Marketing a New Football Franchise: Auckland Football Club’s (AFC’s) Fan Engagement and Brand-Building Strategies in Year One of Ownership
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Kapoor, Dhruv
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De Villiers, Rouxelle
Johnston, Melody
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Auckland University of Technology
Abstract
As a newly established, highly subscribed club, the Auckland Football Club (AFC) is considered a successful marketing adoption strategy of a new organisation in a highly biased marketplace providing marketers with a fresh, current case in the saturated sports marketing arena. AFC is the second professional football franchise in New Zealand and first originating from Auckland. This following research problem is addressed in this study: how can a new sports franchise build brand equity and fan identification in a saturated, non-football-dominant market during its inaugural season.
In this study we will define the measures of success considered specifically, attendance figures, membership numbers, social media engagement metrics, and brand recognition and explore the marketing strategies and early adoption strategies implemented by the AFC in their inaugural season in the 2024/2025 A-League Men's competition. Despite decades of domination by other ball sports like rugby, netball and cricket, the AFC built a highly subscribed fan base, an engaged audience of ticket buyers, and a recognized brand identity - competing in the small, but patriotic sports landscape.
AFC was launched on March 14, 2024, and their first team made their debut match appearance on 19 October 2024, under the ownership of Bill Foley’s Black Knight Football and Entertainment Group. The club achieved exceptional success by breaking various records on the pitch and establishing new attendance records. Average home attendance for AFC was recorded at 18,101 at the Go Media stadium, in Auckland, New Zealand which represents the highest home attendance record in the A-League over the 2024-25 football season. This exceptional turnout provides the prompt to investigate the successful launch and marketing strategies that led to the rapid uptake (adoption) and rapid growth of the AFC fan base and brand identity. Additionally, this study aims to investigate the effectiveness of various marketing approaches of the AFC marketing strategy and tactical plans, including niche and target marketing, building customer loyalty with targeted segments, fan or member experiences and engagement and finally (although recently launched, the thus-far) customer loyalty programmes.
This qualitative case study investigates the year-one marketing strategies employed by AFC through the lens of the marketing team and professionals who developed and executed these strategies. In-depth semi-structured interviews with the marketing team and fans were used as data collection method supplemented by documentary analysis of publicly available marketing communications and materials. Braun and Clarke's (2006) six-step process was used in the analysis process and findings triangulated across professional interviews, fan perspectives and documentary analysis to enhance credibility and trustworthiness of the research findings. The findings provide an in-depth, firsthand view of the marketing strategies that contributed to AFC’s debut season success.
Furthermore, this study investigates the influence of these marketing strategies and tactical plans on market entry, the development of brand awareness, and fan relationship building strategies. AFC’s successful launch is of particularly interest in a complex, patriotic, highly loyal fan base (fans to other sports teams) and established marketplace, where new teams are highly likely to face various contextual challenges compared to that of long existing established franchises. This study extends existing sport marketing literature by examining how a new franchise builds brand legitimacy in a culturally saturated, non-football-dominant market while it also presents insights into contextual factors such as New Zealand's cultural sporting preferences, ownership structure of the club, focus on local talent and community engagement initiatives, providing valuable insights for new sports organisations trying to establish themselves in cluttered markets, providing practitioners and researcher with contextual insights into the strategic and tactical responses by AFC’s marketing team.