Routledge Handbook of Football Marketing

Nicolas Chanavat, Michel Desbordes, Nicolas Lorgnier, Nicolas Chanavat, Michel Desbordes, Nicolas Lorgnier

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351972352
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Business
• Categoría: Marketing

Football is big business. The top teams and leagues in world football generate billions of dollars in revenue and serve an audience of billions of fans. This book focuses on the marketing of football as the apex of the contemporary football industry. Drawing upon key theories and concepts in sport marketing, it highlights the critical strategic and operational elements that underpin effective marketing in football clubs around the world.

From the English Premier League to Major League Soccer, this handbook addresses the most important developments in sponsorship, marketing communications, digital marketing strategies, customer relationship management and social media. Written by a team of leading football marketing experts, it presents the latest cutting-edge research in case studies from countries including the UK, USA, France, Spain, Germany, Italy, China and Japan.

The only up-to-date book on football marketing written from a truly international perspective, the Routledge Handbook of Football Marketing is an invaluable resource for any researcher or advanced student with an interest in football marketing, as well as all marketers working in the professional football business.

Part I
Towards a professionalization of the marketing of professional football clubs

The first part aims to define the context and explain the marketing of football from national, European and world perspectives. Chapter 1, written by Nicolas Chanavat and Michel Desbordes, allows a better understanding of the realities of football marketing. Recent models of income and costs of a football club in France are specifically discussed in Chapter 2 by Nicolas Scelles and Wladimir Andreff. In Chapter 3, Eric Brownlee and Nicolas Lorgnier analyze successful marketing activities in the MLS. Then an interview with Christophe Bouchet, great witness of sport marketing for the last 15 years, addresses sports marketing agencies in Chapter 4. Finally, Chapter 5, written by Vincent Chaudel, discusses the economy of European football.

1
The Marketing of Football

History, definitions, singularities, strategies and forms of operationalization

Nicolas Chanavat and Michel Desbordes

Since the 1970s, professional football clubs have gradually integrated marketing as a key function necessary for their development and sustainability. In France, this change was spurred either by businessmen, such as Jean-Claude Darmon, or by some clubs, or rather by their presidents, visionaries and pioneers in this area, such as the AS Saint-Étienne (ASSE) of Roger Rocher, or the Olympic Lyonnais (OL) of Jean-Michel Aulas, to name a few.

Indeed, Roger Rocher and his team quickly grasped the importance of generating revenue independent from the team’s undetermined sporting results: television rights, sponsorship rights, merchandising, etc. The launch of the hymn “Go green!” in 1976 illustrates the excitement around the European adventure of the AS Saint-Étienne. The commercial success that has followed highlights the growing media exposure of football, and particularly one of its consequences: the birth of economic issues related to licensed merchandise (Moneghetti, Tétart and Wille, 2007; Charroin and Chanavat, 2014). This phenomenon is not without repercussions for the economy and the marketing of clubs.

Currently, a professional sports club faces several challenges: promoting its brand and innovating its products and services to offer to the fans. It should then set in motion a strategy to attract, maintain and develop customer relationships. The other challenge consists of meeting the needs of businesses via sponsorship activities, public relations and all of the services and products needed by business partners. For example, the PSG marketing department innovated itself by adding the name of a partner to one of its buildings. Normally, a club advertises its brand within its stadium, but here PSG innovates by partnering with a mobile operator at its training center. Le Camp des Loges was then renamed the Ooredoo Training Centre in 2013. There is also talk of building and/or renovating its sporting arena to equip and prepare itself for the customer journey in the modern 2.0 football stadium. Finally, since consumers are increasingly connected, marketing and event related activities lead sports entities to turn to digital technology. The fan is looking for an emotional experience through watching football, but he also equally seeks convenience to experience his or her passion. In 2014, Manchester City became the first English club to offer free wireless broadband in its stadium, “Etihad Stadium”. It is now possible for fans to download content and share the moments lived at the stadium through social networks. This is an important step in the digital strategy of the club.

This first chapter aims at explaining the context. The goal is to better understand the place of marketing within professional football by analyzing the evolution of sport business and its role. We will then redefine and analyze the key concepts and characteristics of the discipline and then address the question of the economic value and marketing potential of clubs, players and coaches. It is then necessary to study French football’s factors of growth and decline. In this context, the construction of the brand remains the key issue of every professional sport entity. The marketing strategy and the operationalizations are then chosen decisively. Supported with primary data collected from several professional sports organizations (clubs, leagues, federations, etc.) and personalities from sports business, the chapter discusses different football marketing, topics which are then further studied in the following thematic chapters and/or case studies of clubs.

Sport business and professional football: between genesis and globalization

For 15 years, the sport business enjoyed considerable development. But the use of the sport and its values conveyed through marketing and sales aren’t something from this millennium. For over a century, companies have measured the power of sponsorship communication, whose emotional impact is based on both the uncertainty of the outcome and the commitment of its participants and the public. What is the role of football in this development? Beyond sponsoring activities, who has gradually developed other profit centers of sports organizations? What clubs, institutions and football personalities helped through the steps until the advent of Sportainment? To what extent is it necessary to understand the globalization of the football product? Who are the new investors in this sector? Our analysis relates to world football, but it also focuses particularly on French football.

From the appearance of professionalism to the concepts of “Sportainment” and “e-sports marketing”

The development of economic activities, marketing and sales in the sports sector (commonly known as sport business) can be divided into five distinct phases.

The global professionalization of football’s business activities leads us to address in particular the advent of sponsorship, merchandising and television broadcasts. Analysis of the strategies deployed by the AS Saint-Étienne, the Matra Racing and the Olympique Lyonnais, which are all driving forces on trade and marketing issues, brings us to the year 2000. This period marks the advent of Sportainment. This notion, combining “sport” and “entertainment”, symbolizes the marriage between sport, entertainment and money. This triptych led to the advent of sports-entertainment with the goal of optimizing the fan experience. If the sporting competition forms the DNA of the event, the fan is now at the center, which has consequences for aspects of interactivity, activation or animation. The 2010s has seen the strengthening of digital activities, or so called e-sports marketing. This discipline includes the marketing and sales practices which aim to educate consumers using new communication technologies.

The key periods of sport business development

The appearance of professionalism and the engagement of the first businesses and sponsors within the world of football in the 1930s correspond to the first period.¹

The years between 1970 and 1980 represent the second phase. It is characterized by an increased presence of television in homes, the advent of licensed merchandise and the strengthening of partnership logics. Therefore, the newfound ability to broadcast football on television offers to clubs, which are considered to be true business enterprises, an increasing revenue. This transformation can be observed very early in England with Manchester United and eventually spread all over Europe (see Chapter 18 dedicated to Manchester United). In France, this period is illustrated in particular by the popular enthusiasm aroused by the AS Saint-Étienne (Charroin and Chanavat, 2014). The management of the club is among the first to grasp the extent of the phenomenon and to transform the business structure of the football spectacle (Boli, 2005). At this time, the emergence of large-scale financial stakes in sports is undeniable. The concept of “cash is king” then transforms the professional sport, thereby qualified as sports business, a denomination which emphasizes the commercial dimension attached to it. As a result, the sport has become a product, “like any other” service. The advent and characteristics of the phenomenon exacerbate competitive logic, the unequal nature of remunerations and the social hegemony of the sport. At this point in time, one sees the first sport marketing agencies thrive in the United States.

The 1990s were marked by a new and third phase. Worldwide, the marketing of sports entities was strengthened by the Dream Team basketball players during the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona. In France, the organization of the Winter Games in Albertville and the epic run of the Olym-pique de Marseille (OM) of Bernard Tapie during the 1993 European Championship seem to have played a role in this development. Sports federations, meanwhile, return to an evolutionary process that led to making marketing a core function of their organization (Hautbois, 2014). Strengthened by expertise and experience in organizing temporary international sporting events (the Winter Olympics in Albertville in 1992, European football Championship in 1984) or recurrent events (French Open “Roland Garros”, the Tour de France), this discipline is not new in France. However, the year 1998, marked by the victory of the French football team sponsored by Adidas, is considered the end of sport business prehistory (in France) (Desbordes, 2011). This date is symbolic in several ways. First of all, sponsorship became an element of the marketing mix of brands and no longer a visibility or reputation operation. Brand activation devices developed accordingly. Second, the victory of “Les Bleus” convinced the elites of the importance of sport in society and therefore of its economic potential. More private in the French world, the activity then propelled itself to the rank of noble activity. From then on, there has been a great deal more money in sports, and marketing activities have become more professional. In Europe, the sport more and more takes on the dimension of a growing business, driving companies to invest heavily in this sector. Indeed, the profitability of the sport, especially in the case of a home team victory, is transformed into a “jackpot” for the company. This is why, following the most logical and classic investments of sports equipment manufacturers (Adidas, Nike, Puma, Le Coq Sportif, etc.), which were present in the market for a long time, one observes the very important arrival of, in theory, illegitimate sports companies (insurance companies, banks, consumer goods, airlines, etc.). Thus, we speak of “sports marketing” for equipment manufacturers, while we say that the sponsors (those who invest in sport without ‘natural’ or semantical link to it) are, in turn, “marketing through the sport” (“sport marketing”).²

Then, in the 2000s, everything becomes more complex: marketers understand that the optimization of the investment was going through a successful “threesome or foursome” (at least), each representing a different brand. This corresponds to multiple, sport sponsorship events (Chanavat, 2009). Several brands, the club, the equipment manufacturer and the sponsors in this way come together as a whole on the same jersey. The club FC Barcelona is the perfect illustration. The blue and garnet jersey of the Catalans never had a sponsor’s name (with the exception of the equipment manufacturer) since its founding in 1899. It was, in the image of Athletic Bilbao, an exception in European football. But since 2006, UNICEF has been visible, free of charge, on the jersey. This operation, described as “citizen sponsoring”, allows the Catalan club to see its number of fans increase worldwide, in addition to allowing the club to increase its rates for sponsorship. Since then, another partner, Qatar Airways, appears next to UNICEF on the jersey. Overall, one can legitimately wonder whether each brand of the FC Barcelona quartet with Nike, Qatar Airways and UNICEF, represents the same values and how this brand proliferation impacts the perception of the consumer. If one can observe an increase in the number of brands, then the number of stakeholders has also increased: agencies (Sportfive, Havas Sports, Sportlab, etc.), media (Canal +, France Televisions, BeIN Sports, Team 21, etc.), law firms and consulting specialists,³ sports agents, equipment manufacturers, leagues, federations, confederations, clubs, athletes, etc. This was a time of globalization and Sportainment. Since 2005, Max Guazzini, then president of the Stade Français rugby club, has been recognized as a precursor for the screenwriting of sporting events material in France. He revolutionized the “rugby cassoulet” (traditional meal in the countryside in the southwestern part of France) by making it multicultural: he managed to bring in women and children to the stadium, and his event strategy and marketing strategy will...