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Asia market important for Spurs growth

spurs' magna carter

Ronnie Rosenthal
Didn't know where to put this but thought it was an interesting read and found it to be quite a coincidence as I was thinking today about how important the AIA could be to our growth when thinking about the club's future this morning.

Tuesday, 8 July 2014

Asia market important for Spurs growth

This month sees the start of Spurs' £100m shirt sponsorship deal with insurance company AIA, part of a plan to target the Asia-Pacific region.

The deal saw AIA become shirt sponsor for all competitions, not just cup games. The deal is aimed at helping both partners to grow brand awareness in key markets across the Asia-Pacific region.

Club ambassadors Ledley King and Ossie Ardiles, among others, will make regular visits to AIA's markets, to support a series of co-branded initiatives for company staff, agents, customers and charitable partners.

Tottenham Hotspur will also send the global coaching team to deliver elite coaching programs and associated activities to support AIA's key objectives of promoting health and well-being and increased participation in sport in the Asia-Pacific region.

The award-winning Tottenham Hotspur Foundation will share ideas and philosophies with AIA to help improve the lives of underprivileged young people across the Far East region.

Spurs executive director Charlie Wijeratna revealed:

"The interest is massive in Asia, including China. There are more people outside the UK who like and follow Spurs than there are inside the UK.”

Around the world Premier League football was watched on TV last year by 3.9 billion people in 207 countries, 1.24 billion of them in Asia alone.

Spurs has an estimated three million core fans in the UK, there are another 179 million supporters in other parts of the world who follow the team’s fortunes and the club have to find new ways to engage with them.

Asian fans are only interested in European football it seems, a recent World Cup qualifier between Vietnam and Hong Kong saw just 5,000 there but when Arsenal visited it was an entirely different story, they couldn't sell enough tickets.

Europe’s top leagues are available on TV 24/7 across Asia and every English Premier League team has Asian sponsors and partners.

Tottenham are a distance behind Manchester United who have a huge fan base in Asia thanks to David Beckham, who the continent couldn't get enough of. Then they signed Park Ji-Sun, the best Asian player of his generation and a national hero in Korea. Now of course they have Japanese footballer Shinji Kagawa.

Having a player like that is massive, just as having and American player is excellent for exposure in the States. If we want to grow our fan base in Asia then we'll need to sign a top Asian player and for him to have a meaningful part to play at the club.

Gareth Bale had a one week promotional tour to Asia at the end of the season and he was paid £2.5 million for that trip.

The next step is inevitable, the hunt for the world’s first world-class Chinese player. Both Ledley King and Edgar Davids were in Hong Kong recently.

To compete with the biggest teams we need to maximise revenue and that means maximising support in Asia, China and America with our brand. The essence of the Tottenham Hotspur brand to a sponsor is ‘flair, style and adventure’ so it's important the football matches that.

AIA have paid £100 million over 5 years to tap into it, we have to work hard during these 5 years to increase our support and pick up new Asian commercial partners along the way.

http://tottenhamhotspur.blogspot.co...nt-for-spurs-growth.html#sthash.ewSruyaF.dpuf
 
179 million supporters in other parts of the world :eek: Is that a lie? Or am I down playing our fan base?
 
179 million supporters in other parts of the world :eek: Is that a lie? Or am I down playing our fan base?

Nah they forgot to add another zero ;)

179 million :-k hhhmmmm. Still, we do have a very large fanbase after all 50,000 on the season waiting list, regardless as to how it's compiled, is mahooooosive by anyone's standards.
 
179million fans outside the UK?!! Sounds a bit generous to me considering the Spurs Facebook page only has 5 million followers and the Twitter page has only 850,000.
 
179 million supporters in other parts of the world :eek: Is that a lie? Or am I down playing our fan base?

Less than 10% of those will be actual fans and most of those will just be casual, people that like to see us do well, but don't really watch many games.
 
I can well believe it. I watched Spurs vs Southampton in Hong Kong and the bar was packed, sports is big business in terms of satellite tv and betting revenue as well. English football is a major draw, as is Real Madrid and Barcelona and the Champions League. The rest, as far as I know, is not really worth mentioning. Plenty of Brits in HK, plenty of Europeans in general living and working across the far east.

The deal with AIA is mutually beneficial though, it's not just about getting Spurs noticed in Asia but also about helping AIA expand into new markets. They are an insurance provider based in HK, but as Asian countries like Indonesia and the Philippines develop there is huge potential for the newly-moneyed middle classes to seek insurance on their health and assets - which is where AIA come in. They have the capital and the brand in some countries already and if Spurs are being shown on TV across Asia then AIA gets exposure before they set up shop.
 
Whilst I understand the business argument for looking at untapped potential I wonder when the club will try and convert people from North London to spurs; whenever I walk down tottenham high road on a non match day you only see Man U, arsenal and Chelsea shirts.
 
From my experience a lot of Asians follow players, rather than teams. Take an interest in a particular player and then transfer that interest when said player moves on. There was a lot of this with Beckham. Thousands of Asian kids in Yanited tops, then suddenly they were all wearing Real tops.
 
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