Marketing outsourcing in the English Premier League: the rights holder/agency interface

Abstract

Research question: While marketing outsourcing may offer a clear means for revenue generation and cost efficiency, there is a need to go beyond the outsourcing decision itself to address 'how' outsourcing can be managed successfully. Differing to existing studies, this study examines the dynamic nature of marketing outsourcing from the right holder and agency perspectives in an overlooked setting. Research methods: Qualitative data was generated from semi-structured interviews with marketing managers from 30 English Premier League (EPL) football clubs and with 10 marketing agency account managers. The clubs included in this study had all participated in the EPL, and all ten marketing agencies interviewed had been contracted at some point in time to these clubs. Results and findings: By capturing both sides of the right holder/agency interface, this study includes a neglected perspective (i.e. agency) to more accurately examine the principal-agency relationship in marketing outsourcing. The findings add greater nuance to the drivers/motivations and barriers/constraints that are typically cited in sport management and marketing studies, providing a new framework to understand the relationship dynamic and guide successful sport marketing outsourcing initiatives. Implications: Though outsourcing can be an impactful business decision, the success of marketing outsourcing in football is dependent upon the balance of conditions across the right holder/agency interface. Specifically, while pushing factors may contribute to effective marketing outsourcing, resisting factors undermine the right holder-agency relationship. However, in nurturing key necessary features both parties can limit resisting factors and emphasise push factors for shared value creation.

An examination of the effects of outsourcing ticket sales force management

“…Similar to other business sectors, the sport industry has also seen significant outsourcing of sales and marketing management in a variety of settings (Burden and Li, 2009;Dreier, 2011;Dietl et al, 2017;Lee et al, 2016;Lee and Walsh, 2011;Muret, 2011aMuret, ,b, 2013Popp, 2014;Scanlan, 2017;Schoettle, 2012;Zullo et al, 2014). The decision to outsource sales management has been examined extensively utilizing a variety of sport organizations as cases, such as European football (Dietl et al, 2017;Manoli and Hodgkinson, 2017), minor league baseball (Burden and Li, 2009) and National Collegiate Athletic Association departments (Lee et al, 2016;Lee and Walsh, 2011;Popp and McEvoy, 2012;Walker et al, 2009;Zullo et al, 2014). These prior studies result in two foci.…”

“…For example, Walker et al (2009) surveyed collegiate marketing administrators who work with outsourced agencies within their athletic department and found a significant positive relationship between communication satisfaction measures and organizational commitment. Similarly, Lee et al (2016) and Manoli and Hodgkinson (2017) conducted qualitative interviews with organizational members to examine relationships between key members of both the sport organization and the employees of an outsourced company hired to sell sponsorship or tickets.…”

“…Several prior studies have examined the decision-making process of outsourcing sales functions within sport organizations (Burden and Li, 2009;Dietl et al, 2017;Lee and Walsh, 2011;Popp and McEvoy, 2012;Zullo et al, 2014), and a handful of researchers have investigated the relationship between members of the sport organization and employees of the third-party sales firm (Lee et al, 2016;Manoli and Hodgkinson, 2017;Walker et al, 2009). To date, however, no prior studies within the field have empirically tested whether outsourced companies out-produce in-house sales forces, based on actual sales revenue.…”

The implementation of integrated marketing communication (IMC): evidence from professional football clubs in England

“…Following the significant commercial growth of the industry, marketing communication aspects such as sponsorship, relationship marketing and management, and brand management have also received considerable attention (McCarthy et al, 2014). EPL clubs are often considered to be remarkably advanced in those aspects when compared with both other sports leagues and other industry sectors (Manoli and Hodgkinson, 2017;Manoli and Kenyon, 2018). Taking this into consideration, focusing on EPL clubs would allow for insights to be gained from industry leaders working within highly prominent organisations.…”

Alternative revenue streams for centrally funded sport governing bodies

“…Copeland (1996) also found that most sponsorship arrangements were far from equitable, yet this does not dissuade corporations from spending resources to find a perfect event to match their image as well as researching demographic and psychographic profiles of participants (Irwin, 1995;Pappu & Cornwell, 2014). This helps in gauging the level of brand exposure, quality of the sport concerned, exclusivity arrangements and quantity and quality of broadcast exposure (Wilson, Westberg, & Henseler, 2011;Manoli & Hodgkinson, 2017).…”