Post by QPR Report on Jul 14, 2009 7:10:41 GMT
"I have seen the future and it works" 
The Times/Jonathan Northcroft
Premier League tours of duty stretch farther
Graphic: the Premier travel club
Last week it was at a sports café in Singapore, yesterday it went on display at a branch of Barclays in Solihull. When even the Premier League trophy gets a summer tour, you know the world has a Beth Ditto-sized appetite for English football. The list of pre-season fixtures grows more outlandish every year. Wolves and Fulham are in Australia, Hull are getting ready for a tournament in Beijing, Chelsea plan to wow Hollywood. And they are not alone.
On the same evening the Londoners meet Inter Milan in Pasadena, a Premier League rival will be on show in another Los Angeles suburb. Tickets are still available to — according to the promotional blurb — “come and watch International Stars and Million Dollar Players compete in your home town”. For just $10, you too could be inside Buena High School sports ground in Ventura to watch a local amateur U23 side play Burnley.
More than half of the league’s members are travelling outside Europe and 21 countries will be visited by English clubs. Chelsea's clash with Inter is part of a four-match itinerary that sees them criss-crossing the United States in The World Football Challenge. Manchester United have an ambitious four-date tour of Asia, with about 250,000 tickets already sold. Liverpool go to Singapore and Thailand. The 2008-09 season finished for Fernando Torres in a Confederations Cup game only two weeks ago but he will be on a pitch in Bangkok a week on Wednesday, Liverpool contractually obliged to field all their stars in a match against the Thai national team.
Players’ wellbeing can be at risk when clubs tour. Last season Wayne Rooney was laid low for a fortnight after contracting a virus during a 24-hour visit by Manchester United to Nigeria, where they played Portsmouth. With the exception of Arsène Wenger, who refuses to take Arsenal much beyond the Alps, managers appreciate the rewards outweigh the risks when exotic exhibition games are concerned. Touring can add huge value to sponsors’ agreements, helping with transfer budgets: Manchester United will play in Jakarta and Seoul, having signed lucrative deals with an Indonesian telecom company and a Korean tyre manufacturer, while Liverpool’s shirt sponsors, Carlsberg, want to crack the Asian market.
The appearance money alone makes peregrinating worthwhile. Manchester United, Liverpool and Chelsea will make £3m-£5m from each of their matches abroad. “That might not sound dramatic but, outside of television deals, you have to work bloody hard to make £3m as a club,” said Peter Draper, director of creative communications agency IRIS Nation, and Manchester United’s former group marketing director. That £5m or so to United represents almost 2% of their annual turnover or the transfer fee for Patrice Evra. Sir Alex Ferguson is surprisingly sanguine about the trips. “It’s part of the bigger picture for United. We’re a club with global support and when you see scenes like in the Far East, you know it’s worth it,” he says.
The more subtle (and, in the long-term, essential) reason for tours is to build the foreign fan base. A few years ago there was talk of English clubs “conquering America”, “selling a billion shirts in Asia” and so on. The more excitable verbiage has subsided but the market research suggests huge advances. Manchester United, who six years ago could count on only 10m fans worldwide, can now produce data showing they have 333m fans. Liverpool have figures suggesting they are not far behind. Chelsea rule these days far beyond the King’s Road and now boast 110m supporters globally.
Chelsea’s US jaunt will be their fifth in six years and the club have built a feeder club network involving several of America’s top youth teams. Community events, such as coaching clinics, will be held in all four cities they visit and some proceeds from Chelsea’s match with AC Milan in Baltimore will go towards a charity project for underprivileged children. Manchester United are adept at doing outreach work on tour, via coaching clinics and their charity, Unicef, while Liverpool have a similar approach. “We chose the tour promoter that was best at thinking outside the box in terms of legacy work,” said Ian Ayre, the club’s commercial director. “As well as coaching youngsters, all our staff will meet local counterparts to create links and share knowledge. All the physios from the Singapore league are meeting our guy, for example. We’re also creating a charitable foundation in each territory we visit and our sponsors will contribute so that after the team has left, LFC will be there.”
Ayre was born in Anfield but lived and worked in Hong Kong, China and Malaysia for 15 years. “Liverpool are huge there but I found that whereas in the UK you can live Liverpool 24/7, because of television, radio and the papers, out there you get 90 minutes, some studio discussion and nothing else. It doesn’t make you any less of a fan, you just don’t get to experience enough of what you crave. So the big challenge for people like me is bringing your club to fans abroad in a meaningful way. There’s a view you should go round the globe as much as possible but I think, rather than spread yourself thinly, you should do a proper job in the markets you touch. If that means going back to a territory and disappointing people somewhere else in the world, so be it.”
Liverpool and Manchester United have toured America in the past five years but both seem content to leave that to Chelsea and concentrate on their greater numbers of Far East fans. Liverpool want their matches to reach supporters right across southeast Asia — tickets can be bought at any adidas store in the region. Ayre rejects accusations of profiteering made by the South China Morning Post, which claimed Hong Kong pulled out of an exhibition because Liverpool asked for a $1.5m match fee, exclusive TV rights and half the game’s advertising revenue. “I wish we could command that,” Ayre laughed, “but the story was ill-conceived. We’d intended playing three matches but couldn’t reach an agreement in Hong Kong.”
At the Asia Trophy in Beijing, Hull, West Ham and Tottenham will be engaged in community work as the Premier League takes its Creating Chances programme international. Asia Trophy tickets are £7 — about a third of what’s being charged when Inter play Lazio in the Italian Super Cup in Beijing the following week. “English clubs are switched on when it comes to touring,” says Draper. “The approach is more sophisticated than, ‘We’ll go and play on the Moon because the bloke on the Moon says he’d pay £5m’, which is how many big foreign clubs work.”
Real Madrid command the biggest appearance fees but are willing to hand control of their tours to their commercial department, who arrange a plethora of events and personal appearances, whereas Ferguson, Carlo Ancelotti and Rafael Benitez would not allow players to be used in such a way. This year the first pre-season game for Cristiano Ronaldo, Kaka, Karim Benzema and Co will be in front of 12,500 spectators in Dublin against Shamrock Rovers.
Wigan grab last-minute deal
Until Friday Wigan, the only Premier League side without an overseas pre-season tour, were contemplating a summer stuck at home playing with the bucket and spade in the back-garden. But with the rest of their Premier League classmates off to far-flung destinations, the club under the new management of Roberto Martinez have now scraped enough together for a bargain trip to Austria. However, just like all hastily organised last-minute offers it comes with a catch: no sea-view, no five-star accommodation and, as a club spokesperson revealed, as yet no actual fixtures.
www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/football/premier_league/wigan/article6688739.ece
The Times/Jonathan Northcroft
Premier League tours of duty stretch farther
Graphic: the Premier travel club
Last week it was at a sports café in Singapore, yesterday it went on display at a branch of Barclays in Solihull. When even the Premier League trophy gets a summer tour, you know the world has a Beth Ditto-sized appetite for English football. The list of pre-season fixtures grows more outlandish every year. Wolves and Fulham are in Australia, Hull are getting ready for a tournament in Beijing, Chelsea plan to wow Hollywood. And they are not alone.
On the same evening the Londoners meet Inter Milan in Pasadena, a Premier League rival will be on show in another Los Angeles suburb. Tickets are still available to — according to the promotional blurb — “come and watch International Stars and Million Dollar Players compete in your home town”. For just $10, you too could be inside Buena High School sports ground in Ventura to watch a local amateur U23 side play Burnley.
More than half of the league’s members are travelling outside Europe and 21 countries will be visited by English clubs. Chelsea's clash with Inter is part of a four-match itinerary that sees them criss-crossing the United States in The World Football Challenge. Manchester United have an ambitious four-date tour of Asia, with about 250,000 tickets already sold. Liverpool go to Singapore and Thailand. The 2008-09 season finished for Fernando Torres in a Confederations Cup game only two weeks ago but he will be on a pitch in Bangkok a week on Wednesday, Liverpool contractually obliged to field all their stars in a match against the Thai national team.
Players’ wellbeing can be at risk when clubs tour. Last season Wayne Rooney was laid low for a fortnight after contracting a virus during a 24-hour visit by Manchester United to Nigeria, where they played Portsmouth. With the exception of Arsène Wenger, who refuses to take Arsenal much beyond the Alps, managers appreciate the rewards outweigh the risks when exotic exhibition games are concerned. Touring can add huge value to sponsors’ agreements, helping with transfer budgets: Manchester United will play in Jakarta and Seoul, having signed lucrative deals with an Indonesian telecom company and a Korean tyre manufacturer, while Liverpool’s shirt sponsors, Carlsberg, want to crack the Asian market.
The appearance money alone makes peregrinating worthwhile. Manchester United, Liverpool and Chelsea will make £3m-£5m from each of their matches abroad. “That might not sound dramatic but, outside of television deals, you have to work bloody hard to make £3m as a club,” said Peter Draper, director of creative communications agency IRIS Nation, and Manchester United’s former group marketing director. That £5m or so to United represents almost 2% of their annual turnover or the transfer fee for Patrice Evra. Sir Alex Ferguson is surprisingly sanguine about the trips. “It’s part of the bigger picture for United. We’re a club with global support and when you see scenes like in the Far East, you know it’s worth it,” he says.
The more subtle (and, in the long-term, essential) reason for tours is to build the foreign fan base. A few years ago there was talk of English clubs “conquering America”, “selling a billion shirts in Asia” and so on. The more excitable verbiage has subsided but the market research suggests huge advances. Manchester United, who six years ago could count on only 10m fans worldwide, can now produce data showing they have 333m fans. Liverpool have figures suggesting they are not far behind. Chelsea rule these days far beyond the King’s Road and now boast 110m supporters globally.
Chelsea’s US jaunt will be their fifth in six years and the club have built a feeder club network involving several of America’s top youth teams. Community events, such as coaching clinics, will be held in all four cities they visit and some proceeds from Chelsea’s match with AC Milan in Baltimore will go towards a charity project for underprivileged children. Manchester United are adept at doing outreach work on tour, via coaching clinics and their charity, Unicef, while Liverpool have a similar approach. “We chose the tour promoter that was best at thinking outside the box in terms of legacy work,” said Ian Ayre, the club’s commercial director. “As well as coaching youngsters, all our staff will meet local counterparts to create links and share knowledge. All the physios from the Singapore league are meeting our guy, for example. We’re also creating a charitable foundation in each territory we visit and our sponsors will contribute so that after the team has left, LFC will be there.”
Ayre was born in Anfield but lived and worked in Hong Kong, China and Malaysia for 15 years. “Liverpool are huge there but I found that whereas in the UK you can live Liverpool 24/7, because of television, radio and the papers, out there you get 90 minutes, some studio discussion and nothing else. It doesn’t make you any less of a fan, you just don’t get to experience enough of what you crave. So the big challenge for people like me is bringing your club to fans abroad in a meaningful way. There’s a view you should go round the globe as much as possible but I think, rather than spread yourself thinly, you should do a proper job in the markets you touch. If that means going back to a territory and disappointing people somewhere else in the world, so be it.”
Liverpool and Manchester United have toured America in the past five years but both seem content to leave that to Chelsea and concentrate on their greater numbers of Far East fans. Liverpool want their matches to reach supporters right across southeast Asia — tickets can be bought at any adidas store in the region. Ayre rejects accusations of profiteering made by the South China Morning Post, which claimed Hong Kong pulled out of an exhibition because Liverpool asked for a $1.5m match fee, exclusive TV rights and half the game’s advertising revenue. “I wish we could command that,” Ayre laughed, “but the story was ill-conceived. We’d intended playing three matches but couldn’t reach an agreement in Hong Kong.”
At the Asia Trophy in Beijing, Hull, West Ham and Tottenham will be engaged in community work as the Premier League takes its Creating Chances programme international. Asia Trophy tickets are £7 — about a third of what’s being charged when Inter play Lazio in the Italian Super Cup in Beijing the following week. “English clubs are switched on when it comes to touring,” says Draper. “The approach is more sophisticated than, ‘We’ll go and play on the Moon because the bloke on the Moon says he’d pay £5m’, which is how many big foreign clubs work.”
Real Madrid command the biggest appearance fees but are willing to hand control of their tours to their commercial department, who arrange a plethora of events and personal appearances, whereas Ferguson, Carlo Ancelotti and Rafael Benitez would not allow players to be used in such a way. This year the first pre-season game for Cristiano Ronaldo, Kaka, Karim Benzema and Co will be in front of 12,500 spectators in Dublin against Shamrock Rovers.
Wigan grab last-minute deal
Until Friday Wigan, the only Premier League side without an overseas pre-season tour, were contemplating a summer stuck at home playing with the bucket and spade in the back-garden. But with the rest of their Premier League classmates off to far-flung destinations, the club under the new management of Roberto Martinez have now scraped enough together for a bargain trip to Austria. However, just like all hastily organised last-minute offers it comes with a catch: no sea-view, no five-star accommodation and, as a club spokesperson revealed, as yet no actual fixtures.
www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/football/premier_league/wigan/article6688739.ece