Stop hitting the woodwork! CRM for better fan-identification in Romanian second division football clubs

According to pundits, Romanian football is at an unprecedented low in terms of sporting quality and fan followship altogether. A mix of mismanagement and public regulations have transformed football clubs into under-financed organizations, unable to groom their academic work, raise quality players and, subsequently, perform at highest level which ultimately led to a decrease in entertainment on the pitch and of the numbers in attendance. Adding to this is the loss of brand identity that has created a rupture between clubs and their fan-bases. The paper aims to look at customer relationship management principles that lower-league clubs can use to build better fan relationships, while also identifying, using the same CRM optic, what actually led to the decline in quality. Second tier football has been chosen as opposed to top-flight because it consists of several clubs with development potential within their municipalities, because some of their problems are more stringent than in the upper league and, last but not least, in many cases, total attendance per game is as low as 50-300 people. The research starts with a general presentation of customer relationship management. In order to prepare CRM’s adaptation to the business of professional sports, some focus will be set on the services industry. The article then presents how CRM can be applied to sports, and, in the end, it narrows down to the specific case of Romanian football by starting the investigation from some of the challenges currently faced by the sport. Particular attention is granted to the online environment, as the latter one is host to a wide range of not very expensive CRM strategies and tactics that clubs can use, cost being a factor to be taken into account for a sector with scarce monetary resources. Last but not least, the paper ends with a set of recommendations as well as future ideas for research.