Transforming a football club into a ‘total experience’ entertainment company: Implications for management

Abstract

This article reflects on the main organizational and managerial consequences of the radical transformation of Dutch professional football club Vitesse. After a brief introduction to the club and its new self-image, it will be shown how the club has aimed to move from selling plain football to delivering a comprehensive experience. After a discussion of some of the products Vitesse was able to offer when it re-identified itself as a ‘multi-entertainment football company’, the often far-reaching implications for management will be addressed. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that a process of professionalization/commercialization does not merely create opportunities, as is often assumed. It will be argued that when football club Vitesse came to think of itself as a ‘real’ company, it also forced itself to extend its sphere of control in the sense that many phenomena previously assumed ‘out there’ and therefore ‘not our business’, have become part of the Vitesse Experience and thus need to be actively managed and put under control.