Identifying Effective Components in Professional Athletes’ Personal Branding

Building sports brands is not only related to sports products, teams, and leagues but also has a special place among professional athletes. Therefore, the present study aimed to identify the components that play a role in developing the personal brand of professional athletes. This research was exploratory, and its qualitative method was customary content analysis. Twenty-four semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with sports management and marketing professionals, well-known athletes, and sports fans who were selected based on purposive sampling. The collected data were analyzed via open and axial coding. The coding validity was also verified by reviewing and controlling the accuracy of the extracted codes and re-coding the interviews by two collaborating experts. Based on the results of role-playing components in the personal brand development of professional athletes in seven main themes including the role of media, the role of government and federations, communication and interaction, social status, team and sport, individual competencies and Professional competencies, and twenty-five corresponding categories were extracted and explained. Athletes have many components in the construction and development of a personal brand that attention to them can play a significant role in generating income for athletes, sports teams, and fan loyalty. Professional athletes can gain a competitive advantage by improving their individual and professional competencies, paying attention to internal and external interactions that differentiate their brand from competitors.