La RSE del fútbol profesional español en los medios de comunicación: análisis de la presencia mediática de las fundaciones de los clubes

Social Responsibility reaches professional football as well as other professional sectors of society. Citizen awareness is demanding companies, organizations and institutions committed to their environment and their impacts, and logically football clubs are no stranger to this. This approach allows the relationship between society and football to be realized from mutual commitment, responsibility and understanding (Ruiz-Mora y Guerrero-Navarro, 2018: 62).In the search for a greater connection with society, professional football clubs begin to manage their communication professionally (García, 2005) and in many cases, following a strategy based on publicity (Olabe, 2009: 121), focusing its efforts on acquiring visibility and reputation before its publics (Olabe, 2012: 148).Summers and Johnson-Morgan (2008: 180) highlight how public relations professionals should strive to connect the communication of the club and its players with their CSR activities.This study analyseshow the communication of the actions and the presence in the media of professional football clubs contributes to their foundations as maximum exponents of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and to the relations with their publics. In this study, CSR is a strategy to promote its positive impacts.Specific objectives are to identify which topics communicated by football clubs are subject to media coverage when there are no competitions, as well as to determine the messages transmitted by the clubs, main publics addressed and their relationship with the aims of the foundations and the CSR policy.The methodology of this study uses content analysis to analyse the media presence in 22 national, regional and local digital newspapers during the weeks without official competition, to differentiate the club's corporate information from sports information. We examine 10 football clubs from LaLiga 2017/2018 and their foundations; we select 5 clubs with the higher annual budget and 5 with the lower. The period of analysis includes those weeks without official activity between 2017/18 and 2018/19 competitions.Results show the scarce media presence of clubs when issues related to results in competitions, footballers, transactions or millionaire contracts are not addressed. Likewise, we see how the media interest in corporate issues (foundations and CSR) linked to professional football clubs in Spain is limited.We can observe how only 68 news items have been obtained according to the analysis and considering the clubs under study. These data are similar for clubs with higher and lower budgets, perhaps more prominent in the latters.The CSR communication strategy of the clubs is still limited. Communicatively, clubs are committed to transmitting information about sports incidents, players, results and social actions. Therefore, the publics they are targeting are followers, subscribers, fans and families, including children and young people.Considering our objectives, we must emphasize that scarcely the presence in the media of professional football clubs contributes to the foundational purposes and their CSR policy;in addition, the few news published (compared to the large volume of the other news published),do not have a close relationship with both areas of the clubs' performance. The results obtained convey the idea that there is a limited strategic vision of the clubs when it comes to using both their media and publicity impact to value CSR principles in football and to transmit them through the media.This absence conveys a major and excessive occupation for sports issues, leaving the purpose of linking CSR strategically with the media and the media value of clubs to contribute to the relationship with their stakeholders and to improve their impacts.There is little concern to strengthen relations with the public and to respond to what is expected of an organization that sees CSR as a way to compensate for its impacts.Con este trabajo, pretendemos conocer cómo la comunicación de las acciones y presencia en los medios de comunicación de los clubes de fútbol profesionales contribuye a los fines de las fundaciones como máximos exponentes de la Responsabilidad Social (RSE) de estos clubes y a la mejora de las relaciones con sus públicos. La RSE se plantea como una estrategia que busca potenciar sus impactos positivos.Los objetivos específicos de esta investigación aspiran a identificar qué temas de los comunicados por los clubes son objeto de cobertura mediática cuando no hay competiciones, determinar los mensajes que transmiten los clubes, identificar los públicos a los que se dirigen e indagar en su relación con los fines de las fundaciones y la política de RSE.La metodología diseñada emplea el análisis de contenido para estudiar la presencia mediática en 22 medios de comunicación digitales durante las semanas sin competición oficial, para diferenciar la información corporativa del club de la información deportiva. Estudiamos 10 clubes de Primera División, los 5 con mayor presupuesto y los 5 con menor de la temporada 2017/2018 y que en ese momento cuentan con sus fundaciones en activo. Analizamos el periodo sin competición deportiva entre las temporadas 2017/18 y 2018/19.Los resultados demuestran la escasa presencia mediática de los clubes cuando no se abordan temas deportivos. Existe un limitado interés de los medios por los temas corporativos (fundaciones y RSE) ligados a los clubes de fútbol profesional en España