Chapter
6
IMPLEMENTING THE SPORTS BRAND TRANSFORMATION
Few sports teams in the world are as successful or more integrated into their country’s culture than the New Zealand All Blacks national rugby team. The team is noted for its winning, innovations in game strategy, and the performance of a menacing pregame dance ritual called the Haka. The Haka, based on a Maori legend from the early nineteenth century, became a symbol of the team’s confidence, rage, and ultimate dominance over other teams and is its brand-forming moment. In fact, when international rugby is mentioned, the team that inevitably comes to mind is the All Blacks.
What connected the All Blacks to New Zealanders was its emergence as a colony team that could beat the Brits and ...
Get The Elusive Fan: Reinventing Sports in a Crowded Marketplace now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
