Sport Marketing in Elite Soccer Clubs

The purpose of this study is to provide a case study for marketing in two elite soccer clubs: A.C.Milan (Italy) and F.C.Barcelona (Spain).
In southern Europe, soccer is the most attractive sport for media and corporate sponsors and according to specialist newspapers such as “La Gazzetta dello Sport” and “Marca”, millions of people nowadays take an active interest in it.
The phenomena soccer needs therefore an efficient marketing activity, and a well-structured organisation. (Paganetto 1999)
In other words: ‘To satisfy this market, and gain a competitive edge for their particular service, sports organisations need business-level strategies’. (Slack, 1997)
The clubs used as samples for this study are two of the most important soccer clubs in the European range with two different ways to undertake sport business.
The first part of the survey starts with some relatively unstructured interviews with Italian and Spanish managers of the two sample clubs.In the second stage the interviews became structured. Qualitative data was obtained via in-depth interviews with key managers of F.C. Barcelona and A.C.Milan such as the Assistant Marketing Manager of the Spanish and the Director of Marketing & Sales of the Italians Starting from what the club represents for the community, the topic becomes soon the marketing strategy.
The period spent waiting for the interviews, has been paramount to understand the reality surrounding the club in its environment. In fact talking with supporters and people not purely interested in sport, reading the local press, following the T.V.’s programmes about the topic, it became paramount in the definition of strategy. In other words what McDonald (1986) explained as the only way to sell products is to adapt the product to the possible customer, through his wishes and needs.