To wrap up this series of posts on professional sporting organisations and marketing, I’m going to look at how social media might aid them in their marketing processes, using the model I discussed. It should be noted that I haven’t as yet talked to any professional sporting organisations about social media, and when I do, which I hope will be soon, then I may have different ideas about this aspect of my research.
Sport is after all a game, and there is no guarantee that a certain team will win week in and week out. They can only hope to recruit the right players and the right coaches, hope they are better prepared than their opposition, play an exciting style of game and go from there. But in the end it comes down to chance.
At present professional sporting clubs have very explicit interactions with their customers. Customers either see the team play at the ground, on television, or might interact with the club through their website. These are very structured interactions, and there’s a real separation between what the sporting club does in public and what they do behind closed doors.
There has to be this separation because image management is a huge issue for professional sporting organisations (both leagues like the AFL and individual clubs), but there could be a more subtle separation facilitated by social media that allowed a sports club or organisation to effectively manage its image while still making fans feel more included in the processes of the club.
Imagine if professional sporting clubs used Twitter. For example, Carlton could have tweeted before its recent NAB cup semi-final against Geelong, ‘Should we play Chris Judd this week?’ Although it would surely be inadvisable to take popular consensus over the opinion of professional coaches and other experts, it would make fans more included in the machinations of their club and potentially make it easier for professional sporting clubs to establish and maintain relationships with their customers (fans).
Interestingly, Ebbsfleet United has gone all the way with social media and made an offer to its customers that in exchange for owning a piece of the club they get to be involved in the day to day decisions, including picking the team. The football club is a very minor one in the grand scheme of things, playing in a division that is four below the Premier League but interestingly after embracing this concept they have achieved their best ever result to date, winning the FA Trophy.
Ultimately, a tightly controlled interaction between professional sporting clubs and customers (fans) could make maintaining a relationship an easier process. With more insight into the running of the club, the emotional connection (if indeed it does exist) might be strengthened due to the customer feeling more important in the process of the club, and when times are tough, careful explanations and behind the scenes looks at why the club is performing badly may make fans more accepting of the inevitable slumps that every professional sporting club goes through.
