Dutch football clubs

The last decades cities are trying to improve their image by using sport. They invest large amounts of money in stadiums and in knowledge about organizing big sport events. These investments make it possible to accommodate big professional sport teams or organizing big sport events. But to see if these investments are justifiable with regard to the claimed advantages for the image, the following research question was formulated: Does the presence of a city-based professional football club have a positive influence on the image of the city? In order to answer the research question, the research question was divided into three sub questions. The first is about what image is and the way image is formed. The second sub question addresses why cities use sport for sport reimaging. The third and last sub question addresses the question if there is a relation between a strong association with a football club and the image of small and medium-sized Dutch cities. It is commonly accepted that image is what we think and how we feel about something. Image is very important in our lives and for researchers, because it has a big influence on the decisions we people make. We make our decisions based on the images we have. This also bears truth for how the image of places is formed. City governments use sport reimaging in an attempt to alter the existing overall image people have about their city. It is not only an attempt to alter the existing image of the people living in the city itself, but also as a way to improve the city’s image for outsiders. The use of sport reimaging certainly has its advantages, but its effectiveness has also been criticized. So it isn’t entirely clear how successful sport reimaging is. In order to discover if there is a relation between strong associations with football clubs and the image of small and medium-sized Dutch cities a questionnaire has been conducted. The questionnaire has been distributed among 118 students, who are studying in Rotterdam. This group encompasses both students from the university and from the higher professional education. The results of the questionnaire showed that the football clubs were (among) the best known associations for all four cities, further supported by the fact that the means were among the highest, which means that the respondents often ranked them among their first associations. So it seems that football clubs are strong associations for the medium-sized cities. However, the results from the regressions show that the football associations don’t have a significant effect on the image of the cities. This means that the results of the questionnaire don’t show an image effect for the researched football clubs in their respective cities. The results of the questionnaire are also used to answer the research question. The conclusion from the results is that for the chosen Dutch cities the presence of a city-based professional football club leads to a strong association between the city and the football club, but this association doesn’t lead to a positive influence on the image of the city. After first talking about the limitations of this paper, finally recommendations for further research are given.