The Springfield NorEasters Case Solution And Analysis, HBR Case Study Solution & Analysis of Harvard Case Studies

Identification of the strategic issues and problems:

PROBLEM STATEMENT

The Springfield Nor’easters is a new minor league baseball team situated in Springfield, Massachusetts. The team would play their first season starting from June 2009, which gave the team nearly a year and a half to prepare for the tournament and manage the time to prepare for opening day.

Problem arose as soon as the Nor’easters opened their office, news of the Springfield’s ice hockey teams ‘Falcons’ came in that the team would leave the city if they were not able to sell 300 more season tickets for their upcoming season.

Nor’easters also needed to sell plenty of tickets to stay in business whereas Buckingham, the marketing manager had only six months to set the ticket prices after which the tickets have to go up for sale. This was a particularly daunting task for Buckingham as he had no experience in the sports business and the owner Jimmy Mercante expected that Buckingham would be able to breakeven in the first year.

Unlike major league teams, the minor league teams have to pay for their uniforms, league dues, staff salaries, office and travel expenses and stadium lease all by their own making the ticket pricing particularly important as a right price has to be selected so that maximum reward can be reaped while ensuring maximum attendance because if the price is charged too high making it not affordable or even charging too low making it easy for people to skip a game will lead to low attendance, which would lead to low concession sales that comprises a great part of revenue for any baseball team.

All these possible dangers made the price setting of the tickets a very important task and a considerable problem for the Springfield Nor’easters because they got this wrong then they would be leaving the city like the Falcons.

SWOT analysis of the organization dealing with the problem;

STRENGTH

Major strength that the company holds is that among the 55,000 people residing in Springfield; 60% of the them are families who have children under the age of 18 that comprise of the people, who actually attend baseball game compared senior citizens and single men and women under the age of 65, which gave the Nor’easters a great advantage that is having a very big target market.

The Nor’easters also held monopoly in the Springfield market as they were the only professional baseball team in the city, which meant that if people were baseball fans then they would automatically come to watch the games each weekend.

The Springfield people demand entertainment, a baseball team is not in the market to sell baseball as they would be there to sell entertainment and irrespective of the win-loss record people will come to the stadium if they were provided with entertainment and the Nor’easters have that X-factor in order to entertain people.

WEAKNESS

The two core factors that can hurt the Nor’easters is that Buckingham, the marketing manager for the Nor’easters has no experience in working in the sporting field meaning what he considers right and constructive for the company can in fact not be an effective strategy considering the market. Secondly, in 1950’s Springfield used to be much more financially strong compared to today as there has been a 3.6% average wage income since 1990. However, less income means people would be more conservative and would not spend much on entertainment activities.

OPPORTUNITIES

To make it convenient for the people who do not own their own transportation, Nor’easters could run their own shuttle through the city on the game day so that people could make it to the stadium.

Most importantly, local businesses that are restaurants and hotels are willing to provide sponsorship to Nor’easters, which is an additional income to the company. However, it can be said that in case the company is able to attract a greater number of fans to the stadium; then the company will have more sponsors.

THREATS

The biggest threat to Nor’easters could be the fact that public might find it convenient to view the matches at home on their television or opt for other entertainment means on weekends that could be going to watch movies or going to play bowling, which will result in loss of revenue for Nor’easters....................

The Springfield Noreasters Case Study Solution

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