The most valuable soccer brands
Hi fellow monkeys,
I am currently working on a M&A deal within the soccer industry. Since I am required to provide an overview of brand value by team, I have been using the list provided by brand-finance, which is published yearly by that firm Brandirectory 2013.
Do you know if there is any other ranking published by respected firms with specific regard to brand value? I know that Deloitte published another ranking but it is based on the soccer team revenues...
Just google some lists, I know there are more (in all other lists Man United is numer 1). This list is crap though, Bayern Munich the most valuable football brand? No way. Absolutely not. I wonder how they came to this conclusion. Bayern is only really popular within Germany. Here in Asia I have not seen 1 Bayern shirt (or match) while I see tons of Asians with their Man. Utd shirts and you can watch their matches in every cafe on 5 different screens. Even in Europe teams like Real and United have much more fans than Bayern. I am one big football fan, this list is crap, seriously.
Im not some sort of soccer finance expert, so take everything I say with a grain of salt, but Iconix brand group pre-placed a pretty good sized slug of debt that they've been selling off ad hoc to fund acquisitions, and if memory serves I believe one of those acquisitions was Umbro.
The last tine i saw a two sided iconix trade quoted was months ago and I haven't seen the debt change hands since the Umbro trade.
I guess what in trying to say is that there is very limited liquidity in these markets so you want a "Plan B."
.
I feel that list is pretty spot on. Number 1 and 2 could be debatable but Man. U has been slipping lately and Bayern has been making ground. I'm also not sure how the valuations are calculated to make any other statements about it.
No way Roma should be that far down. Barca should easily be 1 or 2. I could argue with a lot of these but those two really stand out for me.
Though to answer your question I do not know of a more reputable source that produces brand rankings. Pretty awesome you’re working on a deal covering the soccer industry, congrats.
This thread is very ambiguous. Brands and franchise (i.e. teams) are very different things depending on how you interpret it. Typically, Manchester United is number one. After you get out of the top ten, it is really hard to measure (and unnecessary since most of the lower teams never meet eachother in Europe).
But I also think Juve should be further up. Italian teams (while they aren't what they were) aren't getting any love.
EDIT: On second thought, maybe Bayern does deserve #1. 7-0 aggregate vs Barca is unreal.
The international popularity of Italian teams has dropped significantly in the past 10 years, especially in Asia. The English, Spanish, and German teams are by far the most popular.
Hala Madrid!
The REAL top 5
Man Utd Real Madrid Barcelona Bayern Munich Chelsea
The sites below may be worth a look:
http://andersred.blogspot.co.uk/
http://swissramble.blogspot.co.uk/
As far as I know one of the guys is an analyst in the City. Could be worth getting in contact with if you are struggling.
Long shot but thought I'd throw it up.
Gross
Ok thanks guys. Just to clarify, it is about brand, not the overall enterprise value --> trying to split the EV among assets and this is why I need some references to assess the brand value.
However, Chelsea fifth?!? LOL
Don't underestimate Chelsea's popularity. English teams are extremely popular anyway. The English teams Man United, Arsenal, Chelsea & Liverpool and the Spanish Real Madrid and Barcelona would have the most fans in the world I think. Bayern Munchen lacks the international fanbase that those teams have just because the German footbal-competition is not nearly as popular as the English or Spanish. For me there is absolutely no doubt that Man United has the highest brand value among football teams, with Real Madrid and Barcelona following. One way to assess the brand value is to look at the sponsordeals that these teams have. Man United has the best sponsordeal (with GM) and Barcelona comes second I think (with Qatar Airlines).
OMG this is my dream job....it's ok to use brand finance, well recognized list in my opinion
As a long term B.Munich fan I have to say they are more like the discreet good team. The real classy teams are mainly in Spain and England. I would give the all-time list to:
Manchester United Real Madrid Barcelona AC/InterMilan Liverpool/Arsenal
Teams such as Bayern and Man.City are good, but just doesn't have the pedigree like hearing Goldman Sachs or Harvard kind of feel.
Interesting this.
WHat you need to do dude, from a technical perspective, is find out if any of these football clubs license out their brand to third parties, lets say to produce some products or something. Get a good sample of the royalty rates they license out at and terms, and apply this to the revenues of the club you are assessing using the relief from royalty method.
http://brandfinance.com/images/upload/brandfinance_football_brands_2012…
In this article they explain how they calculated the brand values of the soccer clubs. Definitely take a look at this, may be very helpful.
That list is complete and utter bullshit. As for the top spots:
This list is completely premier league biased, Don't overestimate their popularity. Bayern is actually making a run for the club with most official members, title currently belonging to my team, Benfica who is 42!! on that list (56M is laughable), which has 225000 members. Manchester City has more supporters than Man Utd in the city of Manchester for God's sake and it's not even the most popular team in England (Liverpool). Asian and Middle Eastern "supporters" distort these rankings.
1 Manchester United FC 2 FC Bayern München 3 Real Madrid CF 4 FC Barcelona 5 Chelsea
Makes sense imho.
Sounds like a nice deal to be working on @cruel3a.
I actually had the pleasure to work on a football related project as well. We advised a major Eastern European oil company that sponsors a football team and I had to prepare a few slides with possible new coaches and players. Definitely one of my best tasks haha.
Yes it is interesting. Unfortunately, at this stage, I am just supporting another analyst with a couple of analyses but it is still more interesting than working on financial institutions :). I did the same during my internship for a major family holding. We tried to convince them to sell part of the soccer business but it didn't work out...
Was the team one of Zenit, CSKA Moskva, or Spartak Moskva?
Brand value chances each year, each moment actually. By buying / selling certain players, I think clubs increase their brands as well. Most important factors I think are: number of fans, popularity of players, sportive prestations. Besides that, enormous amounts of money, don't increase the value of the brand. By buying an enormous amount of world class players, Manchester City did not increase it's brand value (in my eyes).
I don't follow soccer at all, so I'm blown away with how radically different the naming conventions are in European soccer than in, say, American football, baseball, or basketball.
football*
Manchester United and Real Madrid have a brand value that is on a different level to the rest of the world.
If you had to present to a group of people knowledgeable about football about the brand value of clubs around the world and Madrid/United weren't top, I think you would get some funny looks!
Are the people who are saying Bayern/Chelsea as top football brands basing this solely off of the fact that they + Barca have had the strongest results in the Champions League the past few years? Bayern is not a household name (yet) because they play in the Bundesliga, which isn't nearly as competitive as the Premier League, La Liga, or even Serie A (potentially...Serie A has fallen off while Bundesliga is on the rise) from top to bottom.
Chelsea is popular nowadays, but I'd still say they're overall lagging behind Manchester United, Arsenal, and probably even Liverpool. Chelsea has mostly seen success nowadays because of their billionaire owner that has injected god knows how much money into the squad in the form of transfers, etc. They are big among people my age, but I think older supporters would stick with the traditional England powers of ManU, Arsenal, or Liverpool (Pool was huge back in the day but has fallen off recently).
Currently, we don't really have a criteria in place for how to judge a club's "brand value". Is it fan base? The money they make? The "prestige" of the club? Spending power? IMO, the biggest football brands are Barcelona, Madrid, and Manchester United by far.
This is completely subjective, but I'm basing this on the idea that if I asked a random person on the street who has never seen a football match in his life to name 5 clubs, I can almost guarantee that they will list these 3 clubs along with maybe 2 others. My guess is that the other 2 will either be 2 other traditionally strong premier league teams (i.e. Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool, maybe Manchester City) due to the coverage of the Premier League, Bayern (due to them being so big in Germany and their recent dominance), a traditionally strong Italian team (most likely AC Milan, but also maybe Juventus/Inter), or they would stop after those 3. Obviously, I have no way to test this, but overall, I think for whatever reason, those 3 are the most "prestigious" clubs in the world and as such have the largest brands in football.
I completely agree with this sentiment. However, using your criteria, I don't think Barcelona should be on the list as "top". Man U and Real are top of the top in name recognition.
Barcelona (like Baryern), really weren't that much of a powerhouse until the recent 5 years or so. The rise of Barcelona has really just coincided with Messi, who hasn't been around that long. A decade ago, Barca really did not content with the best.
Of course, my analysis is very subjective (as is everyone's) so its hard to get a real grasp of who is more right than someone else.
Disagree on Barca. Even prior to Messi, they were one of the top clubs in the world historically and not far off at all from Real Madrid in terms of domestic accomplishments. They helped revolutionize the game under Cruyff in the latter part of the 20th century, and they have always brought in superstars to complement the talent developed in their academy.
I think you're spot on except for where you say the Bundesliga isn't as competitive as the Premier League, La Liga, or Serie A. I'd argue that it's more competitive than all you just listed except the Premier League.
Yes La Liga has the best two teams in the world, and a solid 2-3 after them that do well in Europe and still pose a challenge, but the rest of the league is nonsense. Serie A is also garbage as a whole.
The Bundesliga is VERY well spread out as far as talent is concerned with Bayern the only real obvious favorite because of all of the spoils of winning. Dortmund is a very, very legitimate team too. The rest of the league is balanced completely though and it's fun soccer to watch.
If Madrid isn't playing and the Premier League isn't on, I would pick the Bundesliga to watch over anything else.
Last post was pretty accurate. Arsenal are truly the historic team of London, and as a result, have an immense presence in the US and Asia markets.
Milan is the most internationally titled team in the world. They won 5 champions League in the last 25 years and were simply the best team in the history at the time of Van Basten, Baresi, Maldini, Gullit, and Rijkaard. To put City, Arsenal, Chelsea, etc in the same sentence is pure blasphemy.
Until about 10 years ago Serie A was by far the best and highest paid league in the world. Maradona (Napoli), Zidane (Juventus) and Ronaldo (Inter) played their top football while in Italy, while no top Italian player like Baggio, Maldini, or Baresi ever went abroad. Van Basten, Weah, Savicevic were "monsters" in their times and played for Milan.
The France winning team of 1998 and the Germany 1990 teams were formed almost exclusively by Serie A based players.
Matter of fact in the 1980's and 1990's almost all Golden Ball winners were Serie A players:
1982 Rossi (Juve) 1983-1985 Platini (Juve) 1987 Gullit (Milan) 1988-1989 Van Basten (Milan) 1990 Matthaus (Inter) 1991 Papin (OM and then Milan) 1992 Van Basten (Milan) 1993 Baggio (Juve) 1995 Weah (Milan) 1997 Ronaldo (Inter) 1998 Zidane (Juve)
After then Premier League and Real/Barca started paying higher and higher salaries and it became more even although Nedved, Shevchenko, Kaka and Cannavaro were too playing Serie A at the time they won the golden ball.
In 2003 three out of four CL semifinalists were Italian.
Whoever said Serie A is garbage can only be a bandwagon American soccer fan.
Yea but you're just a bandwagon
It's obvious you are a Milan homer, which is fine. But don't imply they are a more storied club than Real Madrid. That's ridiculous.
Secondly, Serie A football has been as big of an eyesore as the league's reliably empty stadiums for the past 5 or so years, as the counter-based style of the league has been passed by, by more progressive leagues in England, Spain, and Germany. At the same time, Italy has struggled to either develop or import talent at a high enough level to compete with the other major leagues.
And it's great to have parity, which the Italian league has a good deal of, but it still doesn't approach what the PL brings.
But the fact that you mentioned Arsenal in the same breath as City and Chelsea already reveals a lot.
From wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A.C._Milan
"They are the most successful club in world football in terms of international trophies along with Boca Juniors, with 18 officially recognized UEFA and FIFA titles."
Develop talent? Mhh did England or Germany win World Cup 2006 and made the final of Euro 2012 by any chance?
How many Champions League did Arsenal win in the last 30 years?
Thanks for the entertainment.
Let me reiterate: Serie A is garbage
Just because it used to be the #1 league does not make it any less garbage currently.
Maybe someday it won't be garbage.
Today is not that day.
Thanks for proving to us your American ignorance
Hah, yes. Me advocating for two or three foreign leagues over another foreign league certainly makes me ignorant due to the fact that I'm American. Excellent logic.
@Ibracadabra , I don't think anyone was saying that it is garbage. Merely that it has declined in recent years when compared with Spanish, English, and even the German leagues.
However, it is still a great league that produces, attracts, and has many of the best players in the world.
CRE above wrote this nonsense. "Yes La Liga has the best two teams in the world, and a solid 2-3 after them that do well in Europe and still pose a challenge, but the rest of the league is nonsense. Serie A is also garbage as a whole."
I had to say something :-)
Serie A was, and perhaps still is, the most competitive in terms of how difficult it can be for the BIGs to play against the low table teams. Look no further than Milan losing to Verona in their first game this season for instance or Di Natale Serie A leading scorer with Udinese for several seasons.
Beyond Milan, Juventus, and Inter, you have Roma, Napoli, Fiorentina, and even Lazio who have some world class players.
Balotelli is a great brand in soccer right now. He was featured in sports Illustrated http://tracking.si.com/2013/08/20/mario-balotelli-on-sports-illustrated…
http://time100.time.com/2013/04/18/time-100/slide/mario-balotelli/
The undoubted Top 3, and I assume most knowledgeable fans will agree are, Real Madrid, Man. U. and Barcelona, in that order. Real Madrid are not only the "best" club team of all time, they are also consistently beating the world transfer record (that they typically have set to begin with). Their transfer approach started a little over a decade ago where they would acquire "Galacticos" which were essentially some of the best players in the world, for insane prices (Beckham, Figo, ZIdane, etc.) and that has essentially been continued to this day. Their mentality in decision making is almost unique in the fact that most of their choices come down to a business perspective rather than a sporting perspective IE see their latest transfer of Gareth Bale. A great player who Real bought for a world-record price, despite not being one of the utmost best players in the world. But, he's good-looking and becomes their only British player (easing their way into that market). Man. United benefit from being the most recognizable club in the most recognizable league. This, IMO, puts them pretty close to Real Madrid, but slightly off, as Real, again, are pretty unique in running their team like a business rather than, well, a soccer team. Barcelona have been the best in the world since 2008, and have arguably the most marketable player in the world (Messi) but still are a ways behind in regards to Real and Man. U. After that it would be a mixture between top Premier League teams (Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool) and other natural European heavyweights (Bayern, Milan, Juventus) with Bayern maybe even making 4th behind Real, Man. U. and Barca.
arsenlol
It's funny that all of you FIFA 13 players are still goin at it
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