Effective Marketing Communication Efforts of Sports Development Initiatives: A Case Study of the Public Sector in the United Kingdom
Arnott Ian

Abstract
Questions could be had that there should be an increased focus in the area of marketing communications of sports development initiatives within the public sector to its consumers. Drawing upon marketing theory and sports marketing literature, the primary aim of the research was to investigate the marketing mix variables and how these impacted consumers’  of a sports development initiative. Data for this case study were collected from a public sector sports facility located in the United Kingdom (UK) focusing on the gender and age of the sport development consumer as well as the main sport in which the consumer participated. A self administered piloted questionnaire was carried out in December (2008) with twenty consumers (n= 10%). Developments were then made to the questionnaire before it was administered to the sports development initiatives participants (N=200). The participant’s abilities were varied, and the questionnaire, to cater for this diversification, contained a range of nominal, ordinal, and interval questions. The findings suggested that people  a sport development initiative based their choices on the marketing mix variable of place. In terms of promotion, the findings revealed that word of mouth communications had an influence on sports development initiatives.

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