The university system is a fertile ground for identification, management, and development of sports talents for sports industry. Every industry including sports industry produces and offers products and services to the society. Sports products and services are produced by sportspersons for sports consumers, and this contributes to the socio-economic, political, infrastructural and cultural development of sports in the university and society at large, if well managed and marketed. Sports in universities can be managed and developed using marketing tools such as sponsorship, advertising, sales promotion, publicity and public relations, packaging, branding, merchandising, labeling, personal selling, direct marketing and warranty. The relevance and applicability of these marketing tools to sports management and development have been highlighted. It was recommended that sports marketing tools should be employed by universities for their sports management and developmental efforts and programmes. Experts in sports marketing and management should be integrated into the running of sports in universities. There should be collaboration between practitioners of sports and marketing professions to see how best sports can be marketed to consumers using different marketing tools. Researches on marketing and promotional tools with the aim of discovering more marketing tools and their applicability to sports should be encouraged.
Keywords: Marketing, Sports Development, Sports Management, University
