Written task

To the Editor:

                What is the problem with sports that there are not being as life changing as they where before? Why is it that sports aren’t part of people lifestyles any more? I have been thinking that is maybe because of marketing. “Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large” (Definition approved by the American Marketing Association Board of Directors). Sports have been so dependable of the market and vice versa that people seem to think of sports as a fashion more than a pastime, or a hobby, or even for some people, a lifestyle. Marketing has change the way we see sports, that’s why is so important to review this.

                People use to relay on sports in a life-changing way, so many famous basketball players turn from extreme poverty to the NBA. An example is Oscar Robertson, famous hall-of-famer player from the 70s that learn his shooting techniques by throwing paper balls to a basket, because he didn’t had any money to buy a basketball. Robertson putted so much emphasis in his technique and did such an effort to allow their family rise in their economic status. Nowadays people don’t play sports for a selfless reason, they do it cause they want to appear on TV, they want to be recognized in their country, they want their own shoes on the market, instead of having a meaningful reason.

                Countries used to believe in a person who represents them around in the world of sports. I think that now a person that has the opportunity to represent his country tries to make it his financial source instead of valuing the chance he has of making his own country shine for a while. An example is the case of the Chilean tennis player Marcelo Ríos. The Chilean delegation of Standard-Bearers selected Ríos to be in the Sydney Olympics of 2000 raising the Chilean flag, but he refused this big honor cause his parents weren’t invited to the opening ceremony even though they had the authorization to enter freely to every match of Marcelo and also they had the airplane to Sydney and the hotel room paid.

If you see kids now, you may get what I´m talking about. Celebritie influence on kids is sow big nowadays that they will do anything to get what their Sports idols are wearing. This is mainly because of media. Media tends to control peoples tastes for some things. But how does the media affects marketing, and, then, Sports? Media makes anything sound good if it’s aprroved by a celebritie. Kids will beg their parents for LeBron James snickers, not for competing in basketball, but for showing of to their friends.

Sports seem to be based arround a big industrie that makes money transforming sports, into a bussiness. So the transfer market in some sports like football, makes players transform from humans to an amount of money based on how well their playing.

But marketing doesn’t just do bad things in sports. Marketing has allowed sports to change in a good way. The amount of money that is moved because of marketing in sports makes some teams make an upgrade in different things. FC Barcelona doesn’t have any sponsorships in their team uniform, they only have foundations, this makes it very hard for the team to increase their budget, but because they release so many good rookies to the market, they make a lot of money. Also Lionel Messi makes a lot of money for FC Barcelona, cause everyone wants to see Messi playing in “Camp Nou” and then buy his complete uniform (going back to the celebritie issue). All this money that comes for FC Barcelona allowed them to enlarge their stadium and make some heated transfers, like buying the Brazilian star Neymar.

Marketing has make so many improvements in sports technology that for people who born with a big ammount of money is easy to start in a sport, but people who grows in a poor family seem to try very hard training and practicing sports, cause is their way out of poverty and the road for succes, but they don’t wan’t succes to be known, they wan’t it to make their family happy.

Concluding this letter, is hard to say if marketing influence in sports is bad or good, cause their’s a little of both. In my opinion sponsorship is wrong, when is in banners in the stadium or in the uniforms, and clothing that people is buying right know because their celebrities where it is something that I also dislike, but the money that is achieved because of marketing, when is used in a good way, for example donate a little to a charity or a foundation, or to any good cause, is a repercussion from marketing that I may like.