Webpage

Analysis
ARSENAL FC
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More than any other activity, and especially in sports, a team website is the first shop window

of its commercial offer and has to have the most developing and valuable image possible.

This study aims to analyze the marketing strategy that Arsenal FC has put in place, that is

what kind of image does it vehicle? How does it answer to the potential sports participants or

spectators expectations? How does it integer itself into a global marketing promotion

strategy?

Presentation of the club – History

Arsenal FC is located in Holloway, north London. The Gunners belong to the Premierleague

Championship and is a frightened team when comes the Champions League. The club owns

13 England Champion trophies and 10 FA cups.

In Europe, Arsenal won once in UEFA cup and is the only London team who accessed the

champions League final.

Arsenal has been founded in 1886. It has come in first division in 1919 and won its first title

in 1930. During the 1970-1971 season, Arsenal has won the two most important national cups

for the first time of its history, that is the Cup and the Premierleague Championship. The

Gunners have repeated this feat during the 1997-1998 and in 2001-2002. In 2003-2004 the

Gunners have won the championship being undefeated on the whole season. The team has

also been stayed undefeated during 49 matches, which has lasted during three seasons.

Presentation of the website

The website design is restrained and clear, with a horizontal three-part repartition

(banner/body/bottom-of-page) and a vertical one (menu/central text).

The website colors are dominated by the red, the white and the black, which contribute to the

restraint style of the page. The red color of the logo, which is the identifying color of the club,

has been certainly chosen because of its dynamic symbolism. The logo evokes instantly the

sports environment, the victories and the whole history of the club just thanks to the little
cannon drawn on it.

The summary of the website can be found on the right part of the website where you can find

a “membership” section, a part concerning the different meetings and events for the season or

interactive devices to watch the latest news about the club.

The main banner presents different possibilities to get information about matches, about the

corporation or the “fanzone” and is very complete as you can find everything you are looking

for, and more.

The core of the website is composed by the latest news about the players or historical facts,

but you also have the option to watch some videos about the greatest goals.

Finally, the right part is composed by advertisements of the club to download ringtones or buy

the tickets for the season.

The marketing strategy

The Arsenal FC marketing strategy, like any other company, aims to use resources in order to

find opportunities to increase sales and achieve to have a great competitive advantage. The

customer satisfaction is the main goal, and this is what the marketing strategy is centered

around.

Let’s first analyze the extern and intern environment of the company, which will allow us

then to define its positioning and its marketing mix.

We can analyze the strategic options for this website using a SWOT analysis.

STRENGHTS WEAKNESSES
Attractive, great design website Too much information
Excellent content with a useful blog Not enough languages
Easy navigation, user-friendly Not addressed enough to young people
Relevant search engine
Good visibility in Asian markets (thanks to
the different languages in Korean, Chinese
and Japanese)
Important sales thanks to the website (30%
of the revenues)
OPPORTUNITIES THREATS
 Implication of the fans concerning the Competitors websites
decision of the club Depends much on the teams results
High income/educated visitors Indirect competitors selling team products
Famous players coming every year

Positionning
Arsenal has positioned itself as a historic leader on the soccer landscape. To succeed in

favorizing a such image in its supporters mind, the club work hard on its marketing strategy

about several factors.

Angus Kinnear, the UK head of marketing for Arsenal said “We are very aware that fans

make their decision about football brands at an early age. Most people, especially in the UK,

will choose their team based on loyalty. If your father supports Arsenal it’d be a struggle to

break away from it.”

The club tries to take advantage of the pre-season to get new members and to loyalty scheme

thanks to direct mail and the website. It considers as important to be close to its members and

to be loyal with them. This is the reason why it uses the membership scheme online and it

deals tickets out fairly too. Arsenal tries to communicate with its members and its supporters

to let them know that their loyalty is appreciated.

The club counts on about 200,000 paid members, which makes it the biggest paid for a

membership for a football club in the corld. So that they could keep these members, the club

tries to stay in touch with them and keep in regular contact.

Concerning the international market, football is considered as one of the most recognizable

exporter, especially in Great Britain. It was studied that a lot of attention come thanks to

team’s successes. But one of the issue is that the team cannot play in other countries. To reach

their target abroad, the club has succeeded in creating serious partnerships in Asia or Middle

East for instance. The marketing management have found out that thanks to its international

marketing schemes, it can influence people’s choice concerning following a team.

The club marketing focuses on driving loyalty of supporters, attracting some new spectators

and create a wide range of products and services to meet the spectators’ needs.

So the positioning is clear: thanks to its website, Arsenal wants to create “an environment

where the people can enjoy the game, the hospitality and the concessions”.

Compared to other business models, Arsenal’s key objective is to be self sufficient.

The target
The target this website is obviously the men aged between 25 and 45 as they are the people

who visit the most this website. They are often educated people with quite high income, as

attending a game is quite expensive. The sober design and the quality of the information can

totally correspond to them.

Another target can also be cited: the young people, more precisely young men, like the

supporters who like to watch matches either on television, or being spectators at the stadium.

They are looking for information about their favorite club, and this is the reason why the

website will try to respond their demand.

The last target than can be cited is a growing one: the women are also a new target of the

football teams marketing as they become a part of it, being players or spectators. A tab on the

website is dedicated to the feminine team with the last news about their matches, the

composition of the team, etc…

Products
The website offer many possibilities to access the information about the club and its former

and latest news, the shop online, the interactive devices, but also a betting zone, where you

can bet on games like poker or casino, but also for the soccer games.

Comparison elements with another website: Chelsea FC (chelseafc.com)

Concerning the construction, Chelsea FC website is close to the Arsenal’s one as it presents

also medias possibilities to watch videos or journalistic interviews of players.

The website is blue like the color of the team, and it seems to contain a little bit less

information than the Arsenal’s one. It is really easy to navigate too, and it is user-friendly.

This website seems to be addressed directly to the fans.

The website of Arsenal is more visited than Chelsea’s one, and some factors can explain this:

- Arsenal is considered as more popular, that is they have much more fans than Chelsea

has (Arsenal average attendance : 38 184 spectators, Chelsea average attendance:

- Chelsea is a club younger than Arsenal, and was too lately considered as an European-

class club.

- Chelsea has been considered for a long time like a poor kid compared to the bigger

English clubs

Recommendations
Tom improve this website which is already a high-quality website, we could try to synthesize

the information, that is make groups for the things which can go together, or open new web

pages for the interactive content of the fan zone for example. A website which has too much

information can discourage the internet user to look for what he or she was looking for, and

he or she may quit the website to look for it anywhere else.

Another improvement could be made concerning the languages, that is add some other

languages like Spanish, French, or German as European or South American countries feel

really concerned with successful teams, moreover with English teams. So the Arsenal

marketing teams should not forget to make marketing and communicate to these countries.

As we said before that the website was not addressed enough to the young, the website should

have more interactive activities for the young people, that is games, where they could win

prizes, tickets for the game or meetings with the players. A such website should not be

addressed only to the grown-ups, but also the kids as they are expected to be the future

spectators at the stadium. Sportive and pleasure values have to be transmitted to them so that

they could be the future spectators.