ZOC: Marketing Is The Heart

Chidochashe Manuwa

Zimbabwe Olympic Committee president Thabani Gonye believes marketing is an important area that needs attention if the organisation is to achieve set goals.

Gonye was speaking at a ZOC three-day work-shop which started in Harare on Wednesday focusing on marketing and event tourism in the sporting world  

“Sports marketing is the heart of the matter for an Olympic Sports Organization. I’m glad that this workshop talks directly to the 3rd ZOC strategic key performance area of business development,” Gonye said.

Idy Uyoe, a Nigerian-born sport consultant living in Atlanta Georgia, was the guest speaker.

This Workshop comes just after the ZOC Strategic Plan for 2021 to 2025 was approved by the board on the 9th of October.

The idea, Gonye said, was “to make the ZOC brand visible, attractive, competitive and to be optimally leveraged by 2025”.

Official data shows that sport tourism is one of the fastest growing sectors in the global travel industry with an estimated value of more than US$7 billion.

While tourists’ usual environments still have a market, travel which involves tourists watching events or sports stars, has rapidly increased.

But without Sports marketing, which involves promotion of the sports events, teams stars and other products, the tourism aspect maybe lost.