Knowledge and Practice of Sport Marketing by Sports Administrators in Colleges of Education in Southern Nigeria

Abstract

Sport marketing has the potentials of promoting and enhancing sports development. The prevailing lack of or inadequacy in sports growth and development in Colleges of Education in Southern Nigeria tends to suggest lack of knowledge and practice of sport marketing. The study therefore investigated knowledge and practice of sport marketing by sports administrators in all the federal and state Colleges of Education in Southern Nigeria. Nine (9) research questions and two (2) null hypotheses guided the study. A descriptive survey design was adopted. Ninety-nine (99) sports administrators constituted the population and were all used as sample for the study. A 42-item self-structured and validated questionnaire was used for data collection. The questionnaire had overall reliability co-efficient of .901. The knowledge section of the questionnaire had reliability co-efficient of .712 which was established using Kuder-Richardson 21 while the practice section had reliability co-efficient of .705 established using Cronbach Alpha. Percentage and mean were used to answer the research questions while chi-square and ANOVA were used to test the hypotheses. It was found that sports administrators had high knowledge of the concept of sport marketing (79.77%); high knowledge of sport marketing tools (67.1%). It was also found that sports administrators practiced to a large extent sports sponsorship (=2.70); branding (=2.54); merchandising (=2.55); publicity and public relations (=2.65); sales promotion (=2.50), and advertising (=2.72). However, the sports administrators practiced packaging (=2.45) to a small extent. Level of education had significant influence on knowledge of sport marketing among the sports administrators and also on practice of sport marketing. It was among other things recommended that sports administrators should be encouraged to improve their knowledge of sport marketing and put such knowledge into practice especially in the area of packaging.