IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/elg/eechap/21289_13.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

Relationship marketing during COVID-19: strategies and processes of communication in German and Austrian sports clubs

In: Research Handbook on Sport and COVID-19

Author

Listed:
  • Thomas Horky
  • Christof Seeger
  • Jörg-Uwe Nieland
  • Daniel Nölleke
  • Christiana Schallhorn
  • Philip Sinner

Abstract

The focus of this chapter is the digitalization of sports associations since COVID-19. Drawing on general characteristics and functions of sports clubs, specific challenges will be shown and discussed on the theoretical background of relationship marketing in sports, particularly for social media. The results of two quantitative surveys conducted among 732 German and Austrian sports clubs reveal that, overall, the clubs' members were regarded the most important reference group. The favored communication channels differed according to the clubs' size. With members and athletes, media representatives, as well as politics and the public three different levels can be structured in a pyramid of public communication. Communication with sponsors and supporters was regarded important, however, the clubs' own communication channels were not used for this notion. The pandemic posed particular challenges to Austrian clubs, as they faced existential problems due to the withdrawal of sponsors.

Suggested Citation

  • Thomas Horky & Christof Seeger & Jörg-Uwe Nieland & Daniel Nölleke & Christiana Schallhorn & Philip Sinner, 2022. "Relationship marketing during COVID-19: strategies and processes of communication in German and Austrian sports clubs," Chapters, in: Paul M. Pedersen (ed.), Research Handbook on Sport and COVID-19, chapter 13, pages 154-165, Edward Elgar Publishing.
  • Handle: RePEc:elg:eechap:21289_13
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.elgaronline.com/view/edcoll/9781802207576/9781802207576.00021.xml
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:elg:eechap:21289_13. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Darrel McCalla (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.e-elgar.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.