Arsenal is aiming to become the “Tesco Clubcard” of the English Premier League’s fan membership schemes as it prepares to place its new CRM system as the engine of its marketing activity.

Soccer fans in the Baltimore area have begun receiving an email survey from Major League Soccer gauging their interest in a team in their city

The English Football Association (FA) yesterday revealed the results of a new study examining how Premier league football clubs are engaging with their fans through digital marketing communications.

A compiling of answers from the Chicago Fire, FC Dallas and Sporting KC on MLS ticket sales and ticket philosophies

Cloud CRM firm Salesforce.com has announced that Premier League football club Everton has implemented Sales Cloud to provide high quality customer service and deployed Force.com for custom application development.

From Arsenal and Aston Villa to West Ham and Wolverhampton, Sports Alliance now provides its unique blend of CRM software and services to 50% of all English Premiership clubs.

In KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape, the municipalities are looking beyond the current 2010 FIFA World Cup hype to long-term marketing campaigns to encourage return traffic.

Assuming that clubs and leagues integrate their social media activities with their overall CRM strategies it could not be long before football clubs – instead of being late adopters of CRM – stand out as thought leaders.

Below is an attempt to outline the proclaimed sports industry specific factors that can work as accelerators for rapid adoption of social media.