Stadiums vs fan zones. The influence of attending place on UEFA Euro 2016’s host cities’ image

ABSTRACT

Assessing the potential effects on local communities of hosting major sporting events such as FIFA World Cup or UEFA European Championships has long been an important source of interest and debate for scholars. The present study aims to move forward in this literature by considering the place where soccer fans attend the competition, namely stadium vs fan zone. Hence, the goal of this paper is to analyze the influence of attending place on the image of cities hosting a major sporting event, by comparing the perceptions of stadium and fan zone spectators. Findings suggest that several components of city image depend on whether spectators attend the event in stadiums or in fan zones, and that these differences have various effects on spectator satisfaction, leading to new perspectives regarding the use of fan zones to achieve city branding objectives.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Can be defined as places that have tourism-oriented business.

2. Morgan et al., Destination brands.

3. Westerbeek et al., ‘Key success factors in bidding’; Rein and Shields, ‘Place branding sports’; and Heslop et al., ‘Mega-event and country co-branding’.

4. Westerbeek et al., ‘Key success factors in bidding’, 309.

5. Beside the role of sporting events, some authors highlighted the role of football clubs in strengthening a post-national identity in Europe and in promoting european cities in a competition context. Through the example of Manchester, King (‘Football fandom and post-national identity in the New Europe’) states that United’s fans took the opportunity provided by the expansion of the Champion’s League and United’s playing success to travel more intensely in Europe and to extend beyond UK the specificities of Manchester’s social identity.

6. Kaplanidou et al., ‘Recurring sport events’.

7. Rein and Shields, ‘Place branding sports’; Heslop et al., ‘Mega-event and country co-branding’; and Herstein and Berger, ‘Much more than sports’.

8. Gratton, Shibli, and Coleman (2006) suggest four main perspectives: economic impact, sports development, media and sponsor evaluation and place marketing effects.

9. Maennig and Zimbalist, International handbook; Preuss and Alfs, ‘Attracting major sporting events’.

10. Taks, Chalip and Green, ‘Impacts and strategic outcomes’.

11. See Lee et al., ‘The Impact of sport mega-event on destination image’.

12. Bale and Dejonghe, ‘Sports Geography’.

13. Or bidding, since the image of countries can be positively impacted by their involvement in bidding processes for sporting events, regardless of their results. On this matter see Cornelissen, ‘Sport mega-events in Africa’.

14. Westerbeek et al., ‘Key success factors in bidding’.

15. Chen and Funk, ‘Exploring destination image’.

16. Gibson et al., ‘Destination image’.

17. Lee et al., ‘The Impact of sport mega-event on destination image’.

18. Tavakkoli, ‘Impact of city image’.

19. Liu, ‘Major Sports Events’.

20. Alonso-Dos-Santos et al., ‘Destination image of a city hosting sport event’.

21. see note 17 above.

22. Pratt and Chan. ‘Destination image and intention to visit the Tokyo 2020 Olympics’.

23. People who were born between 1980 and 2000.

24. For instance Hallman et al., ‘Event image perceptions among’; Kaplanidou and Gibson, ‘Predicting behavioural intentions’; Kaplanidou et al., ‘Recurring sport events’.

25. Funk et al., ‘International sport event participation’.

26. Derom and Ramshaw, ‘Leveraging sport heritage to promote tourism destinations’.

27. Kaplanidou and Vogt, ‘Affective event and destination image’.

28. Haferburg et al., ‘Public viewing areas’, 174.

29. Some informal fan zones were organized during past sporting events such as the 1998 World Cup in France. But these kind of fan zones hasn’t been considered for this research as they were dealing with an embryonic stage of the concept. Moreover, these fan zones were not controlled by the UEFA but introduced by some local governing bodies. Some of them were even forbidden by TF1, the official broadcaster of the competition, for France which considered that broadcasting the competition for free was an unfair commercial practice.

30. Bale, ‘Virtual fandoms’.

31. Schnitzer and Stickdorn, ‘Key success factors for fan zones’.

32. See Lauss and Szigetvari, ‘Governing by fun: EURO 2008’; Klauser, ‘The Exemplification of “Fan Zones”’.

33. Berthoud et al., ‘Euro 2008 in Geneva’, 11.

34. Ibid., 12.

35. Hagemann, ‘From the stadium to the fan zone’.

36. Bar-Kolelis et al., ‘Promotion of host cities of Euro 2012’.

37. Weed, ‘The pub as a virtual football fandom venue’.

38. Weed, ‘Exploring the sport spectator experience’.

39. see note 27 above.

40. See George and Mallery, Discriminant analysis.

41. Kim and Walker, ‘Measuring the social impacts’.

42. See Bryman and Cramer, Quantitative data analysis.

43. See Aiken and West, Multiple regression.

44. Gujarati and Porter. ‘Multicollinearity’.

45. see note 43 above.

46. Funk et al., ‘International sport event participation’; and Liu, ‘Major Sports Events’.

47. see note 36 above.

48. Zeithaml, ‘Defining and relating price’.

49. Chalip, ‘Towards social leverage of sport events’.

50. Berthoud et al., ‘Euro 2008 in Geneva’.

51. see note 31 above.

52. Ibid.

53. MacCannel, Tourist or traveller.