According to research conducted by Cologne based, market research specialists SPORT+MARKT, the potential volume of football related merchandise sales across the United Kingdom, Italy, France and Spain is pushing the €3½ billion mark.
Unsurprisingly, the bulk of this is derived from passionate supporters in the United Kingdom, although with both the Italian and Spanish markets having broken the €½ billion barrier and the French not too far behind, there are certainly indications of further room for growth in this sector.
One of the key factors behind the success of the well-developed merchandise industry in the United Kingdom, is the sheer variety of branded products on offer. Nevertheless, even in Britain the most popular products appear to be those of a more traditional variety, scarves, t-shirts, hats/caps, posters, pennants and in particular, replica jerseys.
With sales of the more expensive items such as jerseys noticeably higher in the United Kingdom, the average spend per football interested person is more than €80 per season, more than 2½ times the next highest average of any market investigated. This becomes even more remarkable bearing in mind the fact that more than 40% of the almost 24 million football interested 15 to 69 year olds in the United Kingdom claim not to own any merchandise at all, meaning that the actual amount spent by merchandise-purchasers in Great Britain actually reaches an average of more than €135 per season.
The ranking of clubs both nationally and internationally in terms of ‘brands bought’ was to a degree, as could have been expected with Manchester United, Juventus F.C., Olympique de Marseille and of course, the two Spanish giants Real Madrid and Barcelona all featuring strongly. However, the emphasis placed on this revenue stream by the English champions was reflected in the fact that they were the only club to score for this aspect in each market investigated.
As just indicated, the investigation took into consideration those people that bought merchandise from foreign clubs as well as those from the domestic leagues and in this respect Barcelona actually managed to outdo their arch-rivals Real Madrid. While the record European champions faired slightly better in the Spanish market, the Catalans had the highest total number of merchandise customers with particular interest apparent in France.
A further point of interest was how well British clubs from outside of the Premier League scored. Although the Scottish ‘Old Firm’ clubs, Celtic and Rangers faired well as could have been expected, the combined strength of the 72 Football League clubs recorded close to triple the number of customers of Manchester United in the United Kingdom, although unlike the 1999 European champions no interest was registered from abroad.
The ‘Football Merchandise 2001’ report has just been released by SPORT+MARKT AG and contains estimations and analysis of the current status quo in the football merchandise market across the key footballing nations of Europe.
For further information please contact:
Andrew Walsh
Tel: ++49 221 430 73-176
Fax: 0049 221 430 73-161