Gothia Cup - Internationalisation Strategy

Abstract

Gothia Cup is the world’s foremost youth football tournament held annually in Gothenburg, Sweden since 1975. The tournament has kept increasing over the years in participants as well as the number of nations represented. There are many theories of what features make an event successful and this thesis has identified eight that can be particularly important to the internationalisation and internationalisation strategy of an event, such as Gothia Cup. The organisation has 7-9 people working all year round with the tournament and its side projects and it is this group that lays the basis for the internationalisation. Therefore qualitative interviews were conducted to identify in what way these features have contributed to the internationalisation of the event. It was found that the one most important feature for the internationalisation of Gothia Cup is the product in itself and particularly the quality of the product. The other dimensions were more or less utilised to develop, improve and secure the product in various ways.