15A Figuring out Buyer Behavior PT. 2

1)I decided to interview people that would be affected by this opportunity but were not athletes. I interviewed a coach, someone from the compliance office at UF and a local business manager. These people would face issues that would occur with the paying of athletes.

2) While interviewing these people, they have very different perspectives on it. The compliance worker and coach would have to work with facilitating the athletes and working with them to make sure they are properly working this rule and not making things sketchy. With the local business, they want to be allowed to use the athletes to market deals or use them as spokespeople for the company. The coach and compliance worker believed that it would be very difficult to manage the money and the athlete payment. They did, however, both agree that it would be better to work with the athletes and teach them how to be able to market themselves under rules rather than just giving an hourly rate or a salary of sorts. They think that if the athletes were working with the schools and the athletic associations, they could make it work and allow the athletes to be compensated.

3) This opportunity would be one that would be through stores and online. The businesses and companies could use the top athletes to promote things locally, but they could also use this opportunity to be in video games and promotion videos online. It is something that would be able to be through the school that it would facilitate and they would work with the athletes. The school would want to monitor and control this and not allow the athletes to handle all of these things by themselves.

4) I think the businesses would look at if the ads with the athletes made more money than if the athletes were not part of it. The school and coaches would look to see if the athletes were more focused on the business side of it rather than actually performing. There would be a time and place to where these deals could be made and all sides need to make sure that the sport and performance are what matters the most. Something that would make this a bad idea would be if there were athletes endorsing companies that should not be endorsed in college sports like beer companies, bars, and clubs. Also would be a bad idea if the companies did not make money off of them. They would not benefit from paying them if they are not making money.

5) These interviews were very beneficial. In my last assignment, I interviewed athletes that would be the ones getting the money. I wanted to get information from a different perspective on whether this opportunity would work and the difficulties with it. They gave me a perspective that was very informational and good to hear. There are a lot of difficulties that this would bring forth and the coaches and the workers for the compliance offices throughout the country would have to control and monitor. Issues as big as this one are rarely solved at one time. It would be something that would take time and failures before there is a real solution for it. Listening to the business owner gave me a source that would want the athletes to be allowed for this as they would be the ones paying for the service and it would benefit them.

7)  I think that although there would be a lot of problems and difficulties with this. The alternative of allowing athletes to benefit and profit off of their own likeness would be the best solution to this. They all thought that allowing the school to control the deals between the two sides and giving this opportunity to the athletes would be better than the idea of just compensating the athletes with a salary or hourly rate. The school officials thought that scholarships were a great alternative but also realized that there are sports that do not get the same scholarships to give to their athletes.