In 2014, FC Barcelona and Real Madrid presented a project for the remodelling of their stadia. The new stadia of both clubs will be, not only a place to attend live sports events, but also somewhere fans will be able to consume both football brands permanently, every moment of the day. Currently, stadia have become commodities themselves. At a time when TV rights in Spain were thrown into crisis, sports organizations understand that sports venues allow them to create other significant income sources that could help them to increase their season’s turnover. Hospitality and events packages, for example, are part of this leisure product that professional football clubs offer in their venues. The aim of this article is to analyse how Spanish professional football clubs attempt to maximize the use of their stadiums, and how these venues are also part of a wider city branding strategy for the host cities. Data for this qualitative research are taken from the Spanish football clubs that have UEFA Category 4 stadia: FC Barcelona, Real Madrid, Atlético de Madrid, Atletic Club de Bilbao, Málaga CF, Real Sociedad, RCD Espanyol and València CF.

The main objective of this article is to analyse the sport place branding strategy of Qatar, a Persian Gulf country that is using the income from the commercialisation of its gas to create an economy, which can be successful in the future without depending on this natural source. Sport, above all football, has been a key sector in which the Qatari government believes in order to promote the image of its country worldwide. One of the most interesting examples used in this article is the relationship between the Qatar Foundation and FC Barcelona. Using a qualitative methodology, this article aims to understand the key pillars of this strategy and why sport mega-events have been so important when governments want to increase their reputation in the international sphere.

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This manuscript investigates the use of social media, specifically Twitter, during the forest fires in Artenara and Valleseco, Canary Islands, Spain, during summer 2019. The used methodology was big-data analysis through the Union Metrics and Twlets tools, as well as content analysis of posts related to the fires written by seven relevant accounts on the days when the fires were active, which was between 17 August and 26 September, when 9636.40 hectares were burned. The accounts selected for analysis were the following: Ángel Víctor Torres, autonomous president; Canary Islands Government; Civil Protection of Las Palmas; Military Emergency Unit of the Spanish Army; Delegation of the Spanish Government in the Canary Islands; Citizen’s Service of the Canary Islands Government; and the information account of the Security and Emergency area of the Canary Islands Government. The study concludes that the Canary Islands authorities did not use social media as a preventive element, but almost exclusively as a live-information channel. Future recommendations are presented for the management of social media during natural disasters.

The global football industry is changing clubs’ corporate identities. Historically, European football had strong local roots; sport organizations represented local values and fandom were regionally based. However, sporting competitiveness pushes clubs to search for new investors, and foreign investors in Europe are attracted by the popularity of European football. In this article, we analyse how Chinese capital and brands arrived in Barcelona, through the negotiations of a football club in 2016: the Reial Club Deportiu Espanyol (RCDE). RCDE is the club that has received the second most trophies in Catalonia, after FC Barcelona, since the beginning of the 20th century. Today, it has one of the most modern stadiums in Spain, designed using a business approach, and has become a corporate ambassador for the Chinese government’s strategy of becoming a “world football superpower” by 2050. Using a case study approach, this article analyses management and corporate identity changes in the organization due to the new Chinese owner: the Rastar Group.

The U.S. presidential campaign in 2008 signified a change on the paradigm of how the political parties deal with local communities. This means that grassroots techniques arose as a key factor for the triumph of Barack H. Obama. After the election, European political parties—even social movements—also adapted some strategies inspired by the U.S. presidential campaigns. The main objective of this article is to analyze how these grassroots techniques have been adapted in a specific scenario: the process of self-determination of Catalonia, an Autonomous Community of Spain that claims to be an independent country after the failing of Estado de las Autonomías (state of autonomies) model. Our method is to explore the parameters that drove the Obama’s first presidential campaign and how they have been applied into the self-determination campaign of Catalonia, such as the creation of local opinion platforms, media spin doctoring, social networking, and the social involvement of foreign actors. We realized that the social commitment with the self-determination process by regional community organizations has had a stronger leadership than the political parties. As a result, we state that political spin doctors in Catalonia could neither drive nor control the framing process of the last parliamentary regional campaign.

In political campaigns in Western society, there are many examples of public relations being behind opinion leaders in getting grassroots committed to a candidate; Obama’s campaign was one example. Grassroots communication has been a major public relations activity that has harnessed local community involvement (from nongovernmental organizations, social and cultural communities, companies, and individuals) in the United States as well as in Europe. Since the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign, third-party engagement is now considered a valid way to legitimize the authority of politicians all over the world. In this research, the authors point out that public opinion support, even outside the United States, can result in greater authority and greater acceptance of U.S. government policies.

The main objective of this article is to analyse whether the positioning of the Pla de l’Estany district, in Catalonia, can be redefined in a context of possible saturation of the sports brand that was structured thanks to the success of the 1992 Olympic Games. Furthermore, this article aims to analyse how to design and implement long-term public policies in place branding. The Pla de l’Estany district is one of the smallest in Catalonia and had its moment of splendour during the Barcelona Olympic Games, which positioned it as a place of natural beauty and sports tourism. However, twenty-five years later, we ask whether this positioning needs to be updated. This research deploys a methodological triangulation that combines in-depth interviews with opinion leaders, discussions in focus groups and an online survey open to citizens. This research presents three conclusions: it places the processes of citizen participation as a key element in the construction of territorial brands; refocuses the narrative of the territory of the Pla de l’Estany based on the concepts of “sustainable nature” and “traditional culture”; and conceptualises place branding not just from the perspective of promoting tourism, but also from that of fomenting sustainable governance.