Globalisation in Football: Introduction
The context of international professional football has been dramatically developed in the 1990s. In the last decade football shifted from national to an international dimension. This has rendered football a multi-dimensional and prodigious business leading to unique merchandising patterns in the sport industry.
The commercialisation in sport is becoming more ferocious and targeting a global extent. National markets are becoming insufficient and a need for global development is remarkable. The National Basketball Association was a pioneer in this aspect. Its reliance on the integration of foreign high-level players helped in stimulating broader TV coverage and in making the merchandising activities in their countries much easier. In 2004 for instance, 20% of the merchandising and 15% of TV rights were sold outside the US. In football, the same tendency was observed as some of the biggest European teams are inclining towards Asian markets. Japanese, or South Korean players were used as a fuel to create interest among Japanese or South Korean Consumers. Other big clubs namely Real Madrid, Juventus or Manchester United think globally in terms of marketing strategies. From a theoretical perspective, the Product Life Cycle (PLC) of European football demonstrates the need for a global direction as it has reached the maturity phase reflecting a saturated market.
The slackening of growth in broadcasting rights, sponsorship, and players’ wages has proved the saturation or the stability of the market. Strategies such as marketing-modification (prices, advertising) or a product-modification (new attributes, new rules, new sports, new competitions, etc.) are difficult to implement and not well-adapted to sport. Hence, the option of market modification appears to be most convenient in this scenario. Sport Managers are required to expand their sport business activities through new marketing targets such as
New Populations: (Women, Young Children, The disabled, etc)
New Geographic territories with high development potentials.
Or through increasing the utilisation rate by:
Multiplying he consumption opportunities
Improving the consumption level for each opportunity.
Why Asian Markets?
As European and American markets are becoming increasingly saturated and the world economies are inundated with globalisation. The sport business has to gain more market exposure and Asian countries reflect an adequate destination for this purpose, especially South-east Asia. These markets are emergent with a high potentiality of commercial development, Highly populated and Solvent concerning the purchase power and additionally the nature of their consumers are passionate about sport and highly follow it and consume its products.
Recently many clubs have tried to strengthen their visibility in Asia. They are aiming to forge a solid base of consumers who are willing to spend a paramount deal of money on their commodities. The 2002 FIFA World Cup translates the purchasing power of Asian fans as it generated some incredible figures. Approximately each fan spent €70 on buying the National Team Shirt, which is not the case in Europe.
The major European Football clubs (Real Madrid, Juventus, Manchester United) have developed fan club shops in various cities where Asian Fans can easily consume the goods of their clubs. Manchester United are pioneering the approach of global expansion with the largest international fan base.
The major football clubs are diversifying their activities to reach higher international visibility. We are observing tournaments played internationally, especially in Asia or USA adding to the focus on high-level players from the targeted markets. Park-ji-Sung is a demonstration of this marketing style with Son Heung-Min as a recent example. Football Business Promoters try to capitalise on these opportunities to sell media rights and drive more visibility and attachment that might ultimately be transmitted into higher revenues through sales.
This Introduction illustrates the first attempts of globalising football. However these days we are noticing a more drastic inclination towards international commercialisation in football with the digital invasion facilitating this practice.
The coming articles will discuss International Marketing in football with focus on core topics such as branding.