Are football teams maximising their audiences and making these audiences into subscribers?

In a word no, it has always mystified me why they haven’t capitalised on these fan bases in monetising their audiences? Especially when football fans are akin to creating a cult like following for their teams, it seems like a very simple process to make this audience into a conversion (subscription). Football clubs have long been traditional subscription businesses, with clubs across the UK and Europe able to guarantee a revenue stream with pre-season ticket sales. With this model meaning clubs can forecast revenues, the revenues have come from traditional media share, commercial deals and merchandise sales. Clubs have been slow to see how they could maximise their audiences, not just in the local area but across the UK, Europe or the world. 

With the older generation of fans engaging with the club in a more traditional manner such as points of sale in the grounds, match day programmes and sms messaging, the clubs have been slow to adopt digital channels. These audiences are digital savvy and digest media in an on demand format, if the clubs engage in the correct format can be the best form of a digital marketing strategy. Teams such as Liverpool FC have followers across the globe who are a loyal fan base, the big question teams have looked to answer is how to monetise their audience, finally Liverpool have stepped forward to partner with Youtube.

The partnership, which is designed to capitalise on the Anfield club’s 3.4million subscribers, will give fans the chance to access premium video and other exclusive features, such as LFC emojis and badges. Fans paying a monthly subscription fee will also be granted access to the Liverpool FC YouTube members’ area, giving access to four additional weekly shows, live match analysis and access behind the scenes. Packages start at 99p a month. Watch this space but lots of clubs will be doing the same if they want to build the brand loyalty! I am just surprised it has taken the clubs so long to do this as it is common place in other industries.