On the 06th of October 2023, Ph.D. candidate Maria Cerga defended her doctoral thesis entitled Strategic Communication in Sports. Communication, branding, and public relations for Romanian handball, basketball, and volleyball teams. The thesis was defended within the Doctoral School of Communication, Public Relations, and Advertising at the Faculty of Political, Administrative, and Communication Sciences. The supervisor of the thesis was Prof. Univ. Dr. Habil. Delia Cristina Bălaș (Balaban).
Managing sports holistically is a complex endeavor involving knowledge of management, logistics, public relations (PR), finance, sponsorship, marketing, and more. This paper addresses the topic of strategic communication in Romanian sports and contributes to a scientific approach to the subject.
Among the problems identified in the field of sports communication are the need for more professionals in sports institutions, the lack of public interest in sports participation and related topics, and the lack of corporate appetite to invest in sports. There is also a significant disparity in popularity between football and other sports such as handball, basketball, and volleyball.
Specifically, the thesis analyses, qualitatively and quantitatively, the way Romanian sports teams from handball, basketball, and volleyball communicate with the public and the differences across teams and different sports regarding their strategy. The research methods employed are content analysis, analysis of social media, and semi-structured interviews.
The empirical results show the state of strategic communication and offer an overview of how the strategic development of communication in Romania should be put into perspective. Furthermore, they conclude by identifying the five pillars of strategic communication in sports: brand identity, positive attributes, digitalization, key athlete as influencer, and sponsoring.
The theoretical contribution to the expansion of the sports communication literature in Romania comprehensively covers all three areas of strategic communication and includes under its umbrella communication policies, brand identity, and public relations (PR), which until now have always been treated separately in the literature.
This work also adds to the professionalization of communication specialists. The documentation of scientific and statistical material on the subject can lead, in the long term, to the creation of new jobs in public relations and sports communication. This field has great potential for development in Romania, especially with the new government proposals focusing on best practices in strategic sports communication. In the same context, the paper argues that it is important to follow successful models from abroad but adapt them to the local context, considering the advantages and limitations imposed by the geopolitical, socio-economic, and historical context.