Skra Belchatow is certainly one of Poland’s most supported volleyball teams. The current PlusLiga Champions boasts a very professional organizational model, with a well visited website, social media platforms, and video channels. Perhaps, then, it’s no surprise that the club was one of the objects of study of a doctoral thesis titled “Managing the image of selected sports organizations” recently defended at the Faculty of Management and Social Communication of the Jagiellonian University by Dr Karolina Kosek.
Dr. Kosek gave an interview about her work to Skra’s official website:
“PGE Skra was chosen as one of the four sports organizations I studied. It was chosen because I took it account legal status, club history, achievements in Polish leagues, as well as in other international competitions, and also because of the ease of access in contacting the clubs’ decision makers, responsible for communication and marketing, in order to obtain the necessary data for analysis.
The aim of the work was to analyze the image management mechanisms of sports organizations. I presented similarities and differences in promotion strategies, defining interactions between such elements as: social media, contacts with fans, media relations, and visual identification. It allowed me to create my own scenario for identifying the image management process.
Several years of research allowed me to come to many conclusions, but I will cite only a few of them. The main factors necessary to achieve sports, business and image success on the sports market is a high budget and having appropriate channels to reach fans, sponsors and the public. An important factor for achieving image success is the mediation of the sport discipline, and what is practically connected with it is the TV station in which sports matches are broadcast. Another important element of communication of sports clubs is the selection of appropriate channels in social media. PGE Skra Bełchatów, as well as other clubs I have studied, use the same solutions for this type of communication. You have all taken the goal of building and maintaining a loyal group of supporters, who keep track of events in the club and beyond. The content you control in these channels is specific and specially selected for the type of recipient. It is friendly, attracts users’ attention and is easy to share. Thanks to my research, I managed to develop a new communication model for sports clubs using social channels for contacts with fans.”
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