Branding and positioning Australian rules football for participation growth in North America

Sheranne Fairley and Pamm Kellett

Sport Management Review, 2013, vol. 16, issue 3, 397-406

Abstract: Founded in 1996, the United States Australian Football League is a participation-based, amateur league that has the goal of increasing awareness, interest and participation in the sport of Australian rules football in the United States. The league has encountered challenges in creating awareness of, and therefore building participation in the sport. Lack of exposure and awareness of the sport in the United States sport marketplace is a fundamental barrier to growing participation. The USAFL has experienced difficulties in building participation because there is limited awareness and knowledge of the sport and league in the US, in addition to also a general confusion about, and lack of understanding of the sport of Australian rules football. These challenges have hindered the growth of the game in the US. The case provides students with the opportunity to consider the challenges inherent in positioning a sport in a foreign context. The case invites students to consider issues of creating awareness of a sport and branding it from the perspective of the President of the USAFL (an Australian ex-patriot) and a fellow board member (an American citizen). By comparing and contrasting the perspectives of an individual from the sport's country of origin (where the sport is immensely popular), and an individual from the sport's new cultural context encourages students to critically challenge assumptions about the popularity of sports, and explore strategies that may more effectively brand and position a sport within a new cultural context.

Date: 2013
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1016/j.smr.2012.06.004 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:rsmrxx:v:16:y:2013:i:3:p:397-406

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/rsmr20

DOI: 10.1016/j.smr.2012.06.004

Access Statistics for this article

Sport Management Review is currently edited by Sheranne Fairley

More articles in Sport Management Review from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().