RISKS AND REWARDS IN THE MONEYBALL TOURS
Many football clubs are global names, placing them in a prime position to
The culmination of the fifth International Champions Cup (ICC) in Singapore last month brought the curtain down on the main pre-season period for the big European football clubs.
Pre-season tournaments such as ICC, which in the lead-up to the final relocated the English Manchester derby to Houston and Spanish equivalent El Clásico to Miami, are increasingly vital to clubs, according to a report launched on Monday by Brand Finance.
“A section of our study looks at what drives loyalty and pre-season and meet and greets are both valuable. It’s promoting your brand. Almost everything a club can do to attract fans and families is hugely worthwhile,” says Finn Dowley, the football analyst at Brand Finance.
In the ICC, 17 of Europe’s biggest clubs played in China, Singapore and the United States. Spain’s AC Milan and arch-rivals Inter travelled to China along with the German Bundesliga sides Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund and French Ligue 1 giants Lyon. The English Premier League (EPL) champions Chelsea, plus Bayern and Inter also played in Singapore.
“Asian markets are so fanatical about the [top European] players that their presence there is huge,” adds Mr Dowley. “Going out there produces so much excitement as there’s a certain mystique.
“In Malaysia and Indonesia, the growth has happened organically as the Premier League has been very good at marketing itself, but in China it’s all happened so quickly.
In China, the loyalty among fans is that they support their local club and also Real Madrid, Bayern Munich and Arsenal. The more fanatical the fans are, the more clubs they support.”
This fanaticism is driving pre-season tour schedules as European clubs look to globalise and commercialise their fan bases.
Demand for European football merchandise in China is so strong that in 2015 Real Madrid set up a club merchandise operation with Chinese web platform Alibaba and launched this with a pre-season tour.
According to Brand Finance’s report, Football in China: Knowledge and engagement of Chinese Football fans, 57 per cent of all Chinese fans bought club merchandise and 41 per cent purchased a club shirt. These is also a spin-off benefit for sponsors, with Brand Finance research showing that 42 per cent of Chinese fans bought brands that sponsor their favourite club.
The ICC has helped to drive this commercialisation of pre-season. The tournament began in 2013 in the US and expanded to Australia and Asia in 2015. It has attracted a slew of high-profile sponsors from Heineken to the watchmaker Tag Heuer and Thomas Cook Sport, which is the official match-breaks partner. But what do sponsors get out of these pre-season tournaments?
“There is a huge demand for these pre-season tours, as we’ve seen with crowds hitting 90,000plus at certain fixtures. These fans are not just from that home country, but as tourists either already in the area on holiday or supporters specifically travelling for the occasion,” says Rob Slawson, head of Thomas Cook Sport.
Thomas Cook is building on existing relationships, as the company is official supporter and travel partner to the EPL’s Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur. “We recognised that we had a selection of supporters who expressed an interest so it made sense to create this partnership for the ICC,” adds Mr Slawson.
After becoming the EPL’s first official timekeeper in 2016, Tag Heuer took the same role for five ICC games in the US. Other new sponsors also have links with competing clubs.
The US car maker Chevrolet is Manchester United’s shirt sponsor and the financial services group Aon sponsors the club’s training kit. This year, both companies joined the ICC’s roster of sponsors.
Links between the ICC and club deals are not always direct. The South Korean tyre manufacturer Nexen Tire sponsors the ICC and Melbourne City, which is the Australian sister club of regular ICC participant, Abu Dhabi-owned Manchester City.
For clubs and sponsors, pre-season offers a chance to cash in on existing deals.
“Pre-season is more a case of clubs trying to finance pre-season by going abroad and selling a few more shirts,” says Anthony Marcou, the chief executive of the marketing agency Sports Revolution. “For a big sponsor like AIA [shirt sponsor at Tottenham], it’s a case of how do they activate in a new territory? It’s more an obligation for sponsors and tends to be the bigger clubs who go abroad as they have a bigger following.”
Sponsors can use leverage from existing deals to surprising lengths, as Everton’s trip to Tanzania last month illustrates.
In May this year, Everton announced a five-year deal with SportPesa, an online betting company based in East Africa. Two months later, Wayne Rooney and Everton were making a 23,000km round trip to the Tanzanian capital of Dar es Salaam for a one-off friendly with the Kenyan Premier League champions Gor Mahia.
SportPesa sponsors both Everton and Gor Mahia. The visit was the first by an EPL club to East Africa, providing some kudos for the sponsors, who capitalised on the opportunities offered by the off-season.
“The summer months are the last bit of unregulated space in football, a moment when famous