Chelsea Football Club is now well established as a brand which has been propelled and driven by a simple tactic that by 2014 Chelsea wanted to be recognised internationally as the world’s number one football club.
Well known for winning trophies, Chelsea also aimed to become appreciated as the best in every other area of its day to day acumen in business, including its customer service, sponsorship as well as its corporate social responsibilities. The foundations for this are now embodied in the club’s brand values of excellence, style, leadership, integrity, pride and unity.
Opportunities and values
The Chelsea FC brand aimed to offer the fans success, style, passion and overall loyalty, which are the values that underpin the relationship with the club. Chelsea’s fundamental product and service is playing a good game while selling tickets for first-team matches at Stamford Bridge, and for matches involving the club at other grounds all over the UK.
This being the case, fan loyalty, and ultimately customer satisfaction, is dependent on the successful execution of these offerings. Adding to this is a series of further more competitive, innovative and modern services, which are inherently but still generally designed to build upon fans’ affinity to the club. These range from the True Blue and “Junior Blue” membership packages with some exclusive offerings, toward the financial services, merchandise, media packages whilst combining the more traditional and new media.
Since 2004, Chelsea has developed a greater focus on some of the more “corporate” social responsibility (CSR) agenda, which is been skilfully interwoven into the core of stakeholder relationships. The key to the original CSR initiative is a national charity partnership base with CLIC Sargent, the UK’s leading children’s cancer charity to form a more appealing overall image for the club. Chelsea engages all of its players, management, staff, fans and its partners into its full time activities with CLIC Sargent. In the 2004/05 season, Chelsea helped raise over £1m for charities and good causes in general further improving the image of the club.
Changes in innovations and promotional aspects
Once Roman Abramovich took over in 2003, the Chelsea “brand” has been transformed into something really special. With the introduction of the additional leadership of chief executive Peter Kenyon, there has been a high-profile rebranding around the core business of football. Previously Chelsea had diversified into other businesses even now in the current times like diversifications into hotels, restaurants, a travel company and an even a leisure club under the Chelsea Village “identity.” Now only the name Chelsea FC is used for all their aspects of business activities across the board, so to speak.
As this transformation was beginning, the club’s identity while still forming was re-vamped and revolutionised. The unpopular club badge from the older days that was previously introduced in the 1980s, was abandoned. Chelsea has now returned to its original badge designed in the1950s, but this has been repositioned in a retro but futuristic style today. This also had a key impact on the side of business function into a more corporate base especially, as far as the terms of copyright and intellectual property protection in the international market place.
Virtually every department was totally revamped in every major area of the business and overhauled, from the first team, the academy structure to the ticketing system, CRM, traditional media (match-day programmes, monthly magazines, Television overviews), new media (website, mobile, online TV) and even the sponsor/partnership programmes they supported. This has led to a new whole host of modernised and innovative offerings both for the club, fans and sponsors, such as football’s first financial portal, www.chelseafcmoney.com.
The market in a context
The new founded and now accelerated development pace of Chelsea FC has only been possible against the backdrop of English football since the initial Premier League began in 1992. The English Premier League became the most popular in the world of football, beamed every week to 195 countries, and two teams, predominantly Manchester United and Arsenal as the stars of the show both who had previously dominated the arena. Simultaneously, the creation of the UEFA Champions League meant there were European rivals in the wings, such as Barcelona, AC Milan, Real Madrid and Bayern Munich.
After the buy up with Abramovich in 2003, a period of rapid investment was injected into the football side of the club, not just in order to catch up, but ultimately intended to overtake any and all of its rivals as all visions were reliant on sustained success at all costs. The £400m-plus investment has now catapulted Chelsea onto a global level, but thorough-out the transition of the club it has never lost touch with its own fans and heritage.
Future prospects
Chelsea FC is experiencing an unprecedented period of success this century after it was formed in 1905. In the past three seasons, Chelsea has won the Premier League title twice – once under the management of Jose Mourinho and then again last season under the management of Antonio Conte and there looks there are plenty more trophies to come for Chelsea fans and Betting Experts from MatchBook Bonus Bets
Even though the story of the history on CFC has only really begun there is much more to come from both the management and the players together so watch this space.