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Stade Fran\u00e7ais is a club without an identity, PSG does not have a winning culture\u2026 These are examples of statements regularly made by sports fans in France, often with a touch of mockery.<\/p>\n
We have all encountered these kinds of statements as sports enthusiasts. They apply to clubs across every division, every sport and every country. Yet the concepts of culture and identity, besides being rather vague for many people, also tend to be conflated. So, what if we tried to shed a little light on the matter?<\/p>\n
Culture and identity are intrinsically linked to the history of the club or institution in question. While a club\u2019s culture contributes to shaping its identity, it is ultimately the club\u2019s identity that shapes its culture.<\/p>\n
A club\u2019s culture is, above all, about its management. Referring to a \u201cwinning culture\u201d is easy enough to understand. A club with such a culture will structure itself around a single objective: winning. Whatever the cost. Some clubs, such as Paris Saint-Germain, have more of a \u201cstar\u201d culture. This is a culture built around the marketing revenues generated by the image of players with extraordinary media profiles. Here again, management is prepared to make any sacrifice to retain its stars and make them shine. There is no question of putting Neymar on the bench after yet another breach of club rules; at PSG, the players call the shots, and the Mbapp\u00e9 saga has only reinforced this perception in recent months. At other clubs, such as Chelsea under Abramovich, this culture is more personified by a single individual at the helm of the club. There are many different types of culture, but one stands out for its effectiveness and its closeness to the values of sport.<\/p>\n
The boundary between culture and identity becomes more blurred in clubs that have what we might call an \u201cengagement culture.\u201d This culture is based on management\u2019s belief in a concept that transcends all the stakeholders within the club: the club\u2019s identity. The perfect example of this type of culture is FC Barcelona. The management of FC Barcelona, as well as the entire organization, is built around the belief in a club that represents the freedom of the Catalan people, a distinctive style of play, elevated to an art form by Johan Cruyff and later his disciple Pep Guardiola, as well as a desire to fight for the thousands of socios who own the club. An engagement culture therefore means believing that the club\u2019s identity is more important than any other concept, and that remaining faithful to it matters more than winning a championship.<\/p>\n
This raises the question of what a club identity actually is. At its core, it is nothing more than a set of symbols, norms, representations and behaviors shared by an entire community which, taken together, give meaning to its commitment to a collective project.<\/p>\n
To better understand this concept, let us switch sports and turn our attention to rugby and the Paris-region club Racing 92, the first club to be crowned French champions. The elements of its identity are numerous. They include, of course, a rich history punctuated by titles, sky-blue and white colors borrowed from the aristocrats of Britain\u2019s great universities at the end of the 19th century, iconic players such as the audacious Yves du Manoir, a presence in the affluent Parisian suburb of Hauts-de-Seine, and, more recently, an ultra-modern entertainment arena serving as its home ground. For many, this identity is easily associated with that of Parisian high society and its humanist values.<\/p>\n
Yet today, this identity-based foundation is being confronted with an evolving reality. The Paris suburbs have become a breeding ground for many rugby players. Players of African origin, sometimes from very challenging backgrounds but explosive and powerful, have joined teams traditionally made up of players from privileged families who had distinguished themselves from a young age through their technical ability and game intelligence. Yet what allows the club to maintain this image of Parisian high society is the existence of a club culture that perpetuates it. Players are valued for their respect and elegance, both during their development and throughout their professional careers. Here, provocative arrogance is not celebrated as it might be in southeastern France. Instead, the club nostalgically remembers a glass of champagne enjoyed in a suit at half-time during the 1992 French championship final, which Racing went on to win.<\/p>\n
And yet this identity is regularly confronted with the need for a top-level club to embrace modernity. The move to Paris La D\u00e9fense Arena completely transformed matchday communication and the overall experience. Many supporters left when the Colombes stadium was demolished. Yet the club\u2019s identity has always been rooted in spectacular and distinguished rugby. And for that purpose, what could be better than an ultra-fast artificial pitch providing perfect weather conditions for every home game?<\/p>\n
Racing accepts the need to move with the times and draws on the elements of its identity to develop a club culture built around humility, elegance and spectacle. The same values that governed the club when it was founded in 1882. However, it seems that the communication strategy used to convey these values is where the problem lies.<\/p>\n
Can we therefore really say that Racing is developing an engagement culture around these values? The club has a taste for stars, exemplified by Teddy Thomas, a long-time Racing player whose personality was arguably at odds with the club\u2019s values of humility, yet who was nevertheless a major marketing asset. The club is also very much the club of one man: Jacky Lorenzetti, an omnipresent president and one of the most high-profile executives in world rugby.<\/p>\n
Racing still has work to do on its culture, but one thing is certain: it benefits from a strong identity-based foundation that many clubs could envy. This provides it with the ideal platform on which to build an \u201cengagement culture\u201d capable of significantly enhancing its performance.<\/p>\n
Six Sports Management is a strategic consulting firm specializing in identity strategy and performance structuring for professional sports organizations. We help clubs leverage their identity to build an engagement culture.<\/em><\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Stade Fran\u00e7ais is a club without an identity, PSG does not have a winning culture\u2026 These are examples of statements regularly made by sports fans in France, often with a touch of mockery. We have all encountered these kinds of statements as sports enthusiasts. They apply to clubs across every division, every sport and every […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nos-convictions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sixsportsmanagement.fr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/711","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sixsportsmanagement.fr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sixsportsmanagement.fr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sixsportsmanagement.fr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sixsportsmanagement.fr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=711"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sixsportsmanagement.fr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/711\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":713,"href":"https:\/\/sixsportsmanagement.fr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/711\/revisions\/713"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sixsportsmanagement.fr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/28"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sixsportsmanagement.fr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sixsportsmanagement.fr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sixsportsmanagement.fr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}