At Everton Football Club, we have not experienced the greatest period in our history over the past few years but our support is forever growing, local and internationally. But there are many ways that we could aim higher to increase our online presence and our global reach as a result.
Our rivals Liverpool are the most popular club in terms of streaming despite City winning more titles in recent years which shows the effectiveness of marketing a football club. We could make huge improvements in terms of our online presence to compete with our rivals commercially.
Television channels
Many top clubs in the Premier League have TV channels that are broadcasted worldwide; they show recent highlights, previews, historic games, and much more. These channels can in some cases be the first time an international fan learns about a particular game and are extremely effective at growing a worldwide fan base.
ExpressVPN’s infographic shows what drives sports streaming in the United Kingdom and that, currently, Liverpool FC streams are the most searched for despite Manchester City dominating domestically.
Everton.com currently only has short videos available – there is no dedicated TV channel yet. The club as a brand could market itself much more effectively; a TV channel would not only serve its initial purpose but could also advertise club products, online content, YouTube videos, and much more.
The success of Everton fan channels shows what we as a club could achieve on a small scale. Videos focused on people who are already fans of our club record around 15-20 thousand views and there are not a huge amount of fan channels representing our club, so that is certainly a gap in the market that we as a club could exploit.
Everton could build a much larger fan base and attain much higher revenues if we were able to improve our external marketing. Most Everton content is only going to be found if a person searches for the Everton website; global football fans need to be shown where they can find this content and it could be made much more accessible for them.
The club has an abundance of digital footage on its site that fans could see much more of if it was on a dedicated TV channel and perhaps streamed online. Everton’s post-match interviews are available on the site as well as youth fixture highlights and more.
Online Streaming
Everton already streams many of its academy fixtures but could maybe broadcast more of our training footage and pre-game content on an increased number of platforms, such as YouTube or Twitch, which could draw in many viewers from around the world.
Of course, the Premier League is watched globally and Everton games can be easily accessed worldwide but advertising ourselves on the pitch is just a small part of building a global brand. With more behind-the-scenes exclusive footage, the fans could be brought closer to the team which is a huge aspect of building an identity and a sense of togetherness around our club.
Everton is making excellent strides to build our club as a brand with the construction of a new stadium Bramley-Moore Dock. We will play our future football in an exceptional setting on one of the world’s most famous waterfronts. But there are many more markets Everton can delve into to improve our global reach.