The Future is Asia Pacific

I hope this piece of information will prove useful once again to the marketers in Manchester United or even Real Madrid. After all, they are the ones who have put the word "global" onto football.

Turns out the manutd.com is the most popular website on the internet. Also the visits from non-home country shows that the game has a global reach (which of course is something that we all know, duh!).

Whats more interesting is that French football is very insular in nature as reflected by their smaller numbers of non-home country hits. Well, if Lyon can win the Le Championnat 7 times in a row, you have to wonder about the competitiveness of the league. Nevertheless, French football clubs have loads of potential if marketed correctly. I don't remember Marseille, Lyon or Bordeaux doing a tour of Asia or China. Hopefully the clubs see this as an opportunity and try to raise the profile of their clubs abroad. I am bored of seeing fans in their Man U or Liverpool or Arsenal team shirts.

Check out the study done in http://www.netimperative.comnews2008july2top-10-uk-football-team-sites.mht

Here, one could see that Asia Pacific internet traffic accounted for almost 1/3 of the total visits to the EPL Big 4 websites. Surprisingly, Arsenal.com gets more hits (12%) in MEA (Middle East & Africa) than even Manutd.com (6%). They must be benefitting from the "popularity" of the obnoxious Emanuel Adebayor (Togo) and brilliant Kolo Toure (Ivory Coast). Also interesting, Liverpoolfc.tv seems to be the most popular (52%) website in the UK which goes to show that there are always fairweather fans tagging along any team who are at the top of their game.

So does this mean that Richard Scudamore's idea of a 39th round with the matches played overseas is rubbish? From this evidence, it looks a certain winner!