General Premier League Thread 2023-24 Mod Note in op 27/6/23 And 21/05/24

The point is not "bums on seats". The point is fan exposure. You can be fairly confident most club fandoms at that level break down into similar subcategories of spending/activity. Let's say 80+% will be passive action - social media engagement, or sports tv package subscription - while maybe only 2-5% having any intention to phsyically go to a match (these figures may be entirely inaccurate - but the point is the breakdowns will be similar). If your 2-5% (or whatever % of match-interested fans) is a significantly smaller number than other clubs, it's likely your 80% is too. For instance, Man Utd have double the number of twitter followers Man City do. So if they're not going to matches in the same numbers, and they're not engaging online in the same numbers... where are they?

Fan exposure - eyeballs - in all its forms is the chief driving factor towards increased sponsorships. More eyes on the team (in person or online) = more eyes on your product, for which you pay more money. Well, we can see that it appears there are not more eyes on the team and sponsors products, which is why people ask about the seemingly inflated deals.

While I'd agree that bums on seats are not as important as they once were in terms of generating revenue, they are indicative of how popular a team actually is.

Take Liverpool for example, compared to City they have had modest successes over the last 5 years yet getting tickets is very difficult.

Likewise Arse and Spurs.

Football tourism is huge business so surely one of the alleged top 10 teams in the world should have zero issues getting day trippers in for games yet in many games there are swathes of empty seats.

If you look at it objectively, none of it adds up, none of it. In 15 years they went from a bottom to mid table level team to record breaking revenue generators, all supposedly by legitimate sponsorship deals.

If anyone believes that then I've got a rather nice bag of magic beaks they will be interested in.

And how many of those social media fans are actual supporters of the club and not bots? You are hardly that naive are you?

How many of the Real Madrid, Barcelona and United ones are bots, you are not that naive are you?

Obviously with super rich owners they are going to have bigger sponsorship.

Deals can be done with companies where they pay exorbitant sponsorship and then get price reductions from Mansour in other business so they probably end up better off.

I never said everything is above board but there are ways around breaking Premier league rules like what I've just pointed out above.

There's just so much conspiracy theory stuff being spouted here it's ridiculous.

And the fact is that success breaths growth in support and anybody that can't accept that is fooling themselves.

It's highly like that over the next decade that City will become more popular than MUFC if United don't get it together and win major trophies.

Wasn't Man City's twitter account (pre-Elon times) suspended a couple years ago, with the suspected reason being that a large number of their 'fans' were bots.

Using my 6 year old in senior infants as a barometer. There are currently approx 15 boys in his class.

5 are United "fans".

5 or 6 are Liverpool "fans".

1 is a Villa fan.

A couple are Arsenal fans.

None of them are city fans.

I'm also involved in underage coaching with my local gaa team. When we are coaching there are the guts of 100 kids there ranging from 4 to 8 years old on any given evening. Not once have I seen a city jersey, not once. There are United, Liverpool, Arse, Chelsea, Villa, Spurs, Madrid, Barca, PSG and others but again, not a single kid in a city jersey.

Of course this is just anecdotal but it's the kids that drive jersey and merch sales in the main and from what I've seen, city aren't even a drop in the ocean, despite multiple trophy wins and Sky driven saturation of city.

You see you live in Ireland where it's a tribal thing and parents tell kids who to support. This isn't the case in Asia or the USA or any other part of the world.

It's a global sport now, what happens in Ireland and to a lesser extent England isn't really that important.

Speaking from the US (primarily in Los Angeles but also spend a lot of time in New York) I can't saw I'm seeing any City jerseys over here either tbh... (once again, anecdotally of course, but it's just not something i'm seeing)

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did a bit of a google to see if i could find club interest via jersey sales - this is kind of interesting. It's not the proper breakdown i was looking for, but shows the top seller per state. Man City's shirt is only the top seller in 1 state, New Jersey.

The joys of anecdotal evidence I guess... i'd be involved in football groups in both areas though, and yeah, to me they've not caught on yet (edited the above comment with a breakdown graphic of top seller by state - and they do have an impact in New Jersey it seems).

It makes sense they might have a bit more of a grasp in and around the New York City FC fans though (sharing owners, with loan player-crossover and all that jazz - the NYCFC shirt is even modeled after the Man City one, complete with 'Etihad' sponsorship). But I wouldn't be convinced they're breaking into the market over here in any more meaningful way. I've lived over here for 13 years now, and have seen little shifts, but it's primarily always been Utd, Liverpool, Chelsea, and Arsenal I see at pick up games/matches/events.

The Spurs interest in that graphic is pretty interesting though - not something i've seen much here! Though it's a big seller in parts of the country i've not been to, so I guess that tallies.

I do think it's only a matter of time alright though, as we've seen with Chelsea's increased global reach since Roman took over 20 years ago.

Having lived in Sydney for 10, moved back last summer so maybe its changed since the champions league final win, but City are still pretty much a non entity among kids over there. And the EPL is bar far the biggest supported league in Oz...I had my kids in football camps and weekend tournaments where they could be a 100+ kids involved and if there was 2 City jerseys on show, it would be a surprise. It pretty much follows as it does here 75% between Liverpool & UTD, then Arsenal, always a few random and Chelsea and Spurs kits. Of course outside of EPL teams, there was always be Barca and Real jersey knocking around, but that's about it. People claiming that City have as many fans buying their kits as there would be Barca, Real, Liverpool or UTD are not living in the real world...

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I was going to say there are probably warehouses full of City jerseys in the desert somewhere, bought by the club owners to bump the sales figures up. But I guess they don't actually have to take the physical jersey do they, just buy a bill of sale and report that instead.

Maybe City jerseys are the new national uniform of North Korea and those sales are skewing the figures?

I live in the Netherlands. I have ever seen a Haaland jersey. I see loads of United, Liverpool, psg, Chelsea and barca Jerseys.

There are obviously kids that love Haaland. I just don't see them around.

Not really. You are underestimating the literal legacy effect. Thats why you have currently unsuccessful teams like LA Lakers, Yamaha, Ferrari or Manchester United remaining more popular and in fact still increasing in popularity than modern successful teams like GSW, Honda, Red Bull/Mercedes or Man City.

Nowadays that line of "success = popularity" generally isn't as powerful as it may once have been. TV kinda killed that strategy/pattern off.

Probably the better comparison is Chelsea, very successful for 20 years now yet still way behind Liverpool and United. Success will only get you so far.

Where are you talking about?

Ferrari is completely different because people love their sports cars. Nothing to do with formula 1 but the support carries over to F1.

Here's one for you. The biggest selling jersey in NBA last year and this year is Steph Curry's. LBJ is next.

I don't know anything about Yamaha. I'd imagine Ducati is the most popular selling motorcycle? Anyone I know that is into fast bikes talks about them and another brand I can't remember, some newer brand. Anyone I know who likes classic bikes talks about the Harley and the Honda Gold wing is often mentioned. I never hear any of them talking about Yamaha.

United, Real Madrid and Barcelona were the most popular. Now it's Barcelona, Real Madrid and then United.

United's support worldwide is dwindling due to the lack of success.

Younger people want to support winners. City are winners in the most popular league in the world, they are going to grow and grow as long as they keep winning.

City also have the most popular footballer playing in Europe. That's attracting lots of new fans to the club as well.

Here you go.

https://www.ranker.com/list/best-selling-jerseys-2023/david-de-la-riva

Oh the pure innocence of it all. Wait until he hears about the guy who turns water into wine!

Jesus H Christ.....

The next game can't come fvckin quick enough!