Sports Clubs’ Role in City Branding - What do they actually do?

Abstract: In today’s city branding field, a gap exists between research and practice. A gap made more evident since the field has moved to prefer a participative approach, where stakeholders are more acknowledged as an important part of the city branding process, illustrating the little knowledge of stakeholders’ own practices. This study undertakes a mission of moving forward in the research field by shedding light on how stakeholders take an active part in city branding, with a focus on the brand creation process. In the study, sports clubs were chosen to be studied from a stakeholder perspective. To study sports clubs’ role in city branding a framework on the best available knowledge was developed. The framework was then used to discern practices and motives by sports clubs through semi-structured interviews. Previous research suggested four components to be suitable for a framework, from this study the components were supported, but improvements were also identified. As a result, three motives and six practices were identified for why and how sports clubs partake in city branding. The insights generated in this study contribute to moving the research field forward and practical implications for how sports clubs can work with city branding and what motivates them to do so.