Application of digital and social media marketing on sport industry: the "B2B Derthona Basket" project

The idea for my dissertation is born from one of my best interests: the sport world. Since I was a child I played sport and actually I'm actively interested in a basket team project called “B2B basket to business” for Derthona Basket team that participate to the Second Division championship national league. Basket is today one of the most popular and widely viewed sports all over the world. Rising to fame in the middle of the 20th century, the game has evolved to becoming the marker of successful sport business. The high popularity of the game has made it one of the best sport business market where there is the possibility to find always new opportunities and challenges. Starting from my university's studies, I learnt that every company faces a time when there is a need to develop a marketing plan, which consists of determined goals and objectives, analysis of current situation, forecast planning and other relevant elements. In order to stay competitive and gain competitive advantage, companies seek for marketing opportunities aside from traditional marketing. The era of technology has facilitated internet marketing development and opened the door of marketing opportunities also for sports teams. Concepts of business organization and marketing such as customer analysis, sponsors, branding, communication, new media in sport assume very different characteristics compared to traditional economic sectors and for this reason they need expert and prepared people. The aim of the project is to find new partners for the company through market strategies and partnerships and also to increase the brand name of the company. In order to do this, Derthona Basket activated some initiatives with their potential partners (activation of an Hospitality area in the stadium, collaborations with associations and schools of the territory etc…) and the development of an app of the team. In this app you can find everything: news, results, interviews, press review, press conference etc.. The analysis will be conducted initially in a theoretical way with the introduction of the digital marketing and social media marketing concepts and then will be show the results of the application of these new marketing strategies on the project. The methodology of the following dissertation is based on the analysis of the results achieved by the project with the use of the digital and social media marketing, also with the aim to improve the brand name of the team and to find new partners that will help the society to reach the future goals.