Challenges of management performance in managing a professional team: a case of AmaZulu Football Club.

Masters Degree. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban.The face value of owning a professional football club in South Africa reflects a lucrative business. The compounding claim is that the majority of football club owners are either former footballers themselves or philanthropists with a love for the sport. The general observation reveals that club owners in this industry do not employ managers with necessary high education, knowledge and skills to manage the club, unlike in the case of white-collar corporates. The current practice has a negative financial implications for the club performance, survival and growth. The onus for management of professional club is to establish congruency of performance goals and objectives between personnel and overall organisational objectives. The objective of the study is to determine extent of effective and efficient management of the financial functions in the professional club. The study seeks to evaluate whether the AmaZulu Football Club (AFC) performs to the objectives of satisfying supporters and fans, interpreted as customers. The study further attempts to analyse whether learning and development at the club promote employees’ innovation. Lastly, the study seeks to determine whether internal processes assist the AFC to achieve a competitive advantage status. A mixed-method approach has been chosen as the strategy to attend on research objectives. Qualitative data was extracted from twelve members of the management team in the AmaZulu Football Club (AFC), and four executives from corporate sponsors of the AFC were also interviewed. Quantitative data was extracted from three hundred and eighty-five (385) customers or fans of the AFC. The NVIVO software package assists to analyse qualitative data using thematic analysis method. The SPSS software package assist to analyse quantitative data using descriptive statistics. The study findings indicate that the financial function manifests efficiently and effectively managed for future financial viability of the club. However, the study found that management handling of performance and productivity of the club was at an unsatisfactory level. The study further found that the organisation was not innovative enough to be competitive. The internal processes are operating below the competitor’s performance, making the club less competent and productive to meet customers and fans expectations. The implications of an executive sponsor should offer strategic guidance and create conditions that can link the AFC to new markets. The club should create an efficient internal system that can elicit effective productivity from the available resources

Nike marketing plan: the launch of Nike Academy in Portugal

In this master project, the objective is to develop a strategic and operational marketing plan to support the launching of a football academy, designed to ensure the physical, psychological and emotional welfare of its athletes. This football academy will be launched in Portugal, by Nike, during the summer of 2021. In this project, we have identified the potential participants, sponsors and fans, and studied the advantages that this initiative may bring to Nike. To achieve these conclusions, we made a strategic and operational study, that will allow to evaluate the impact the new service for the brand and what resources will be needed to implement this project. We studied the reality in which the current football academies are being developed, to construct terms of comparisons between them, and to understand what the good practices are, and what can be improved in this industry. We defined a marketing strategy and designed marketing-mix components, with the goal of creating a football academy that fulfills the young athletes’ needs, and not only the agents’ and managers’ needs. Our goal was to construct a model of an academy that could be followed by other football clubs, demonstrating the importance that the mental wellbeing of the players has for themselves and for their futures, but also for the clubs where they play in.Este projeto de mestrado tem como objetivo, desenvolver um plano estratégico e operacional de marketing, para apoiar o lançamento de uma academia de futebol, desenvolvida com o intuito de garantir o bem-estar físico, psicológico e emocional dos seus atletas. Esta academia de futebol será lançada em Portugal, pela Nike, durante o verão de 2021. Neste projeto, identificamos os potenciais participantes, patrocinadores e fãs, e estudamos as vantagens que esta iniciativa pode trazer para a Nike. Para chegar a estas conclusões, realizamos um estudo estratégico e operacional, que permitirá avaliar o impacto do novo serviço para a marca e quais os recursos necessários para implementar este projeto. Estudamos a realidade em que as atuais academias de futebol estão a ser desenvolvidas, para elaborar termos de comparação entre elas e para entender quais são as boas práticas e o que pode ser melhorado neste setor. Definimos uma estratégia de marketing e projetamos componentes de marketing-mix, com o objetivo de criar uma academia de futebol que atenda às necessidades dos jovens atletas, e não apenas às necessidades dos agentes e diretores desportivos. O nosso objetivo passou por construir um modelo de academia de futebol que pudesse ser seguido por outros clubes de futebol, demonstrando a importância que o bem-estar mental dos jogadores tem para o presente e para o futuro deles, mas também para os clubes onde jogam

A Strategic Model to Strengthen the Brand of Senior Sports

In recent years, with the rapid development of social economy, the country has paid more and more attention to the development of sports industry, and along with the arrival of aging society, the quality of life of the seniors has also received more and more attention from the society. With the increase of the seniors population, the seniors have become a force to be reckoned with in the sports market. Senior people have free time, pay attention to health, have a fixed income, and senior people buy sports products affordable, safe and convenient. With the development of sports industry, senior sports have gradually become a "sunrise industry" in the development of sports industry, and the development of participatory and healthy sports products and the health needs of the seniors are being paid more and more attention to, so the research on the strengthening of senior sports brands has important theoretical and practical significance

Segmenting initial fans of a new team: A taxonomy of sport early adopters.

Marketers are interested in the first buyers of new products, given their important role in driving wider community adoption. This is especially the case for new entertainment products, like new or relocated sports teams who must quickly build fan connections and loyalty, given the importance of crowds and social networks in adding value to the entertainment experience. Fans choose to connect with sports teams for numerous reasons; however, fan development in the context of a new team has rarely been examined. This paper examines the diversity and similarity among inaugural fans of an expansion team. A large sample (n=1724) was classified into five segments revealing how each varies in their brand associations, satisfaction, identification and involvement. By analysing key dimensions (relationship identifiers) that characterise how consumers connect with a new team, the authors provide new insights about the nature of consumers in the context of a new sports team. Furthermore, the five segments were found to be distinct cohorts, with sufficient variation between them to warrant variant marketing approaches to achieve the outcome of committed, long-term fans

The Basketball Court

Public law scholars often consider how to separate power among and within governmental entities in order to encourage that power to be used effectively. However, public law scholars only rarely bring the insights they have developed about the separation of powers to bear on questions of how to design private business firms. But these firms often need their own private separation of powers to diffuse power among their officials and ensure compliance with foundational firm objectives.This Article considers an emerging form of the private separation of powers: a private supreme court-like institution internal to a single firm. The consistent application of firm rules may be commercially valuable in some contexts, and private supreme courts can help provide firms with that kind of consistency.We consider the case for private supreme courts from the perspective of one illustrative example: sports leagues, and, in particular, the National Basketball Association (“NBA”). We argue that the NBA should create a “Basketball Court,” a somewhat-independent adjudicatory body that uses the tools of judicial decision-making to interpret league rules in a consistent way that can provide commercial value to the NBA. Creating a court-like body would promote the ability of the NBA to convince spectators of the fairness of competition, encourage casual spectators to make the types of emotional and financial investments that turn them into rabid fans, and dissuade governments from regulating their sports.We pattern our discussion of a court-like structure on the Oversight Board created by Facebook (now Meta) in 2018. The Oversight Board has largely been considered for what it means for speech, but we are interested in what it means for private institutional design more generally. Creating a court-like institution with independent judges writing opinions justifying their interpretations of private firm rules will be desirable for many, the NBA included

Digital Marketing Plan Villarreal C.F.

Treball Final de Grau en Administració d'Empreses i Dret. Codi: DA0249. Curs 2022/202

The implementation of e-sports in professional football clubs - an experience economy perspective

Masteroppgave International Business and Marketing - Nord universitet 202