29A- Venture Concept No. 2

 Opportunity:

Soccer is the one of the most popular sports in the world. About 4 out of 10 people consider themselves fans of soccer. Soccer has a stronghold on the global market and still has yet to capture one of the biggest markets in the world, The United States of America. The opportunity for us is to create a University of Florida sanctioned Men’s Soccer Team. In terms of opportunity, universities around the United States are havens for a diverse community who all have varying interests. The fact that this university does not cater to the most popular sport in the male variation presents a major opportunity that we can exploit considering our potential customers.

Our potential customers are those students, faculty, and surrounding Gainesville residents who are fans of Gator sports and have an interest in the sport of soccer. We currently have a women’s soccer program here but Men’s sports still garner a larger interest whether due to media coverage or other reasons. The nature of the need I believe when we talk about sports is that people have the need for community and sports allows fans to share a common interest and identity. This is important in a college atmosphere where many people come together from different walks of life and must mesh and the sense of community can be filled by cheering on a sports program.

People long to be a part of a community; it is in our DNA. Sports does a fantastic job of bringing people from all backgrounds together in a community. This market is mostly defined by the City of Gainesville and the diversity that runs in this city thanks in part to the University’s students. Potential customers currently solve this need through other sports that may not be of greatest interest to them which makes this opportunity big considering how popular soccer is. This window will be open for years to come because Soccer is still growing.

Innovation:

My service would be to provide a Men’s Soccer team sanctioned by the University of Florida. This service would be my team and I providing the resources through the University to create a program that can be sustainable and the necessary tools and actions needed to create a program at a university. I will spend a lot of time at the community level looking for ways to create fan buzz and identity. Soccer fans can be some of the most passionate fans in the world and our goal is to create that inclusive atmosphere with this program. The innovation comes in our marketing fan initiative which the University does a great job with already. Money will come from boosters, non-student ticket sales, merchandise, advertisement, etc… Tickets would range from 10-20 dollars depending on the game. Merchandise would follow standard Gator merchandise prices and advertisement would range from popularity. Our innovation has to be in how we can foster the market and not with things we cannot control such as team performance. Gator fans identify strongly and thus we want to cater to that.

Venture Concept:

Previously, the opportunity was that Gator fans need the sense of community in the sport that some of them enjoy the most, Soccer. By getting involved in fan involvement and interaction, we can create a sports community around our Men’s Soccer program similar to what we see in Football and Basketball here at the University. I believe being a part of the Gator brand will make customers more likely to buy into the innovation due to their identity to the brand already. I believe the reason customers would switch to this product is because it is an extension of an already well established brand if they root for Gator sports they could be inclined to also attend and be a party of Men’s Soccer. Also those who love soccer would also switch.

Competitors I see would also be Gator Sports because people may not attend every sporting event due to the volume of teams. The weaknesses would be competitiveness and the specific sport that it is.

I believe our customer experience is going to be the defining factor in our business concept. Creating a customer experience worthwhile will keep people coming back to root on our team and continue to support us.

To support this service, we would rely on the resources already put in the place of the University in terms of employees but would still need to hire people for specific roles such as coaching, communications, marketing, security, etc…

Three Minor Elements:

• Most Important resource: The Gator Brand
• Being a part of the Florida Gators gives us resources and advantages that other competitors will have a difficult time matching up to and competing with.
• What’s Next?
• I hope the venture creates the community that I dream of and can be as popular as some other sports here on campus. I hope we could compete with Basketball in popularity and revenue since Football is untouchable.
• What’s Next For Me?
• I want to move on to creating another program here at the University that has not been done such as Men’s Lacrosse. It would follow similar strategies should this venture be successful and bring another program and community here to thew University.

Since I did not complete the previous assignment I was unable to get student feedback but I still brought my concept to other peers in order to garner feedback and adjust my concept. The feedback I received was that I should focus more on fan engagement and involvement rather than team performance since it is more controllable and have more successful results. I also received feedback that I should be aware that a reason Men's sports could be more popular because of media's coverage of it and they can frame public opinion. The last feedback I received was that legislation issues are in the way of this venture such as Title IX.

I used the first two pieces of feedback in my venture concept and changed it because I believe I did not do a great job explaining that throughout the semester. The last piece of feedback regarding Title IX I had mentioned at the beginning as a major hurdle to overcome in this venture.