According to a new report, Europe’s richest football clubs are losing nearly $900 million in combined revenue each year by failing to build fan loyalty. According to the Fan Relationship Index, NFL and NBA fans spend ten times as much money supporting their teams as football fans.
According to the CLV group, which commissioned the study, football clubs are failing to capitalize on new digital revenue streams and connect with fans outside of matchdays.
Football teams in Europe currently only understand about 5% of their global fan bases, according to Neil Joyce, Chief Executive Officer of CLV Group. “According to the report, roughly 95 percent of fans are unknown to clubs.” If you can better comprehend If you can better understand those fans’ wants and needs, you can marry them with digital propositions like new loyalty programs powered by Web3 technologies, virtual streaming, and matchday experiences. Today, a lot of it is about capacity and match fans. Limitless capacity is provided by digital propositions.”
According to the report, football lovers in Brazil spend the most on supporting their team, shelling out an average of $206 a year. Fans in the UK and Spain are just behind.
When you break that down by club, it’s fans of Premier League champions Manchester City who spend the most at just over $250 each per year.
But, while that seems like a hefty sum, fans of NFL and NBA teams are willing to part with much more money to support and engage with their teams – so what exactly are the clubs doing to tempt supporters to open their wallets?
“They’ve optimized on the match, they found,” Joyce explains. “So they charge a lot higher for tickets to go and watch an NBA game. There are also a lot more NBA games per season – there are 38 Premier League games but over 100 plus per season in the NBA.”
But, with elite clubs already resistant to adding more games to a packed schedule, Joyce believes tapping into new markets and technologies is the secret to building new revenue streams. NBA clubs have done a really great job of engaging with fans in global markets like China, where they’ve increased revenue through streaming propositions into that marketplace,” he adds. So the signs are there for what the Premier League teams and the European teams need to follow. It’s just a case of really investing heavily and understanding, unlocking new opportunities around those global fans who they don’t understand right now.”
