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Why China still loves Why China still loves Manchester UnitedManchester United

Whether it’s the passion of Wayne Rooney, the silky skills of Christiano Ronaldo or thefearless approach of Roy Keane, there is no question that China still loves Manchester

United.Research conducted by Birkbeck’s Sport Business Research Group,undertaken duringUnited’s recent tour of the Far East, reveals Chinese football fans are as keen as ever to watchthe Red’s international stars play in their country. Sport Marketing Europe’s Maaike Denkersinterviewed Dr. Simon Chadwick, about the research study and its results.

Dr Simon Chadwick:

Maaike Denkers

Why China still loves Manchester United

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“The research was undertaken by one of my post-graduate students, aChinese guy called Jing Feng Weng and myself. Jing Feng initially came to meand asked whether he could research fan behaviour in China. What we deci-ded to do is attach a dissertation to this particular piece of research. Whenhe went home to do some research over the summer period, ManchesterUnited were playing a series of tour games in China, one of which was inBeijing, Jing Feng’s home city. As far as I know there was no research doneon this before, so we decided to look at why Chinese football fans would gowatch a football game involving a North Western European football team. Theresearch study was therefore part dissertation, part personal interest, andpart wanting to really capitalize upon the opportunity of studying somethingno one has ever studied before. On top of we wanted to create awarenessabout the potential of the Asian market places.”

Potential“If you look at different European teams they tend to have a different posi-tion in different countries. In China, for example, Manchester United and RealMadrid are very popular. They are the two biggest supported clubs in China.However, in contrast to China, Barcelona is the biggest supported club inJapan. Of course it is very easy to generalize about Asia and say ‘they all loveEnglish football’ or ‘they all love Spanish football’, but in reality you have dif-ferent pockets of activities in different countries in Asia. While these teamsare clearly aware of their popularity and status in Asia, they often do not knowwhy. So in other words a lot of European football clubs are aware of the com-mercial potential of Asian market places, but they don’t really understandhow to capitalize upon it. One of the reasons they find it difficult to capitali-ze upon it is because they simply don’t understand the behaviour and moti-vation of sport fans in those particular markets. Consequently, trying to pro-duce products, whether it is goods or services that appeal specifically to tar-geted market segments is very difficult for them.”

Influencing factors“Findings from the research show that the promise of seeing top stars in acti-on remains the most important factor influencing Chinese fan’s support forUnited,” says Dr Simon Chadwick. “But it is not simply the appeal of ‘bignames’ that attracted Chinese fans to United’s games over the summer.Seeing a Van Nistelrooij goal, a crunching Scholes tackle or a classyFerdinand clearance were also amongst the most significant reasons for wat-ching the Reds. If they go to watch top performers in action, Chinese fanswant to see them perform well.”

Generate revenue“I think up until now a lot of European football teams have gone on tour inChina simply to generate revenue, but these tours have been heavily critici-zed. Firstly, there has been a lot of criticism from people concerned thatEuropean teams should not be travelling ten thousand miles to play gamesjust before the start of the season merely to generate revenue. The secondcriticism is that ethically, in terms of corporate responsibility, clubs shouldnot see the Asian market place as cash cows. The third criticism is, when alot of clubs do go to China, they tend not to take their best 11 players, whatthey do is they take 5 of their best players and 6 reserve team players.

5 main factors influencing

Chinese fan support:

Blood, sweat and tears: one of the rea-

sons that Chinese fans want to go and

watch Manchester United, Real Madrid, AC

Milan and other European top teams, is

because they believe that they are going to

watch the best players in the world.They

do not only want to watch the best players

in the world perform: they want to see

them perform to the best of their ability.

Star quality: fans want to watch teams

that include high profile players, many of

whom will be seen as the best in the world.

So not only do they see western teams as

being skilful and exciting, they also see the

clubs as having recruited the best players in

the world for that position.

Local pride: Given that they perceive

European teams as the best in the world, it

would be great to see your local team beat

them. Clearly that represents something

very significant to a country where football

is very important. Fans want to see their

local team do well and hopefully beat

European teams.

Englishness: Fans reported wanting to

see Premier League teams because they see

the Premier League as the best league in

the world (research is skewed because all

questions pertained Manchester United, a

British team).

Strategies and tactics: the motivation is

that fans want to see tactically astute and

tactically aware players and managers taking

part in these matches in China.

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One of the things this study will hopefully do is firstly to sug-gest that teams do need to behave in a far more responsibleway and not see this as some kind of cash cow. You cannotexploit these market places, as fans are not prepared to beexploited. Another issue is attendances as for ManchesterUnited tour the attendance was not particularly high, whichwas also criticized. Fans are far more sophisticated and theymake their judgements far more carefully than a lot clubs rea-lize. Part of that is, that when the pay however much they payto go see a game, they do actually want to see the best play-ers. So, hopefully what the research will have done and cer-tainly the clubs that we are now working with are trying to do,is really understand and establish specifically what fans arelooking for from these clubs.”

Merchandizing“A lot of European clubs increasingly have commercial opera-tions in Asia, but they do tend to be specifically based aroundmerchandizing and retailing. I think one of the premises of ourstudy is to say ‘OK you can sell merchandizing, but why would

anybody want to buy this from you?’ There stillseems to be this gap in understanding, andthis has been one of the problems forEuropean football, that Asia is this cash cow.This assumption is, however made without real-ly understanding what the market place is allabout. There has been this long rush into tra-ding in the Asian market place and establishingrelationships with Asian organizations, but inmany cases clubs have not seen the returns.They have therefore become disillusioned withwhat they see as perhaps not as profitable amarket as they initially anticipated. The mostobvious example is Manchester City andEverton, who played in a Premier League gamewhich was reputedly watched by 3 hundred mil-lion viewers on TV. The reason being thatEverton’s shirt sponsor was a Chinese tele-communications company and Manchester Citywere playing a Chinese midfielder. Afterwardsthere was a lot of talk about commercial oppor-tunity and what this may lead onto, but nothingreally happened. Everton subsequently movedonto another shirt sponsor and the Chineseplayer is still at Manchester City, but they haveno specific interests in China.”

Gap“There is a genuine gap between what clubsthink they know and the opportunities are, andwhat the actual picture is on the ground in

China. One of the big things they remember about China is thatthere is a small number of very intense pockets of economicactivity, in places like Beijing and Shanghai, but outside it isstill a very rural economy with very low disposable income. Partof the understanding is that deposable income is generally lowand in certain places people do have a high deposable incomeand a predisposition to spend it on sports, but the extend towhich that happens and where about it happens is not part ofthe understanding associated with Chinese market places.

LessonAccording to Chadwick, “it was anticipated that ManchesterUnited would fill the Beijing stadium, but in this particular casethere was a crowd of less than 25,000, while the stadium hasa capacity of 72,000. I think really this is a lesson in why clubsneed to start thinking in a rather more fan coherent strategicway, because despite, in this particular case ManchesterUnited’s, preconceptions about who they are and what theydo, the product still wasn’t sufficiently attractive to fill the sta-dium. I think the understanding of why people would or would

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not go to a game is very important. The research will come asgood news to bosses at United because after the club’s sum-mer tour to Asia was criticised due to lower than expectedcrowds at some games, the findings clearly suggest there willbe further opportunities in the future for tours to China, andfor the development of United’s commercial activities in Asia.

Interest“While Manchester United hasn’t expressed any particularinterest in this research, other teams in the Premier Leagueand in La Liga have asked us to present and take this further.I think, clearly you have to understand that ManchesterUnited, as an organization, has changed from a public to a pri-vate status over this period. And while I think other market pla-ces are important to them, I also believe other revenue stre-ams; such as media streams are increasingly important. Asfor the clubs that we are now working with they have really justbegun professionalizing their marketing activities and they areonly now becoming aware that Asia is a potentially very impor-

tant market place. More significantly, however, they need tounderstand these Asian market places, which should be thebasis upon which they develop their strategy. What I am tryingto say is that the implication of the research is that clubs arenow starting to think a bit more strategically, in a rather moresophisticated way, about how they target Asian markets.”

Conclusions• Chinese football fans remain strongly attached to Europeanfootball, particularly to British football. More than SouthAmerican football or indeed Asian football in itself, there is avery strong identity and affiliation with European football inAsia. I think it is seen as being ecstatically pleasing, skilfuland high quality. In turn that is linked to the calibre of playerthat is associated with it. Uncertainty of outcome is also veryimportant; I think a lot of Chinese fans appear to want agame, which is a close contest. In other words they are notgoing to witness a 10-0 Manchester United victory, nor arethey going to witness a 10-0 Beijing victory. What they want is

to witness a good local team pla-ying an international side.

• Ticket prices are a major issue;high-ticket prices have a largeinfluence on crowd size. If Euro-pean clubs press for highly pricedtickets, by increasing ticket pricesby, say, 10% over regular ticketprices, you will see a dispropor-tional fall in crowd size.

Recommendations• If European football wants toretain its position as an importantsport in China, it must continue tobuy well known, leading internatio-nal players. Manchester United, inparticular in recent years, hasstruggled somewhat to recruitthese types of players. They dohave to think about the extent towhich this has an impact on theirpopularity in China. The mostobvious example here is DavidBeckham and Real Madrid; therehave been a lot of speculationsthat the only reason Real Madridsigned Beckham is because he ispopular in China and as a conse-quence of that Madrid wouldbecome popular. The research

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undertaken does tend to signal that well-known high calibreglamorous footballers are important.

• It is important that when teams go to China they play theirbest 11 players. Chinese fans are looking for the strongeststarting 11 putting on their best game.

• Image and profile of iconic playersshould be fostered and promoted. Weuse Beckham as one example and itseems again that this appeal to Chinesefans in particular. That is part of their moti-vation to watch European football and towatch specific clubs.

• European clubs should adopt acompetitive and serious approach tomatches in which they are involved.

• Coherent communications strategyincorporating media relations, cor-porate relations and marketingpromotion should be employedto establish and maintain profileand presence in the Chinesemarket. Basically what thatmeans is that a lot ofclubs have the tendencyto fly in and out and don’treally connect with thepeople who want to watchthem. It is therefore impor-tant they give some thought tosome advanced marketing communications ahead of the tour,so when they are on tour they can do some public relations.The main objective being to show they care about the localpopulation, about the fans and about their brand image andposition in the market. • Clubs should address the impact that marginal price decre-ases might have. Price reduction may actually increase reve-nue, so like I said before, they think they are employing a pre-mium ticket pricing strategy and attendances have not beenas high as anticipated. So my suggestion would be that theyactually reduce the price level, which may draw in more fansand increase overall revenue

• Intangible issue. If Chinese fans want to see their clubs beatEuropean teams and actually start beating them, would theylose their interest in tour matches and in European clubs? Theother thing is, if they constantly play these European teamsand don’t win, how long will it be until they lose interest?

Overall conclusion“The overall conclusion from the research is that Europeanclubs need to be far more strategic in what they do and theyneed to think far more carefully about fan motivation and whatmotivates people in China to watch games, buy merchandise,access European club website, etc. At the moment a lot ofEuropean clubs, and in fact a lot of European sports, don’treally have the resources or the people on the grounds toundertake the kind of market research in these countries thatthey should be undertaking in order to capitalize upon it.”

Final thoughts: NBA“The only other thing I would like to add, and I say this to mystudents as well, is that really the Asian market place is beco-ming an increasingly important market place for sport. You lookat American sport for example, the NBA, has identified Chinaas one of its most strategically important market places and asa consequence of that has been devoting a substantial amount ofresources to try and boost the popularity of the NBA in China. YaoMing, the Chinese basketball player, has been an important partof that. What European football and European sports need tolearn is that you have an incredibly accomplished, sophisticatedmarketing team working very hard to enhance the popularity of

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NBA and clearly we are up against that. I think therefore to market football, andto market individual clubs in China you do have to learn some lessons from theNBA and the NBA approach. I am not necessarily suggesting that European foot-ball can develop it better than the NBA or to the same extent as the NBA, becau-se arguably the NBA is one of the world successful marketing operations. But Ithink clearly we need to recognize the competition and we need to therefore havea much stronger appreciation of what the different market places involve, howpeople are motivated, what products will work, what prices to charge, how tocommunicate with the markets and so on.” The research was undertaken by a team of Chinese researchers on behalf ofBirkbeck, University of London working in cooperation with the Chinese FootballAssociation and the Beijing Hyundai Supporters Trust. Almost 1,200 suppor-ters were surveyed at the stadium before United’s game with Beijing.

ResultsOn 27 September 2005 Birkbeck, University of London issued a press rele-ase about the research conducted in China and its main results. The pressrelease already generated some attention; as Dr. Simon Chadwick is due tospeak at Sport Campus ’06 in London on the commercial opportunities inAsian sports. Furthermore, they have been invited to do some work withSpanish La Liga clubs and some of the Premier League clubs have showedinterest as well. So, alternative versions of the research study will be eitherreproduced or replicated and extended into other geographically remote mar-ket places. “One of the reasons I believe our research was picked up on, isbecause of our student base, we have a fairly diverse student population, sowe can actually get people on the ground in these countries”, said Chadwick.

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Birkbeck, University of London:

Founded in 1823, Birkbeck, University of

London is the country’s leading provider of

face-to-face part-time higher education,

offering a programme of 100 undergradua-

te degrees, over 140 postgraduate courses

as well as over a thousand certificates,

diplomas and short courses.

All undergraduate teaching takes place in

the evening, so students are enable to work

full-time while they study, gaining valuable

work experience as they go and graduating

without debt.

Birkbeck is equally well known for its high-

quality research, with a strong emphasis on

providing full-time and part-time

postgraduate courses and research

opportunities. Ninety-one per cent of aca-

demic staff at Birkbeck are research active –

the highest rate for any multi-faculty institu-

tion in London and the fifth highest for the

UK. More than 80 per cent of all research

carried out at Birkbeck is rated as being of

international importance.

www.bbk.ac.uk

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Dr Simon Chadwick, Birkbeck Sport

Business Group, Birkbeck,

University of London

Email: s.chadwick@mbs.bbk.ac.uk

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