The strategic value of sport for an African city brand

Abstract

Sport is already acknowledged as having a significant impact for city brands, particularly through the hosting of sport events and most notably as a means of creating global awareness, improved image and differentiation from other tourism destinations. This is especially pertinent for emerging brands in an increasingly competitive global environment. Although the literature has predominantly studied the impact of sport mega-events, few have examined the strategic significance of sport more broadly and none have looked at the emerging African city context. This paper therefore examines the strategic contribution of sport in the form of teams, personalities, facilities, brands and sponsors and a range of home-grown, re-occurring and mega-events, for an emerging African city brand. Cape Town was chosen as the case study context as it has a strong association with sport, tourism and mega-events. A qualitative design was adopted to study the perceptions of sport tourism and city brand stakeholders on the strategic importance of sport. A series of twelve semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted with definitive sport and brand stakeholders. A thematic analysis of these findings identified particular strategic benefits that sport provides for a city brand, such as: brand personality attributes; brand identification; national and global brand competitiveness; and the creation of brand ambassadors. Beyond the theoretical contribution, the study sets out a number of strategic implications for emerging city brand stakeholders wishing to leverage the brand value of sport.