English Premier League @ 30: The Success Story Of An Iconic Sports Entertainment Brand
The 2022 season of the English Premier League started barely two weeks ago, however, the league had to take a time-out to celebrate its 30th anniversary on Monday, August 15, 2022. It has been three decades that have seen English club football transformed into one of the world’s leading sports entertainment products.
The last three decades have been quite memorable looking back at various exciting activities on and off the pitch. Indeed, the fans have emerged as unsung heroes in this celebration.
In the last 30 seasons, 4,488 players from 120 different nations have featured in 11,646 fixtures. Of the EPL, fifty clubs have featured in the Premier League, with just seven of them winning the title in its 30 years of existence.
Manchester United dominated the early days with the first nine titles under Alex Ferguson while Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal team won in 1998, 2002, and 2004.
Another London club, Chelsea, won back-to-back titles under Jose Mourinho in 2005 and 2006 before United returned to dominance with the likes of Wayne Rooney and Cristiano Ronaldo. Manchester City, under Pep Guardiola, has dominated in recent years, winning four of the last five titles, only interrupted by Liverpool in 2020.
The Premier League has become the most popular football league globally thanks to the world-class players and managers who have delivered captivating football as well as a multitude of addicted fans.
The EPL Package
The EPL is broadcast to 800million homes in 188 countries. Crowds attending matches last season were at an all-time high, with a total attendance of over 380 matches of 15.2million.
Teddy Sheringham who scored the first televised goal in the league for Nottingham Forest against Liverpool, exclaimed recently “I don’t think we all realized quite what the Premier League was going to become 30 years ago,”
There are over 90 broadcasters and more than 400 channels showing EPL games, thus the League and its clubs count almost a billion followers on social media.
For the first time, this 2022, the premier league will generate more revenue from foreign television deals than the established domestic market. When all deals are concluded, the league expects foreign rights sales to generate 5.3 billion pounds ($6.40 billion) over the next three seasons with 5.1 billion raised from UK broadcasters.
The 30th-anniversary campaign activity kicked off on Monday 8 August in Manchester when the Premier League Trophy began a seven-week tour of England and Wales. The League’s all-time leading scorer Alan Shearer will see the Trophy off as it visits many people who have been a part of the Premier League’s success and had a positive impact on the lives of people connected to their football club. The tour will also visit the studios of Sky, which has handled, for the last 30 years, all the live Premier League football broadcasts.
CSR Angle
The League will also be announcing new financial commitments to benefit fans and communities. This includes increased investment into the Premier League Fans’ Fund, with £5m available to support fan engagement projects. The League is also investing £13.5million into the Football Foundation to create small-sided pitches in the heart of communities as well as a new Premier League investment into women’s and girls’ football, including the Emerging Talent Centres, announced earlier this year.
All Premier League fixtures between 13 and 22 August are dedicated to the 30th anniversary, giving clubs an opportunity to celebrate their history in the competition.
One fact stands out, the EPL is full of compelling characters and is constantly producing engaging storylines that capture the imagination of fans across the world.
The platform has created a brand, and marketed it properly to a global audience, although the brand equity of some of the individual teams and players within the league might actually be bigger.
Economic Gains in Sport Marketing
Biodun Shobanjo, Chairman of Troika Holdings, Nigeria’s largest marketing communication services group in a paper he presented a few years ago in Lagos revealed that few forces in contemporary society influence massive numbers of people across the world more immediately than sport.
In his words, “In sport and everything it stands for, we find ourselves simply impassioned, in love, sad, excited! From football fans to golf enthusiasts, the sport continues to manifest itself for social cohesion, development, and leisure and is nowadays, used as a strategic tool for advancement in emerging economies.”
Shobanjo explained further that sports marketing is synonymous with “sports entertainment”. And must have two critical components- sports talents and the massive number of fans. The essence of sports marketing is to communicate between brands and their target audience by leveraging the emotional connection/bond between sports talents and their fans.
The force is in a strong passionate bond between these two groups of people. Creative marketing communications practitioners have become adept at using this emotional bond as a platform to build patronage and loyalty for consumers of brands when they are able to convince the producers of products or services to commit their funds to support sporting activities and personalities. This is what is termed sponsorship.
It is from here that the $600 billion Sports tourism industry can build on for business and Investors’ confidence can flourish.
Lessons for Developing Economies
Can leagues of developing economies like Nigeria learn from the EPL? Harry Iwuala, a respected sports marketing consultant in an online article explains that the required packaging is lacking in most African leagues except that of south Africa where remarkable efforts have been made to package it impressively.
In his word, “In Nigeria, we have not treated football as entertainment which is why its perception index is so low. There is unbelievable quality in Nigerian football, skillful players but they are not reaching their full potential due to poor administrative and management structures at the clubs.
“You hardly can see a club with a decent clubhouse and welfare package. The entertainment treatment must be applied to the Nigerian Premier League to make it attractive for empowered youths and adults to show interest. It is no longer hip to identify with the Nigerian Premier League as a result of the comparative exposure to the English Premier League and the role of the media here is very germane. SuperSport is doing a relatively good job but a whole lot of miles still needed to be covered in live television presentations of match days.
“We can still start by improving the number and position of cameras at the stadium, improving the directing of broadcasts and in the commentaries, which add to the excitement of watching the EPL. The pre-match analysis is vital as it helps to the hype and heightens expectations these are not done here and I am not even sure we have the right kind of personnel to handle that. Our facilities are not built for entertaining experiences They lack decent conveniences and these are the total package of match day experience.\
We also have to employ competent persons to manage the administration of the league and these must be people with private sector competence and track performance at very high management positions.”