HOME AND AWAY
We can learn from the English Premier League's money savvy
THE English Premier League (EPL) is out to capitalise on its sizeable following in South Africa with its first full-blooded fan engagement outside the UK this weekend.
This move steps on the toes of the Premier Soccer League’s dominance, and opens a new front in the battle for sports marketing spending in this country.
Though EPL teams often visit other countries this is the first time its management arm, headed by the doyen of the league, chief executive Richard Scudamore, has engaged directly in an initiative of this kind outside the UK. The fan outreach in Johannesburg aims to attract 24 000 people and is an indication of the EPL’s desire to explore commercial opportunities in one of its biggest broadcasting markets.
The EPL has reason to believe it can open new doors. The seismic shift with the inception of the EPL in the UK winter of 1992, which spawned today’s multibillion-pound football industry, gave it incredible financial clout. Even the teams in the Football League’s First Division that took the fateful decision on February 20 1992 to break away from the governing structure and take advantage of lucrative and ground-breaking television rights deals could not have envisaged the R50-billiona-year business it has become.
According to research agency Repucom, of the total global social media football following of 2.6 billion people, the EPL has more than 1 billion followers, of which 244 million are in subSaharan Africa and 11 million in South Africa.
The popularity of the EPL has welcomed to our shores a new wave of British imperialists, who come not in pursuit of mineral wealth or political influence but of the riches potentially to be generated by the millions of adherents to the new religion that is football fanaticism.
Judging by the numbers, the EPL will offer the most serious competition to the local Premier Soccer League (PSL), our richest and most lucrative sporting property.
The Repucom research shows that among football followers in South Africa 52% are interested in the World Cup, 46% in the PSL and 41% in the EPL.
Logic suggests that South Africa and Africa would be an ideal market for sponsorship and commercial rights deals — which puts the PSL (and all other sporting properties) and the EPL head to head in competition for the limited but lucrative pool of corporate sports marketing spending.
But Scudamore says: “We are not a threat, we are an enhancer of other domestic leagues.
“You can’t buck the tide of choice. If people say ‘I like that variety of football and I’m going to watch that’, it’s a television proposition. That doesn’t stop the local leagues from being very competitive and very wellattended. Everywhere we go we like to see the local league on an upward trajectory because it’s good for football and it’s good for us,” said Scudamore.
He concedes that the pull of
Message to corporate SA: the EPL is here and open for business
the EPL makes it a prospect for substantial commercial rights partnerships.
Reading between the lines, the EPL fan outreach in Joburg is a strategic move to announce to corporate South Africa that the EPL is here and open for business. Scudamore and the EPL hosted business leaders in Johannesburg on Friday morning in association with UK Trade & Investment, a British government agency.
Additional revenue would allow the well-oiled EPL machine to continue ticking over, especially as some of its teams continue to record serious losses.
In 2011-12, the 20 top clubs in the EPL generated a record income of R43-billion, but collectively EPL clubs had a loss of about R3.7-billion, according to The Guardian newspaper.
The EPL concept can be replicated in other domestic leagues, says Scudamore, and the EPL will help them.
So, ironically, the most watched and competitive league in the world is now involved in a competition with domestic leagues. How the locals respond to this global assault will make for an interesting fight — and first up on the fixtures list is the PSL.