I have chosen this area of interest because there does not seem to be an online community based around the smaller football leagues of Europe. Therefore, it is hard to precisely figure out the participation rates on things like forums, news websites etc are, because the content that is around is not directly linked to my particular area of interest.
This being the case, I am going to use things like audience numbers for clubs and leagues on the field along with research into the online marketing being done by football clubs to create a general picture of what I feel will be the audience of my unique area of interest. To supplement this I have also found some football forums who, whilst not specifically talking about ALL the smaller football leagues of Europe, do discuss things on a local (country) scale.
Portuguese marketing school IPAM released a report earlier this year titled ‘European Football Attendance Report 2011’. This document ranked the top 20 clubs and countries by way of attendance throughout Europe, both by average attendance and how full particular stadiums are. Russia, Belgium, Ukraine, Norway, Austria, Poland, Denmark, Sweden, and the Czech Republic were in the top 20 countries in terms of attendance, coming between 8 and 20 in the above order. Although this doesn’t show what online audience the site would get, it does show what the general audience for the leagues mentioned would be.
If you combine the above document with the piece of research produced by the International Journal of Sports Marketing 2011 titled ‘Online marketing of professional clubs: engaging fans on a new playing field’, I believe you will get a complete view of my target audience. This article analyses how football teams are trying to branch out with advertising by engaging the online community. It looks at what type of audience would be expected, and how big that audience would be.
Online marketing of professional clubs: engaging fans on a new playing field
Xtratime is a football forum website that allows separate forums to be set up about particular leagues and countries. Some of the countries I am focusing on that have a thread on this website include Belgium, Israel and Hungary, among others. These sites regularly get many views a day, with some topics having over 50,000 views. This shows that there a people who are actually interested in my topic, that they are desperate for information regarding the lesser known leagues in Europe and are resorting to getting it from fellow football fans.
All this material put together shows that there is a gap in the market, and my idea is the perfect size to fit that gap. It also shows that there is an audience that desires the content I would be aiming to provide. All signs seem to be pointing at a good area of interest.
A Focus on Football 