The presence of Telekom Veszprém on the Markets of Professional Sports

Absztrakt (kivonat)

Because I love sports and handball was part of my life since my childhood, it was evident that I will choose a topic in connection with my interests. My other interest and favorite subject at the university was marketing, and I am interested in sports economy and sportsmarketing. This topic includes both of my favored topics. The basis of my research is Krisztina András’s research, written in 2004, with the title The markets of professional football. In my research, I examined the business operations of Telekom Veszprém through three markets out of the five of professional sports. My examined markets were the sponsorship market, the merchandising market, and the consumer market. I have chosen these three markets because these are the closest ones to the customer, these have the biggest impact on the decisions and the behavior of the customer. During my thesis work, I wanted to examine the relationship of Telekom Veszprém with its fans and supporters. I studied the importance of the customers in the value chain of Telekom Veszprém. I think the topic is actual because sports are becoming an important business segment in the last decade. These include team sports and the social activity of attending a game or following it remotely, through television, online streams, etc. During my work, I used different types of research methods. Firstly, I read many articles and researches in my topic for my theoretical background. Based on the articles I did a secondary research and looked for data in connection with views, arena usage, etc. For this purpose, I used the university's database, journal articles, and other different online sources, like Google Scholar or Researchgate. This research helped me to build the theoretical part of my thesis work. In my practical part, I used more methods and combined them to gain as much knowledge as possible. I did one Quantitative and two Qualitative types of research. As Quantitative research, I created a questionnaire. The survey was addressed to the fans of Telekom Veszprém. I was asking questions about the fans' preferences and opinions about the merchandising strategy, about the game prices, the new outfit, and mainly about the sponsorship relations of the team. My research was filled out by 399 Veszprém fans and supporters. After the questionnaire, I did two interviews, one with the name-giving sponsor of Veszprém, Telekom, and a second one with the CEO of the brand Telekom Veszprém. After the research and the theoretical knowledge gain, I answered my seven hypothesizes in connection with the behavior of the fans and their opinion about the brand. The hypothesizes were mainly build around the feelings of the customer. the theoretical framework of the questionnaire is provided by the research made by Yong Jae Ko and Joon Sung Lee in 2018, in connection with the behavior of sport fans and spectators.They said that the behavir of fans is determined by gender differences and by the resuls of the team. I discussed the results of the quantitative research in the qualitative interviews and I asked them to share their opinions in connection with the questions which arose during the questionnaire. In case of my research Ko and Lee’s statement is not true. From the answers it is clear that the hypothesis which states that being a sports fan depends on gender is not true. Although most of the participants say that they are engaged to theteam and are fans, not spectators. Based on the questionnaire and the interviews, Telekom Veszprém is having a better relationship in the last years with its customers. The club realized that they need to follow the demands of the fans. Based on the interview Veszprém started to pay more attention to the merchandising market, and in the last three years drastically increased its revenues which are coming in from merchandise sales. With their ticket sales strategy, they also try to get more fans to the venue to have more people who are interested in buying merchandise products. In previous years, Veszprém also started to focus more on the quality and the quantity of the sponsors. They try to attrack more nationally known sponsors instead of smaller local ones, they say it is due to the fact that the team is not Veszprém’s team, it is the country’s team. Based on the valuation of the fans and of the CEO the sponsoring activities of Veszprém are not having a bad judgment, neither an influence on the opinion of the fans because the main sponsors are mainly selling their products to other businesses and not to everyday people. In the future, I would suggest Telekom Veszprém to focus more on the consumer market and value the opinion of the fans. I think the team should participate more in the life of the supporters and organize more fan-oriented events which could also help to strengthen the cohesion among the fans. The second important part of the research was built around the question of being a fan or a spectator. Veszprém supporters say that they are fans and not spectators, they are engaged to Veszprém, no matter what happens. I think that this type of research could be beneficial in the case of other internationally known handball teams (e.g. in Germany) to see the differences between the fans and between the opinion of the management. The main drawback of my research was this year's special situation with the pandemic, the situation is exceptional, sport teams are having difficulties due to Covid. I hope that this situation will not change the position of Veszprém in the future, and they will be able to successfully continue their work on the markets of professional sports.