Hobo
The role of sport fan community in value co-creation1
Patrizia Zagnoli (zagnoli@unifi.it) Elena Radicchi (e.radicchi@unifi.it) Sport Management Laboratory, University of Florence, Italy
Introduction The new complexity of the sport sector has a strong impact on the implementation of sport products that nowadays are an expression of manifold subjects. Planning, production, distribution and communication of sport contents involve numerous actors who participate in the implementation of sport with diversified roles and importance: sport organizations, athletes, institutions and local administrations, sponsors, media, etc. Fans and supporters are of course of central importance to sport service production. The passion, excitement, involvement expressed by the audience has a crucial role for event implementation and value creation. Due to the importance of fans as “co-producers” of the sport service, the hypothesis of this research is that a fan community is a salient stakeholder in the value co-creation process. This research focuses on a fan community of a specific professional football case, the ACF Fiorentina the Florence, Italy football club - a “rich” example for identifying and analyzing the manifold influences and interactions that fans can engage in with their team, the local context and the network of actors as a whole. The knowledge of this case study has profited from several investigations, research and theses carried out within the Master‟s Degree in Sport Management at the University of Florence. We started to monitor the football club and the relations with the local stakeholders since the year 2003 - after the club‟s failure and its “rebirth” when the team went to an owner that for the first time ever was “non Florentine” - up to the last 2009/2010 football season. To develop this case study a quali-quantitative methodology was used. The analysis of the fan community starts with an examination of the Fiorentina‟s ticket season holders database that
Patrizia Zagnoli (zagnoli@unifi.it) Elena Radicchi (e.radicchi@unifi.it) Sport Management Laboratory, University of Florence, Italy
Introduction The new complexity of the sport sector has a strong impact on the implementation of sport products that nowadays are an expression of manifold subjects. Planning, production, distribution and communication of sport contents involve numerous actors who participate in the implementation of sport with diversified roles and importance: sport organizations, athletes, institutions and local administrations, sponsors, media, etc. Fans and supporters are of course of central importance to sport service production. The passion, excitement, involvement expressed by the audience has a crucial role for event implementation and value creation. Due to the importance of fans as “co-producers” of the sport service, the hypothesis of this research is that a fan community is a salient stakeholder in the value co-creation process. This research focuses on a fan community of a specific professional football case, the ACF Fiorentina the Florence, Italy football club - a “rich” example for identifying and analyzing the manifold influences and interactions that fans can engage in with their team, the local context and the network of actors as a whole. The knowledge of this case study has profited from several investigations, research and theses carried out within the Master‟s Degree in Sport Management at the University of Florence. We started to monitor the football club and the relations with the local stakeholders since the year 2003 - after the club‟s failure and its “rebirth” when the team went to an owner that for the first time ever was “non Florentine” - up to the last 2009/2010 football season. To develop this case study a quali-quantitative methodology was used. The analysis of the fan community starts with an examination of the Fiorentina‟s ticket season holders database that
References: Source: Adapted from Freeman et al., 2007 Other Serie A’s Clubs