MT243 Unit 4 Audience Profile Example

Known, Partly Known and Guessed: A Unit 4 Audience Profile of a Marathon Weekend's Three Crowds

[Student Name]

Purdue University Global

MT243: Sport Sponsorships and Sales

Unit 4 Audience Profile

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The Harbor Point Marathon Weekend, its records, survey and every figure are composite and illustrative; the sources cited are real.

Why Confidence Matters

Sponsors buy audiences, and they plan their spending on the numbers a property gives them. A property that reports every figure with the same certainty invites a sponsor to rely on a guess. Crompton (2004) argues that sponsorship evaluation often fails because the measures of exposure and audience are loose, which leaves both sides arguing later about what was delivered. Mullin et al. (2014) describe audience data as the foundation of every sponsorship conversation, and a foundation is only as good as its weakest figure. This profile therefore rates each figure: high confidence when it comes from records the event holds, medium when it comes from survey or platform data, and low when it is an estimate.

Registrants

The 14,200 registrants are the audience the event knows best. Registration fields give age, gender, home ZIP code and race choice for every runner. A post-race survey, answered by 3,100 runners, adds income, training habits and spending.

Median age 38, from registration: high confidence

54 percent women, from registration: high confidence

38 percent traveling from outside the metro, from home ZIP codes: high confidence

61 percent of survey respondents reporting household income above $100,000: medium confidence, since survey respondents may differ from all runners

Behavior matters as much as demographics for a sponsor. Survey respondents reported training for sixteen to twenty weeks before a marathon or half marathon, which means a sponsor can reach them for four months, not one weekend. Forty-four percent of last year's runners registered again, a high-confidence figure from records. Respondents reported spending an average of about $600 a year on running gear and shoes. And the event's emails to runners have an open rate of 41 percent, a high-confidence figure from the email platform.

Remote Followers

The second audience follows the race from a distance. About 46,000 people used the runner tracking app to follow at least one runner, a medium-confidence figure because some users followed several runners and some may have downloaded the app without using it. The livestream reached 58,000 unique viewers, with an average minute audience of about 8,700, from the streaming platform's data: medium confidence. These are mostly family and friends of runners, many of them outside the metro.

Spectators

The crowd along the course is the least known. The police department estimated 70,000 to 90,000 spectators along the route, based on crowd density at several points. This figure is low confidence. It counts people who were present, often briefly, not people who saw a particular sign, and many spectators stand at several points and may be counted twice.

A crowd estimate is a reason to put up a banner, not a number to put in a contract.

Overlap With the Three Prospects

The profile closes by matching each audience to the three prospects from the previous unit.

For the credit union, the key audience is metro registrants aged 25 to 44. Registration records count about 5,300 of them, a high-confidence figure, and about 1,900 live in ZIP codes within three miles of the four planned branches.

For the grocer, the key audience is finishers who receive a bag, about 13,300 last year, and the families who meet them in the recovery zone. Both counts are high confidence from records and bag distribution.

For the health insurer, the key audience is runners in training, about 9,800 registrants for the marathon and half marathon, who train for months and match the activity its wellness program rewards.

Volunteers and Expo Visitors

Two smaller groups deserve a line each. The event's 1,800 volunteers are known by name from the volunteer system, a high-confidence count, and many are former runners or members of local clubs, which makes them a useful audience for a sponsor that wants employee or community involvement. Expo visits, about 19,500 over two days, come from door counters and are medium confidence, since one runner who leaves and returns counts twice. Most expo visitors are runners collecting packets, so the expo is the one place where a sponsor can talk to almost every registrant face to face.

Improving the Data Before Next Year

The weakest figures can be improved at low cost. The post-race survey could be offered with a small incentive, such as an entry discount, to raise its response rate above the current 22 percent. The tracking app could report unique followers rather than downloads. And the event could place two counting stations on the course to replace the police estimate with a measured count at fixed points. Each improvement would move a figure up one confidence level and make next year's sponsor reports easier to defend.

Limits

The survey's response rate, 3,100 of 14,200, is about 22 percent, so income and spending figures describe respondents rather than all runners. The app and livestream counts depend on platform definitions the event does not control. The spectator estimate should not appear in any sponsor contract. Meenaghan (2001) notes that audience goodwill toward an event can transfer to its sponsors, but only for audiences who are engaged with the event, which favors runners and their families over passing spectators.

References

Crompton, J. L. (2004). Conceptualization and alternate operationalizations of the measurement of sponsorship effects in sport. Leisure Studies, 23(3), 267-281. https://doi.org/10.1080/0261436042000183695

Meenaghan, T. (2001). Understanding sponsorship effects. Psychology & Marketing, 18(2), 95-122. https://doi.org/10.1002/1520-6793(200102)18:2<95::AID-MAR1003>3.0.CO;2-H

Mullin, B. J., Hardy, S., & Sutton, W. A. (2014). Sport marketing (4th ed.). Human Kinetics.