Brand Wars : United Versus Chelsea
Is there really a brand war between the Premiership’s top two teams?
United and Chelsea are engaged in an earnest struggle to transform their popularity into hard cash.
Last year, Chelsea outlined an ambitious project to move away from their reliance on Roman Ambramovich’s vast fortune, towards developing the biggest global football brand within eight years.
United laughed out loud, as they pressed ahead with their own marketing plans, subsequently boosted by Premiership success and the run to the Champions League semi-final.
Chelsea hopes centre reportedly on cracking the American market and succeeding where United, Robbie Williams and Oasis have each failed. Jose Mourinho’s players will be the support act tonight, when they line up against David Beckham, headlining in his first match for LA Galaxy.
Intent on spoiling the party, United’s Chief Executive David Gill, scoffed at the idea that Chelsea could emerge as a bigger club. He suggested United would leave north America to the Blues in favour of deepening their brand identity in Asia and Africa.
“Chelsea have been having a great time in America the last few years, which is fine,” Gill said in today’s Mirror newspaper. “Is America ever going to be as passionate as the Asian market? I wouldn’t have thought so. We had a good tour in America in 2003, but clearly there were issues in 2004, when we didn’t take a full squad because of the European Championship.
“We have amazing support in Asia. But I think Africa is an interesting area as well. There’s clearly a great following for the Premier League in Africa. There’s a lot of money in Nigeria, for example.
“We do what’s right for us and we’re comfortable with the opportunities with our history, our ground, our heritage and the way we play. Those are key assets for us.”
The Mirror’s report adds : “Of United’s 75m fans around the world, 40.7m are in Asia, while only 4.6m are based in the US and Latin America, proof that the Far East is the most lucrative football market. A staggering 750,000 of football-mad South Koreans are said to have a United credit card.
The reams of data, the financial projections and the number crunching tell an obvious story. Chelsea can only dream of United’s popularity. Gill enjoyed an Amen chorus when he declared the club’s international dominance and confirmed United are the Premiership’s greatest export.
Whilst the chief executive’s Asian ambitions have been well advertised, the scramble for Africa is new. Political instability, endemic poverty and the absence of a sizeable middle-class outside South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria, would suggest limits on United’s ability to generate mass commerce from the continent’s wild enthusiasm.
It is also curious that United would abandon the United States to their most determined rival. After all, the compelling logic of the Glazer project, especially for a debt-ridden club, is that United’s American owners would have an acute insight into how their home market could be capitalised.
It is thus startling to hear from United’s chief executive that the world’s wealthiest sports audience should be abandoned to Chelsea or Real Madrid, when the full riches of the Asian market have still to be secured.
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