In the middle of the park: How brand equity exists within football official and Fan TV YouTube communities

Kimamo, Maxwell

Abstract

The rise of social media users and both football official and Fan TV YouTube channels has been fruitful for football clubs and their fans. In this context, the fourth quarter of 2023 had approximately 5.3 billion internet users globally, which was 65.7 percent of the global population. Of this total, 4.95 billion or 61.4 percent of the world's population were social media users (Petrosyan, 2023). Additionally, Degenhard (2023) notes that the global number of internet users was forecasted to increase by 1.2 billion between 2024 and 2028. In the online football fan sphere, the official YouTube channels of the top five football clubs in the EPL season 2023/24 have 26.381 million subscribers, whereas Fan TV YouTube channels established by their fans have 3.293 million subscribers. In addition, Arsenal FC’s official YouTube channel has 4.17 million subscribers and AFTV, a Fan TV YouTube channel established by Arsenal FC’s fans has 1.67 million subscribers (YouTube, 2024). Still, football Fan TV YouTube channels pose both an opportunity and a threat to football clubs’ brand equity. This is because they are beyond football clubs’ control, and provide football fans with a platform to share brand opinions without any football club restrictions. In this light, Aaker (1991) proposes that “Brand equity is a set of brand assets and liabilities linked to a brand, its name and symbol, that add to or subtract from the value provided by a product or service to a firm and/or to that firm’s customers” (p. 27). Moreover, Keller (1993) stresses the importance of brand knowledge and proposes that “customer-based brand equity occurs when the consumer is familiar with the brand and holds some favourable, strong, and unique brand associations in memory” (p. 2). This study uses brand equity as a theoretical lens to investigate the existence of its dimensions (brand loyalty, brand awareness, perceived quality, and brand associations) within the digital data traces of the following respective football official and Fan TV YouTube communities: 1) Arsenal FC’s official YouTube channel; and 2) AFTV. Thus, to implement this investigation, this study employs netnography which is a form of qualitative research that seeks to understand the cultural experiences that encompass and are reflected within the traces, practices, networks and systems of social media (Kozinets, 2020). Additionally, within netnography, this study uses the following two immersion journals to unobtrusively observe Arsenal’s official YouTube community and AFTV’s You Tube community during the EPL season 2022/23: IJ 1—An immersion dedicated to Arsenal FC’s official YouTube channel; and IJ 2—An immersion journal dedicated to AFTV. Moreover, various autonetnographic introspections are included in the netnographic account of this study. Auto-netnography is a method to netnography that showcases the role of the netnographer’s own experiences and/or his/her own online experiences. It merges the participant-observational method of netnography with the reflexive, autobiographical approach of autoethnography (Kozinets & Kedzior, 2009). To this end, this study is significant because: 1) it is a new and developing subject in the discipline of sports marketing given the rapid growth of football official and Fan TV YouTube channels; 2) it will help netnographers and other digital marketing researchers understand how brand equity is showcased within SMBCs; and 3) it will enable marketers to understand how to nurture, maintain, and protect a football clubs’ brand equity on official and Fan TV YouTube channels given the lucrative brand value some top EPL football clubs have—Arsenal FC, $851 million (Statista, 2024), and the unique historical heritage that these football club brands have—Arsenal FC, founded in 1886 (Arsenal, 2023). The theoretical implications of this study indicate that: 1) ritual texts, conscious and subconscious brand loyalty texts, brand influencer texts, bonding texts, affective analytical texts, and emotional texts, contribute to brand emotions as a new brand equity dimension; 2) punditry texts, brand influencer texts, experiential texts, community jargon, symbolic texts and affective analytical texts, contribute to brand functionality as a new brand equity dimension; 3) punditry texts contribute to both brand awareness and perceived quality as dimensions of brand equity; 4) brand influencer texts contribute to brand loyalty, brand awareness, and perceived quality as dimensions of brand equity; and 5) experiential texts contribute to both perceived quality and brand awareness as dimensions of brand equity. Lastly, this study recommends that in good practice football club brand managers can maintain and nurture a club’s brand equity by incorporating the following aspects in their digital marketing programs: 1) YouTube buyer personas; 2) Brand engagement and cultural lingua; 3) Match highlights and fan post-match interviews from an official YouTube channel and a Fan TV YouTube channel; and 4) Adapting the Ubuntu philosophy in collaboration and content co-creation between the club and Fan TV YouTube channels.

• Thesis Type: Thesis
• Online Publication Date: Apr 24, 2025
• Deposit Date: Apr 7, 2025
• Publicly Available Date: May 25, 2025
• Award Date: Apr 24, 2025