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(Bourgeon & Bouchet, 2001). It has also identifiedyoung an fans and females – women and girls.The brand was positioned in opposition to its mainrugby union competitors located in the south-west ofFrance and the club has developed a modern,fashionable brand image. Marketing was conducted inaccordance within the overall strategy and thesegments SF Paris targeted. The club focused onoffering highly entertaining games with numerousperipheral elements at very cheap prices (starting from5 euros), developing the merchandising throughinnovative replica shirts and extending the brand withinnovative merchandise such as cosmetic products.This strategy has important similarities withAmerican professional sport and is consideredinnovative when compared to European practices.Indeed, European rugby union clubs, and professionalsport clubs in general, concentrate mainly onattracting the best players in order to secure as manyvictories and trophies as possible. These, in turn,enhance customer loyalty, which then guaranteessteady financial income (Morgan, 2002).Moreover, Harris and Jenkins (2001) highlighted thelack of strategic marketing in English and Welsh rugbyunion clubs, which favours the reproduction oftraditional practices.The aim of this analysis is not to encouragereplication of the SF Paris strategy because it isstrongly related to the sports club’s identity. Instead, itis to emphasise the essential role of marketing strategyfor professional sports clubs and to encourageinnovation in the increasingly competitive professionalsport and entertainment sectors, which are, more thanever, being driven by globalisation.BackgroundOn 27 February 2007, Stade Français Paris beatStade Toulousain 22 to 20 in a game that set a newworld record, not for its score but for attendance at thestadium (Jackson, 2007) – 79,741 spectators for aFrench premier league regular season matchconstitutes a world record for rugby union and also aFrench national record for any sport. The reasons whythis event is so interesting are based on the context inwhich it was achieved. This was not the result of aregular on-field success, but a result of the role ofmarketing in attracting such a crowd. Incidentally, theattendance figure was not a one-off. Since the2004-05 season, SF Paris has on several occasionssucceeded in gaining significantly large crowdsthrough marketing initiatives. Crowds in excess ofaround 70,000 or 40,000 (depending on the capacityof the stadium) have been achieved regularly. Theseare exceptional performances considering both thegeneral interest in rugby union in France and that theclub’s regular home stadium has only 10,500 seats(Ligue Nationale de Rugby; LNR).ObjectiveThe objective of this paper is to highlight thesuccessful marketing management of SF Paris inattracting big crowds and developing strong brandequity. Obviously, investigating a posteriori the successof a company or a brand is always a difficult exercisebecause analysts can never be entirely sure about theauthenticity of the managerial rationale that leads tosuccess. However, in our case, we think that themarketing strategy that we present was wellconsidered and intentional, mainly because of thepersonality and the professional background of thechairman of the club, Max Guazzini. This formerchairman of a successful private French radio stationtook over the presidency of Stade Français in 1992and was the catalyst for the development of the club,indeed some might even say for the overallrejuvenation of French professional rugby.Therefore, we will present the strategic plans andmarketing initiatives SF Paris implemented to build itsworld record attendance and strong brand equity.Finally, a comparison with other European clubs willbe made to show why this case is unique and how itcould be replicated.CASE STUDY● APRIL 2009 ● International Journal of Sports Marketing & Sponsorship253
Stade Français Paris rugby clubCASE STUDYImplementationStrategic marketingAs stated by Kotler et al (2004), strategic marketingrelies on three elements: segmentation, targeting andpositioning. Segmentation consists of clustering amarket in several homogeneous groups, which areboth significant and accessible to marketing activity(Kotler et al, 2004). In the case of SF Paris, the firstquestion concerns which market the club is competingin (Couvelaere & Richelieu, 2005). Indeed, as withprofessional sports clubs in general, SF Pariscompetes in several markets, namely the rugby unionmarket, the professional sports market and finally thebroad leisure and entertainment market (Euchner,1993; Mason, 1999).As far as the rugby union market is concerned, theintensity of competition can be determined throughanalysis of different levels of the sport. At the nationallevel, the main competitors for SF Paris are based inthe south of France, i.e. the area south of the Loireriver, and in south-west France in particular (Boure,2004; Charlot, 2006). The main rivals, in terms ofboth field performance and image, are StadeToulousain, Biarritz Olympique, Clermont-Auvergneand USA Perpignan. SF Paris is the only clubgeographically situated in the ‘north’, and this partiallycontributes to the cultural rivalry between the capitaland the provinces. The south is considered to be thehome of rugby union, and the spirit of rugby is oftencharacterised as a sport of villages or ‘clock towers’,meaning that it is territorially (Boure, 2004; Charlot,2006) and culturally attached to ‘peasant’ values(Pociello, 1983). At a local level, there is only oneother professional club situated in the Paris region, l’Ilede France. Racing-Metro, which along with SF Paris isone of the oldest French sports clubs, plays in thesecond division with a home ground capacity of6,500 seats and an average attendance of 1,141 forthe regular season 2006-07 (LNR).In the general professional sports market, SF Paris’smain regional competitor is Paris Saint Germain (PSG)football club, although other team sports such asbasketball, handball, volleyball and ice-hockey have atleast one first division professional club. However, it isdebatable whether they truly compete, given thatfootball and rugby have very different fan profiles.Finally, as an entertainment activity, we canconsider that SF Paris competes in the leisure marketand, more specifically, is an alternative choice forSaturday night activities such as theatre, cinema orgoing out (Euchner, 1993; Mason, 1999).The principle of segmentation highlights thedifference between groups of customers. It does so inorder to select which segments fit the company’sproduct and which are profitable (Kotler et al, 2004).In order to investigate the marketing strategy of SFParis, it is legitimate to focus on several frameworksthat might help us to understand the demand for thesport spectacle, and then which segments weretargeted by SF Paris.Thus, in relation to the sports spectacle, Holt(1995) identified four types of practices which aredefined as consumption metaphors. The first onedefines consuming-as-experience and highlights theconsumer’s subjective and emotional reactions andparticularly the experiential, aesthetic, autotelic andhedonic dimensions of consumption (Holbrook &Hirschman, 1982). The second metaphor, consumingas-integration,describes “how consumers acquire andmanipulate object meanings” thanks to their symbolicdimension (Holt, 1995). The third highlights theclassification role of consumption in general and thesports spectacle in particular. Finally, consuming-asplayrefers to the way consumers use consumptionobjects to interact, socialise and share commonexperiences. Although this framework constitutes thefirst step to understanding what consumers of sportsspectacles look for, it did not allow us to createmarketing segments, because most spectators useconsumption for several meanings. However,Bourgeon & Bouchet (2001) extended the work ofHolt (1995), and produced a semiotic squareproviding four consumer profiles of sports spectacles.The ‘aesthete’ profile characterised customers wholook for the quality of the game, the beauty of the254 International Journal of Sports Marketing & Sponsorship ● APRIL 2009 ●
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ContentsAbstracts 196●●●●
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EditorialGlobal reach to reflect de
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Page 14 and 15: Drivers to divasimage portrayal of
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