Charlotte Case Study

After the first time reading this article about the teams in Charlotte, it was very apparent that the fans are very disgusted with the NBA. It’s very clear that the citizens of Charlotte in a sense felt like they got stabbed in the back not only by the owners, but also by the entire NBA. It was very hard for the Charlotte fans to completely forget about the organization that left them high and dry, and just get up and move on to the next one. It would become a huge struggle for the Charlotte Bobcats to receive any love and respect from the city of Charlotte. After everything that happened to them involving their former owners George Shinn and Ray Wooldridge who could blame them? The entire state of North Carolina just had their basketball team
ripped away from them. This was not going to be an easy task for the new Charlotte Bobcats organization. They had to be very patient and make all the right decisions in order to win the trust and approval of all the fans.
Probably the biggest problem within the new organization was the ability to find sponsorships for their brand-new team. Luckily when the new team expanded to Charlotte a bunch of different corporate leaders and sponsors helped create the team a brand-new state of the art arena for their brand-new team. When trying to find new sponsorships for their team they became unsuccessful in the beginning. The reason why they were so unsuccessful was because a lot of the big corporate sponsors like Wachovia Corporation and Bank of America had already found new organizations that they could represent. Bank of America teamed up with the Carolina Panthers, which is a NFL team. And the Wachovia Corporation moved
on to sponsor a PGA tour event. Not being able to major corporate sponsors is a big problem for a team because that is where they get a majority of their money. There is only a certain amount of money you can make off ticket sales and as you will soon find out that was a very tense area as well. They also ran into a problem with sales. The new team was having a hard time getting fans to buy season tickets for their games. The biggest reason why the fans no longer wanted to buy season tickets was because ticket prices had doubled for the games. Fans felt that the price they were paying was not worth what they were receiving in return. Of the 23,000 seats in the arena only about 40% of fans bought season tickets which is a very low margin. After two consecutive seasons of having the worst ticket sales in the NBA the Owner Robert Johnson decided it was time for a change and fired a bunch of front office executives in order to turn things around for their organization. With a whole new team, the Charlotte Bobcats wanted to become their own organization they wanted to create their own brand.
They no longer wanted to be associated with Charlotte Hornets, that was a different team, a different organization. They wanted to be the start of something new, something great. The way the Charlotte Bobcats did that was by bringing in a whole new team. They wanted a completely new atmosphere from the old one. The way they went about doing this was by marketing their organization. The main goal they had in mind was to win the fans back over. In order to win the fans over the new owner Robert Johnson put together a brand-new organization whose primary goals was to emphasize the team as being new, or original. They process they used to market the organization is known as “The Marketing Management Process”. The main idea behind this process is to essentially advertise your product or in this case the Charlotte Bobcats to the local area and get feedback on what they want to see from the organization. Johnson realized that the only way the organization was going to work out was if he could obtain the publics opinion on the team, so he could get an idea on what the community wanted out of its professional team. One of the biggest complaints about the new organization was that if you wanted to watch one of their games you would have to subscribe to a specific cable network known as C-SET (Carolinas Sports Entrainment Television). Fans didn’t like this
because it would cost them an extra $15 a month. The first thing that stands out from the beginning is that the current Charlotte Hornets have improved their attendance for games. They currently sit at number seventeenth in the league for attendance which is a great improvement, but clearly you would want to see the number continuously grow. Another big improvement seen is that their ticket prices compared to the rest of the NBA are actually down. “The Hornets are in the top 5 for most affordable tickets in the NBA. Season tickets start as low as $430 for 43 games (one ticket per game). The average price is $1,634” (Charlotte Hornets). Another big thing that has change about organization is that they are no longer known as the Charlotte Bobcats, but instead they are now back to their original name the Charlotte Hornets. They did this in 2014 as a way to make it look like the Hornets never really left Charlotte. The biggest move they made was adding Michael Jordan as a minority owner within the organization. This was a great move because he has a very strong basketball mind and if used right he could be a huge asset to the organization. Also, having him is a great way to attract fans to your team as well.