"Knocked Out!" Marketing the Philadelphia Quakers

The Philadelphia Quakers franchise, a National Hockey League (NHL) team in 1930, lasted only for one season. We argue in this paper that the failure of the franchise can be explained, in part, by the team's marketing approach. This paper attempts to address how and why the franchise came to close its doors in a year by investigating the marketing strategies and tactics for the team of its manager Benny Leonard, a successful former professional boxer. First, the paper begins with a discussion on the marketing of a professional sport team and the four major approaches used in sales and marketing of a sport franchise and concludes that relationship marketing is of great importance in marketing a sport franchise. Then, the paper presents the historical evidence of Quakers' marketing efforts in Philadelphia. Specifically, we examine how and why Leonard relied heavily on a product-oriented approach in a city with a new NHL franchise and used his fame to market the franchise instead of building a relationship with the city and its citizens.