Univeristy of Michigan students tackle real-world challenges facing GFL clubs

What does a German Football League club do when it wants to put more fans in the stands, attract sponsors or turn social media followers into committed supporters?

Six clubs from the GFL and GFL2 are now working with students more than 6,000 kilometers away at the University of Michigan to find some answers.

The GFL Ligaverbund e.V. and the University of Michigan have launched a joint project that will put students from the university’s sport management program to work on actual business and marketing challenges facing German American football teams.

Rather than studying hypothetical cases, the students will work directly with the Dresden Monarchs, Munich Cowboys, Schwäbisch Hall Unicorns, Rostock Griffins, Kiel Baltic Hurricanes and Braunschweig Lions.

Different clubs, different problems

There is no single assignment covering all six teams.

The clubs have different markets, histories and priorities, and the students will examine issues specific to each organization. Those include finding and retaining members, developing audiences, improving social media strategies, strengthening fan loyalty and attracting sponsors.

Fan surveys will provide some of the raw material. The students will use the responses to identify target groups and build profiles of the people the clubs are reaching — and potentially those they are not.

From there, the groups will determine what additional information they need before developing recommendations for their respective clubs.

The project is being supervised at the University of Michigan by Jan Boehmer, PhD, Assistant Professor of Sport Management at the Center for Sport Marketing Research.

For the students, it provides something difficult to reproduce in a classroom: the opportunity to work with operating sports organizations in another country and see how their ideas hold up against real-world problems.

Six projects could help dozens of clubs

The six teams are effectively serving as test cases for something much larger.

When the work is finished, the results will not remain with the Monarchs, Cowboys, Unicorns, Griffins, Hurricanes and Lions. The findings will be compiled and shared with clubs throughout the GFL and GFL2.

That is a key part of the project for the GFL Ligaverbund. Managing Director Torben Dill said combining academic research with problems clubs are actually encountering could produce approaches that can eventually be used throughout the leagues.

The project kicked off September 21, when representatives from the six clubs met the University of Michigan students and the individual working groups were established. A week later, the groups have moved into the project phase, with fan surveys among the first major pieces of work.

Now comes the interesting part: seeing whether ideas developed in Ann Arbor, Michigan, can provide practical answers to some very German football problems.