The representation of reality seems to have gained precedence over reality. In the society of the spectacle, entertainment has become the experience. Accordingly, sport organizations must ...increasingly provide added value to their fans' brand experience. Nowadays, entertainment and sport have merged to give birth to 'sportainment'. Through a polar type of case study, this paper examines how the strategic marketing of, and through, sport can adapt to this reality by proposing a strategic sportainment mix. This study demonstrates that the strategic sportainment mix can provide valuable insights about the theoretical fit between strategic marketing efforts by, or through, sport, on the one hand. This is in addition, on the other, to a stakeholder segmentation that categorizes fans according to their connection with sport in a society of the spectacle. The proposed sportainment mix could boost the fan lifetime value, together with both the customer and financial-based brand equity.
Los enfrentamientos entre Real Madrid y Fútbol Club Barcelona se encuentran entre los acontecimientos deportivos más seguidos por televisión del mundo. Este estudio proporciona un enfoque histórico ...de la explotación de los derechos de retransmisión en España de una de las mayores rivalidades de la historia del fútbol y de la gestión audiovisual de estos dos clubes, a través de la trascendencia de este fenómeno con la exploración contextual de publicaciones informativas y el análisis documental. El clásico lleva impulsando transformaciones en la comercialización televisiva durante décadas, desde su origen con el interés esencial de 1959 hasta las presentes variedades de mercadotecnia del evento deportivo estrella de la industria mediática española.
Ongoing improvements in sports management, marketing, fan experience, as well as corporate social responsibility (CSR) must be implemented by professional team sport organisations (PTSO). Yet, little ...is known about how and why PTSOs account for the impacts of their CSR initiatives.
This case study analyses a one-of-a-kind sport for development museum. Curated by FC Barcelona's Barça foundation, this innovative museum was designed to showcase, and account for, Barça's social impacts.
Four main sections of the Museum are leveraged to translate the claim that Barça programs provide positive social impact.
This paper illustrates how a museum becomes a significant asset for convincing and activating both fans of a PTSO as well as sponsors of a sport-related foundation.
This study invites CSR practitioners to reflect about innovations in how they account for the impact of their programs.
How this unique SfD museum contributes to FC Barcelona's efforts of becoming més que un club, or more than a club - and therefore allowing FC Barcelona to escape market logic on a planetary scale - is also discussed.
The paper analyses the relationships between the teams and supporters of FC Barcelona and RCD Espanyol Barcelona, in which the dispute concerning Catalanness has been and remains the foremost issue. ...FC Barcelona is widely considered an ambassador of Catalonia, a symbol of Catalanness and the epitome of Catalanism as embodied through football. Espanyol, its local rival, has to face allegations of being a non-Catalan club, or an outgrowth of Real Madrid in Barcelona. While Barça is the club in which one “does politics” and with which one creates Catalonia (fer Catalunya), it is emphasized that Espanyol and its supporters are not involved in politics and the Catalan national effort. A perennial feud continues between the boards and fans of both clubs; historical, identity-related and ethnic arguments are invoked to demonstrate the Catalanness of one side (FC Barcelona) and its incompleteness or even utter absence in the other (RCD Espanyol). The analysis conducted in the paper shows that FC Barcelona’s exclusive Catalanness and right to represent Catalonia is a historical and social fact, but it has been challenged recently by Espanyol through the Catalanization the club undertook in mid-1990s and a series of public campaigns to undermine the hegemony of Barça in the city and the region. Espanyol is the active side in the contest to overcome FC Barcelona’s monopoly on representing Catalonia, while Barcelona itself focuses on retaining its previous status. The study demonstrates that both clubs are in fact polysemous, which means that Espanyol has supporters who feel first and foremost Catalans and espouse Catalan independence, while avowed opponents of the same idea can be found among the supporters of the Blaugrana, although the club is primarily Spanish and not only Catalan.
The aim of this study is to show how an entrepreneurial project that identifies a future form of value may not be motivated by the search for personal financial gain. Based on the new entrepreneurial ...history framework, the paper analyzes the process by which FC Barcelona was created and consolidated, at a time when football was strictly amateur in nature. It was an entrepreneurial project deployed in a dynamic process based on trial and error characterized by three decisive entrepreneurial momentums: the creation of the club in 1899; its rebirth in 1908; and the construction of a large stadium in 1922. From uncertain beginnings, the club's eventual consolidation led to long-term socio-economic change and presents the main characteristics of a Schumpeterian creative response since it was key in the introduction of a sport that changed the way in which leisure was consumed in Spain.
This article explores the forced closure of FC Barcelona in June 1925. When the club resumed activity six months later, its economic situation was even stronger than it had been before the ...suspension. The aim of this paper is to reveal the factors underlying this course of events. The strategic factors that allowed the club to remedy the situation included the close links between the fans and the institution, which went beyond purely sporting aspects; the club's capacity to adapt its governance model to the new circumstances; and its ability to influence the bodies governing the sport.
Las relaciones entre los gabinetes de Comunicación de los clubes de fútbol y los periodistas deportivos se enmarcan en el modelo de Gieber y Johnson (1961) por el que el hecho de que ambos compartan ...objetivos comunes, donde los gabinetes de Comunicación necesitan que los medios publiquen determinadas informaciones y los periodistas precisan de noticias que publicar, provoca una pérdida de independencia por parte de los periodistas, ya que necesitan a esos departamentos como fuentes. En la actualidad, los departamentos de Comunicación de los clubes de fútbol, como el del FC Barcelona, se han constituido en gatekeepers. Esto ha acentuado las históricas diferencias que existen entre los periodistas y los profesionales de la comunicación corporativa, incrementado por el control informativo de estos departamentos lo que provoca constantes tensiones entre ambos.
This observational methodology study had a substantive and a methodological aim. The substantive aim was to analyse the use of overall and effective play-space (EP-S) in the construction of offensive ...sequences ending in a shot by under-12 (U12) FC Barcelona (FCB) players. Analysis of EP-S helps to contextualise play in terms of a player's relationship with the ball and other players on the pitch. The data analysed corresponded to all the matches played by FCB during an international U12 tournament. The reliability and generalisability of the data were confirmed. The methodological aim was to illustrate the complementary use of two of the most common diachronic techniques in observational methodology: lag sequential analysis and T-pattern detection. The software for both techniques (GSEQ and Theme, respectively) is free. The patterns detected for the use of space in general and EP-S using both techniques show that FCB's U12 team exhibits certain features of play that the senior team is well known for, namely, elaborate play; frequent use of the wings to widen the area of play and press forward to ultimately break through the last line of defense; and recovery of the ball in forward positions within the EP-S of both teams, enabling rapid completion of sequences ending in a shot. We also detected behaviours that reflect a playing style adapted to the smaller size of the pitch used in 7-a-side soccer (e.g. the use of distant shots from within the rival team's EP-S).
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