EVENT RESEARCH REPORT: BOSTON MARATHON
Table of Contents
Background / About the Event 3
Introduction
The Boston Marathon is one of the sixth major marathons in the world. This study shows every detail of the Boston Marathon, which occurs in the United States annually. This study shows the background of the event and its various stakeholders who take all the responsibilities of the game. How marketing helps in organizing and development is also a matter of focus of this study. If any event occurs in a country, then it is evident that some impact will be on society and the economy, which will be understandable after going through this study.
Background / About the Event
In Greater Boston, there is an event which is generally known as the Boston Marathon, which takes place annually in eastern Massachusetts, United States. Traditionally, this marathon takes place on Patriot’s Day. This event took place after the success of the marathon competition of the Summer Olympics in 1897 (Baa.org, 2020). This Boston Marathon is one of the world’s oldest marathons. This is best known for its event off-road racing. Because of all this, the rank of this marathon is number one on a worldwide basis. The Boston Marathon is one of the sixth major marathons of the world. The starting point of this marathon is from Hopkinton, which is in Southern Middlesex County to Copley Square, which is the endpoint of the Boston Marathon as opined by Knechtleet al. (2020). The Boston athletic association first organized this event in 1897. This organizer organizes this event, and the management team of this Marathon event is DMSC Sports Inc. since the year 1988. But in this year that is 2020, it was not DMSC Sports Inc. who managed the Marathon team. Boston marathon all the amateur and professional runners take part from all over the world. This event of the Boston Marathon gets attracted by about 500,000 people every year in which the people of New England play a significant part in these event spectators. In 1897 this event was started with only 15 participants and which was the center of attraction of about 30000 registered participating players (Baa.org, 2020).
Stakeholder overview
The stakeholders of the Boston Marathon are the organizer, government, participants, sponsors, management team, and protection team, and so on. The organizer of the Boston Marathon is a Boston athletic association. Sponsors of The Boston Marathon are John Hancock, Adidas, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Jimmy Fund, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Special Olympics Massachusetts. John Hancock is the principal sponsor of the Boston Marathon. The protection team of the Boston Marathon includes the cops of the country and the officials who can protect the participants if any critical situation arises, as commented by Grace & Butryn (2019).
All these stakeholders have different job roles in organizing an event. The organizer that is the Boston Athletic Association takes all the responsibilities of planning, managing, and organizing the event – Boston Marathon so that it can be completed efficiently and profitably. It looks after all the requirements and essentialities of all the participants. According to Tapia & LaLone (2019), the country’s government also plays a vital role in event organizing as it strengthens the event by permitting the event. The sponsor of a game helps in contributing a certain amount of money to advertise their brand in that event so that the audiences of that event can know the brand and get to attract their products, which will increase the sales of those brands. The sponsors always targeted the audience, which helps to expand their business. The sponsors provide financial support to organize an event also. The management team simultaneously helps in managing events in every possible way.
Marketing
There are various ways to do marketing about an event. Nowadays, the most preferred mode of doing marketing about an event like the Boston Marathon is through Social Media like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and many more. In the world of digitalization, people are too advanced. The people who wait eagerly for the Boston Marathon event get all the information through the social media page of the event. In the present time, social media plays an essential role in advertising an event throughout the world. The event also gets that much of attraction needed to be successful, as opined by Maffetone et al. (2017). The official site of the organizer i.e., the Boston Athletic Association, also does the advertisement so that the people who visit their page can get to know about the famous event – The Boston Marathon in the US.
Yes, the marketing was successful. The number of audience/spectators proved that the event was outstanding. Various automatic emails come to the people about the Boston marathon event, which is another method of doing marketing of the game. Before the event is printed, different posters are made so that the people who do not have any internet connection get the acknowledgment of the event. The organizer of the event – Boston Athletic Association, created a real-time social media communications hub to do their marketing about the event. The sharing of various posts related to the Boston Marathon also showed their efforts behind the organization of the event. Newspaper advertisements also helped a lot to attract about 50,000 people from the outskirts of the country. According to Schlosser (2017), around 500,000 spectators were there to witness the event – The Boston Marathon. Without the help of social media, people would not have come to see the event.
Impact
The event of the Boston Marathon impacts the health of the participants a lot. It helps to keep the participants mentally and physically healthy. The physical benefits of this event are losing weight, eating better food, maintaining the water level of the body, and so on. It also helps to reduce cholesterol levels of the body, which reduces the risks of a heart attack. It also allows better blood circulation of the body, as stated by Grace & Butryn (2019). This event’s mental benefits are feeling energetic and stress-free, which will help in stepping towards a better life. This can attract the people of the society for the better life and longevity of their health. According to Maffetone et al. (2017), people can become mentally more robust as compared to earlier. People become enthusiastic after watching the participants so healthy. People become motivated after watching.
There are various impacts of a marathon on the economy. The marathon’s entry fees are 5K for $55, 10K for $65, and for the Half Marathon, it is $85 in the recent year. In 2019 the registration fees of the Boston Marathon were USD 200 for the residents of the United States, and the registration fees of the International residents were USD 250 (Baa.org, 2020). The total cost of the marathon gets that before a month of the event takes place. A considerable amount of capital is needed for the advertisement and obtaining the permission of the game. Though the marathon’s entry fees are not affordable for ordinary people, they also take part in a better experience as it is one of the most significant marathon events all over the world. The Boston Athletic Association organizes a lottery for selection to participate in the actual marathon directly.
Conclusion
This study is about the biggest Marathon event, which occurs in Boston since 1897. This study deals with the various aspects of this event and the history of it. This study shares all the relevant information about the Boston Marathon. This study also focuses on the stakeholder overview, which includes all the stakeholders of the event – The Boston Marathon, which are organizers, government, participants, sponsors, management team, and protection team, and so on. Their contribution to the event is also discussed in this assignment. It highlights the marketing of the event and also how marketing made the event successful. It also deals with the social and economic impact of the event.
References
Baa.org (2020), Boston Marathon. Retrieved on: 22 June 2020, retrieved from: https://www.baa.org/
Grace, A., & Butryn, T. M. (2019). An interpretative phenomenological analysis of 2013 Boston Marathoners’ experience of running a subsequent Boston Marathon. Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health, 11(2), 201-216. Retrieved on : 22 June 2020; retrieved from : https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/2159676X.2018.1526206
Hall, S. A., Manning, R. D., Keiper, M., Jenny, S. E., & Allen, B. (2019). STAKEHOLDERS’PERCEPTION OF CRITICAL RISKS AND CHALLENGES HOSTING MARATHON EVENTS: AN EXPLORATORY STUDY. Journal of Contemporary Athletics, 13(1), 11-22. Retrieved on : 22 June 2020; retrieved from : https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/59239969/Hall_2019_Stakeholders_perceptions_of_critical_risks___challenges_hosting_marathon_events20190513-25438-rps9gc.pdf?1557793939=&response-content-disposition=inline
Knechtle, B., Di Gangi, S., Rüst, C. A., & Nikolaidis, P. T. (2020). Performance differences between the sexes in the Boston Marathon from 1972 to 2017. The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research, 34(2), 566-576. Retrieved on : 22 June 2020; retrieved from : https://www.zora.uzh.ch/id/eprint/171202/1/Knechtle_Performance_differences_between_the_sexes.pdf
Knechtle, B., Di Gangi, S., Rüst, C. A., Villiger, E., Rosemann, T., & Nikolaidis, P. T. (2019). The role of weather conditions on running performance in the Boston Marathon from 1972 to 2018. PloS one, 14(3), e0212797. Retrieved on : 22 June 2020; retrieved from : https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0212797
Maffetone, P. B., Malcata, R., Rivera, I., & Laursen, P. B. (2017). The Boston marathon versus the world marathon Majors. PloS one, 12(9), e0184024. Retrieved on : 22 June 2020; retrieved from : https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0184024
Nhan, J., Huey, L., & Broll, R. (2017). Digilantism: An analysis of crowdsourcing and the Boston marathon bombings. The British journal of criminology, 57(2), 341-361. Retrieved on : 22 June 2020; retrieved from : https://watermark.silverchair.com/azv118.pdf?token=AQECAHi208BE49Ooan9kkhW_Ercy7Dm3ZL_9Cf3qfKAc485ysgAAAowwggKIBgkqhkiG9w0BBwagggJ5MIICdQIBADCCAm4GCSqGSIb3DQEHATAeBglghkgBZQMEAS4wEQQMNDtKQR0o_KTV2t9tAgEQgIICP4UJbT16IoPomi-
Schlosser, K. R., Creedon, J. K., Michelson, K. A., & Michelson, C. D. (2017). Lessons from the 2013 Boston Marathon: incorporating residents into institutional emergency plans. Pediatrics, 139(6). Retrieved on : 22 June 2020; retrieved from : https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2017/05/23/peds.2017-0688.full
Tapia, A. H., & LaLone, N. J. (2019). Crowdsourcing investigations: Crowd participation in identifying the bomb and bomber from the Boston marathon bombing. In Crowdsourcing: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications (pp. 1433-1450). IGI Global. Retrieved on : 22 June 2020; retrieved from : https://nicklalone.com/files/LaLone_IJISCRAM_Boston.pdf