By Elizabeth L. Boineau

As the football season winds down, Super Bowl countdown begins, Atlantic Coast Conference basketball lifts off and professional hockey skates our way, many of us scramble to be spectators and don the logo, icon or colors of our favorite teams. What’s behind all this cheerleading?

Teams take on a brand identity in our minds, meaning they take on an image, character, temperament, style, form and flavor that we come to love and sometimes hate. Most often, given the depth of loyalty and passion we feel, they turn us on and off with each encounter at game time. How is it that sports gets so embedded into our psyches and drives us to spend untold time and dollars to demonstrate our allegiance?

Since only half of the fans on a given day will leave the game victorious, what is it about sports teams? How are we drawn to them and the brands they are identified with that speak to us so profoundly? The way we come to identify with a team can become an important part of self-identity to the more passionate fans.

When we see another person wearing the same logo as we are or see someone flying down the highway with the same-colored school flag, we immediately feel a sense of connection, which can facilitate communication and even imply a sense of shared values, ever-critical to the success of winning brands.

There also is the sheer social togetherness of sporting events, since a majority of fans attend games with friends. For many, the sporting season creates a sense of nostalgia, as well as one of hope—there is always next season.

Research indicates that following a team tends to raise your sense of psychological well-being, so taking your company dollars to a sporting event means you’ll be catching the target in the right frame of mind too. Higher identification with a team has been shown to lower levels of alienation and loneliness and raise levels of self-esteem and positive emotion.

A lot of psychology goes into our love of sports and the teams we follow, and fans from passing to fanatical have helped turn sports marketing into a huge business for many categories of industry, including entertainment, media, apparel, food and beverage, and travel and hospitality, just to name a handful.

Sports marketing is defined as the specific application of marketing principles and programs to such sports products as teams, leagues or events and the marketing of such non-sports products as alcohol, sports attire or equipment through a connection to that sport or athlete.

Sports management firms cropped up in the late ’60s and early ’70s to broker endorsement deals and contract negotiations for professional coaches and athletes. Sports marketing and sponsorship agencies were founded in the mid-’70s and took the industry into event production and sponsorship negotiations.

Explosive growth came with the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, where Coca-Cola spent $30 million for sponsorship of the Games.

The Sports Business Journal reports that sports marketing is a $250 billion industry in the United States, and includes sports-related advertising and venue signage, athlete endorsements, facility construction, sporting goods and licensed merchandise, event management and marketing, sponsorship and ticket sales, media broadcast rights, and multimedia, including sports-related Web sites, magazines, books and video games.

So now that we are clear that sports marketing is big business and that we are all party to that, what could be more exciting than reaching your target audience through a “playing field” where you get to leverage the passion your audience has for their favorite team? If you think your company can reach its target through sponsoring an event or other form of promotion with a team of choice, carry it past just a logo on a shirt, program, plastic cup or stadium wall.

Getting down onto the “field” and interacting with the spectators, whenever possible, offers a huge opportunity and benefit. Whether that means well-planned tailgating or greeting friends at the gate, just do it. Granted, that’s easier to do with your local baseball team than with the Atlanta Braves, but whatever your budget, get creative, personal and interactive with your involvement and support wherever and whenever you can. Add to their experience and be sure it’s a moment, a game and a time they’ll not soon forget.

Elizabeth L. Boineau runs E. Boineau & Co., a Charleston-based strategic marketing communications and public relations firm. E-mail her at eboineau@eboineauandco.com.

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