Business Analysis: Los Angeles Lakers

Words: 1039
Pages: 5

Context
Los Angeles Lakers are one of the greatest basketball franchises in the history of modern sports. Since their foundation, they won the NBA championship 16 times and missed the play-offs just five times in its history (Stew, 1989). However, the organisation has been struggling with their on-court performance since 2011, and missing the playoffs the last three consecutive years. This could have serious repercussions for the organisations’ off-court performance if not addressed.

Founded in 1947, the basketball franchise, originally from Minneapolis, comes from humble beginnings. It wasn’t until 1960 that things began to look promising for the Lakers, when they became the first NBA expansion team and relocated to the west coast, mainly
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Effectiveness is defined as “the ability of the organisation in either absolute or relative terms to exploit its environment in the acquisition of scarce and valued resources” (Yuchtman & Seashore, 1967). However, environments can change, which can result in a decrease of resources (Pfeffer, Salancik, 1978). The addition of a rival team, Los Angeles Clippers, in the early 90s, has finally caught up to the Lakers, with a better team and product on …show more content…
Some believed he was past his prime and rendered the Lakers ineffective. Some suggested trading Bryant back in early 2011, which would have enabled the organisation to adopt a new approach. A growth strategy would have allowed the smooth transitioning into a new Lakers era of basketball by focusing their core on the new young recruited talents, and perhaps avoided this situation all together (Hodge & Anthony, 1991). On the other hand, some argued that it was a sign of loyalty and respect based on what Bryant had done for the franchise in the past (Augustus, 2016). This put the organisation in a challenging position. In addition, some of the key trends that were failed to mention in the previous state of play report were the changing customer needs of the Lakers. While some consumers searched for entertainment value and quality of experience, others sought association with a winning team, or both. The city of Los Angeles is one of the most sport-oriented cities in America, and competition in the market is intense (Landt, 2012). This dilemma reflects the competitiveness of customer needs and wants, resulting in a drop of attendance and tv ratings for the Lakers (Bolch, 2016). Furthermore the increased pace of change in the market with rival team Clippers as mentioned, offering better performances for a considerably cheaper ticket price, suggested the