During the 2006/2007 season, revenue in the European Premier Football Leagues totalled ????13.6 billion (Deloitte, 2008). The ‘big five’ – English Premiership, German Bundesliga, Spanish La Liga, Italian Serie A, and French Ligue 1 accounted for ????7.1 billion, with the English Premier League representing the highest earner at ????2.3 billion. Despite these figures, only 10 clubs in British football are profitable, and the 72 clubs outside of the Premiership, in the British Football League (Championship, League Divisions 1 and 2 collectively), do not have guaranteed access to any of the colossal income stream that broadcast rights to matches paid by the terrestrial and satellite television channels represents. This leaves them almost entirely reliant on the generation of income from matchdays and commercial activities such as sponsorship.
Oughton et al. (2003) exposed the weakness of the typical football club business model as financially over-reliant on one person or small group of people –
witness the pop star Elton John’s historical association with Watford FC, the Harrods owner Mohammed Al Fayed’s involvement with Fulham FC, and Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich’s ownership of Chelsea FC – and proposed that the key to long-term sustainability lay in the wider community. Webster and Clements (2008) went further in declaring that for football clubs to be profitable they need not only to be successful on the pitch, but also to realise the importance of their fans as a revenue stream – particularly those clubs competing in the lower leagues.

Questions 1 Why do you think a survey of this nature is carried out only every two years rather than more regularly? Why was data deliberately collected during December/January?
2 Why do you think the ‘other areas’ of investigation, outside of the key performance indicators, were identified as being important? What decisions, made by a football club’s management team might be informed by the results of supporters’
views?
3 What do you think were the advantages and disadvantages of using an online survey technique for this research? Assuming that the budget was available, what other techniques would you use in addition to the survey described, and why?
4 Think about a company or brand outside the world of sport whose product/service is designed to provide you with an ‘experience’.
List what you believe would be the key performance indicators if they were to undertake a participants’ survey and give reasons why.