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Building Team Identity Through Place Attachment: A Case of a Korean Professional Soccer Club

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The Sports Business in The Pacific Rim

Part of the book series: Sports Economics, Management and Policy ((SEMP,volume 10))

Abstract

Professional soccer leagues in East Asian countries (China, Korea, and Japan) have a relatively short history compared to those in Europe. For instance, Korea’s K-League was launched in 1983 as the first professional soccer league among East Asian countries (e.g., China’s Super League in 2000 and Japan’s J-League in 1992). However, dwindling fan attendance over the past decade has challenged K-League and severe damage from a devastating match fixing scandal that took place in 2011. Given that the league recently adopted a promotion and relegation system in 2012, clubs are now even more challenged to build a strong and sustainable fan base. From a social identity perspective, the present chapter examines how local and regional identity help construct team identification and team loyalty. The first part of the chapter briefly reviews K-League’s 30-year history. The second part of the chapter applies the theory of social identity construction to explore the relationship between place attachment and team identification by conducting in-depth interviews with spectators of the first supporter-owned club in K-League history—Daejeon Citizen.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Gwang-yeok yeon-go system. In 1987, Pohang represented Gyeongbuk Province, Yugong represented Incheon and Gyunggi Province, Daewoo represented Busan and Geyongnam Province, Hyundai represented Gangwon Province, and LG represented Chungcheong Province.

  2. 2.

    If promoted to the K-League, each club must pay US$ 900,000 to join the professional league and an additional US$ 3 million for Soccer Development Fund to become an official K-League club. However, none of the clubs in the second-tier league could afford such an amount since most clubs’ annual budget is about half that fee. As a result, K-League decided not to adopt the promotion and relegation system in 2008.

  3. 3.

    In theory-based studies that use semi-structured interviews, Francis et al. (2010) suggested a minimum sample size should be at least ten. Given that our conceptual categories (e.g., place identity, team identification) are predetermined from existing theory, we believe our sample size is appropriate for this study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Pai Chai University, Bldg. G, Rm. 204, 155-40 Baejae-ro (Doma-Dong), Seo-Gu, 302-735, Daejeon, Korea

    Ki Tak Kim

  2. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA

    Dae Hee Kwak

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  1. Ki Tak Kim
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  2. Dae Hee Kwak
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Correspondence to Ki Tak Kim .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Seoul, Korea, Republic of (South Korea)

    Young Hoon Lee

  2. Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA

    Rodney Fort

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Kim, K., Kwak, D. (2015). Building Team Identity Through Place Attachment: A Case of a Korean Professional Soccer Club. In: Lee, Y., Fort, R. (eds) The Sports Business in The Pacific Rim. Sports Economics, Management and Policy, vol 10. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-10037-1_20

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