Because college sports are a large and well-known industry, the greatest business opportunity for college sports is having successful teams. Football teams alone bring in tens of millions of dollars for the colleges, and even more if the team is one of the best in the nation. Although the rest of the sports like basketball and hockey do not bring in as much as football, they follow the same structure where the teams bring in millions for revenue for playing and more for winning. For Pitt Athletics, they are already receiving tens of millions in revenue for being from D1 and D2 teams, but they have had an increase in revenue recently as their sports such as football and basketball have been doing better than in years passed.

The greatest threat to these teams, however, is if the colleges don’t use social media to their advantage. Pitt Athletics has been able to use an engaging social media presence as another way of capitalizing the teams’ successes, as well as creating a bigger following of the teams’ online. If other universities do not do the same, their teams’ will receive less profit and funding than others, which could lead to less successful teams.

By having an interest in marketing, the Pitt Athletics could be valuable to me because they have opportunities to teach their students their skills of having an engaging and successful social media presence, which is currently very important in current marketing. Pitt Athletics could also teach me other ways to engage the community and create an excitement surrounding college teams.