14 DAY TRIAL // Football, or soccer, to be more accurate, is the most popular sport worldwide. It attracts the biggest revenues and the biggest audience for specialized websites as well. Although one would expect that the websites of the national league of a country attracted mostly in-house users, the situation is reverted in the U.K.
According to a study performed by comScore, the vastest audience for the websites of the Premiere League soccer competition does not come from the U.K. Three of the "Big Four," namely the Manchester United, Arsenal and Chelsea teams, that are best situated both in the first echelon of the league and in people's preferences when it comes to online navigation, seem more interesting from outside of the U.K.
Liverpool's website is the only one whose internal audience exceeds half of the total. 52% of the global users who show interest in the activities of this team are Britons, the rest of them being heterogeneously divided into other Europeans (13%), North Americans (6%), South Americans (2%), Africans or inhabitants of the Middle East (6%), or Asians, with a greater percentage of 21.
An average of 60% of the total number of visitors comes from other continents or from the rest of Europe. Asian-Pacific people are the heaviest users of online football content, with more than 20% of the global audience coming from this area. Moreover, the percentage of users interested in the Manchester United website reaches 30%, which could actually give some business ideas to football investors.
"These data suggest that there is a substantial market for Premiership football beyond the confines of the U.K.," says comScore analyst Jamie Gavin. "It therefore makes sense that the Football Association would be considering staging an additional ten games per season overseas to help raise the profile of the other clubs. Generating additional exposure of these teams across other continents will help establish the Premiership as a sports league with a truly global fan base." the analyst explained.