Team Sports Brand Management

This chapter offers insights into the branding of sports teams. The importance of branding is explained, and a strong sports team brand is defined, by introducing the concept of brand equity. Based on this definition, which identifies the key components o

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Abstract

This chapter offers insights into the branding of sports teams. The importance of branding is explained, and a strong sports team brand is defined, by introducing the concept of brand equity. Based on this definition, which identifies the key components of sports team brand equity, the three fundamental stages of team sports brand management, strategic brand management, operational brand management and brand system management, are explained and illustrated.

Learning Outcomes of Chapter

1. You will understand the main functions of brands. 2. You will know how to define a strong sports team brand. 3. You will know the main components of customer-based sports team brand equity, and how to assess them. 4. You will know the main stages of strategic sports team brand management. 5. You will know the main components of operational strategic management. 6. You will understand the influence of sports team brands’ stakeholders and the brand governance approach.

G. Bodet (&) Université de Lyon, Lyon, France B. Séguin University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 S. Walzel and V. Römisch (eds.), Managing Sports Teams, Management for Professionals, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56495-7_8

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Introduction

Numerous observers (e.g. Giulianotti and Numerato 2018; Horne 2006) recognise commodification as a significant trend in sports, particularly in contemporary societies. This process has been defined as “the making into a commodity for sale on the marketplace of items or services which were previously not part of market logic” (Miller et al. 2001, p. 130). This illustrates the transformation of sports and sports organisations that are nowadays considered more than sporting entities, and also true businesses and brands, both the biggest and even those with not-for-profit status. Among the diversity of sports brands, this chapter will focus on “sports club and institution brands” (Bouchet et al. 2013). It is notable that team sports brands present common universal characteristics that can be found in other sports and non-sports brands, but that the detail of their analysis and the branding programmes have specific forms and applications. In this chapter, we first address the brand concept, defining a brand and its various functions (Sect. 2). We then present and analyse brand equity (Sect. 3), the concept and approach that defines a strong brand, and its various components. After defining customer-based brand equity, we examine the management and development of a team sports brand (Sect. 4) at the strategic level based on the identity of the brand, and then at the operational level. The operational level deals with marketing mix programmes that support the development of brand equity. The concepts of brand experiences, the way fans and spectators live the brand and brand touchpoints, which are the interactions creating these experiences, are key to this stage. Finally, considering the impor