fans to watch the games provided unless they go to a stadium. Fans can watch a game without charge if they own an antenna or fans can listen to games on the radio. One could look at one’s cable bill as the price of admission to watch an NFL game. The NFL does not set the price of admission for fans to watch games in hometown stadiums. The team owners set the prices for admission, food, and beverages in the stadium. The NFL does set the prices the networks have to pay to air NFL games on a weekly basis. For example, CBS, ESPN, Fox, and NBC combined shelled out 3.1 billion dollars last season (Badenhausen,