Transformation in Communication of Russian Premier League Football Clubs

While there is an ongoing digitalization, which provides all kinds of business organizations with new tools to interact with their audience, this process also impacts sports industry where professional clubs try to adapt to the new world of communication. However, this trend generally proceeds more slowly in Russia, where due to the various reasons football clubs are dilatory to adjust to the new communicative possibilities. This research attempts to contribute to this debate by identifying these reasons and exploring the specificity of transformation in communication activity of Russian Premier League (RFPL) The general purpose of the study is to analyze forms and content of recent communication activities that are held by RFPL football clubs and to identify what influence it has on the audience’s brand perception of a football club. There are various methods applied from the comparison of pricing policies between Russian and leading European clubs to the content analysis and online survey, which are beneficial with achieving the study purpose. The anticipated results would advance our understanding of the new media role in the sports industry and, in addition, could be find valuable for RFPL clubs in order to adjust their process of interaction with target audiences