A game of two halves - are sports marketers an emerging cohort to be admired as a force in marketing or merely accomplices to mediocrity in new marketing approaches?

Consumers and Publics alike today are insatiable. Sport has now become the elixir of new and modern marketing trends. Publics can justifiably infer sport has become not only big business, but a standalone entertainment industry as the embodiment or 'mantra' for all things 'generation lifestyle'. The argument leads to fierce debate as to the validity and perspectives offered for the case for sports marketers to be taken seriously? This paper seeks to add to the debate by clarifying the current position of sports marketing within academia in an engagement with sports students, practitioners and the industry as a whole. The objectives will be to establish benchmarks for sports marketing to join the mainstream school of marketing excellence in both theory and practice. The discussion paper will focus on current practice, dialogue and debate, with support from academic enquiry on current marketing research and programmes of higher educational provision in the sports marketing arena