Competitive Advantage in Professional Sport

Sustainable business advantage is the policies put in place to maintain and improve any enterprise’s competitive position in the organizational market. This is an advantage which enables an enterprise to survive over a long period of time. This is the same scenario when it comes to professional sports. A team should put forward a strategy that will enable them to be in the competition even when they are not winning. The best component that a team has to put in place in order to compete effectively is good leadership and management. The team management should employ a well qualified technical bench that has vast experience in the field.  The management should hire players on a contract basis. These “contractors” should be good at the game and loyal to the teams’ philosophy as stated by Mitchell & Coles, 2003. The more they are paid the better they perform while on duty for the team. The management should insure the players against life threatening injuries and other health sport related hazards in order to win their trust fully. This makes the players have a vested interest to get injured since they still get paid when not playing.

With these competitive strategies in place, the players’ loyalty is with the team as long as their contracts are in place. The team should market their logo to the public by winning more games and many other promotional events. This increases the ticket sales therefore increasing the revenue collected. This is the case with the Chicago bears team where the fans buy the home tickets completely which has been brought about by their brilliant performance.

The four main criteria of competitive advantage: owning your competitive advantage, although this may be tricky in the sports industry, the hall fraternity should be aware of their advantages. They should know what is unique about the team that makes them succeed over the other teams. The second is building on the teams core competences and accessing the missing ones. This can be archived by taking statistical analysis of the team over a given period of time. Thirdly the team should have an inclusive approach to all the parameters which in this case are the fan base the team depth the coaching staff among others (Nilsson & Rapp, 2005). Last but not least the there should be a sustainable team model, since, no matter how competent the team is there is always going to be competition. The sustainable model provides a basis for management

According to Mitchell & Coles, 2003, a successful team should always have a loyal fan base; the fans always play a major role in the team’s success. Loyal fans always give moral support to the team more so they provide a financial basis since they purchase match tickets on a consistent basis. When a team has goodwill from the fans its promotional events always turn out to be successful hence generate revenue to sustain the team’s expenditure as is the case with Chicago bears football team. The coaching staff in is the fundamental organ of success in a team. A good head coach understands each of his/her player’s strong points and weakness. The coach should try and come up with a playing style that is widely acceptable and produces results at the same time .A coach’s decision can bring the difference between winning and loosing. Coaches always try to come up with a winning formula. This decision transforms to the betting taking place.

When a team is competing successfully it attracts good players who have good individual skills thereby increasing the team’s probability of winning. Players with good individual skills always turn out to be the darling of the fans. Such players can be used as a marketing strategy since they have a good command of the fans. These players can be used for celebrity advertisement to market a variety of products thus collecting revenue for the team.