October 1st, 2022, Emily Patel
Business challenge
Attract new sponsors and explore commercial opportunities outside of football.
Solution
Insight from YouGov Profiles on Southampton FC’s fanbase and other local audiences.
Business outcomes
Gaining high value sponsors and building strategies to increase revenue outside of football.
Business challenge
English football club Southampton FC needed to gain new sponsors and increase their audience reach. To appeal to potential partners, they required an approach that differentiated them from competitors and demonstrated a deep understanding of their fan base. The club also wanted to build strategies for generating revenue outside of traditional footballrelated activities – for example, using their venues for non-sporting events. Understanding their local audience in more depth was just as important as understanding their fans.
Solution
Southampton FC used granular audience data from YouGov Profiles to underpin their sponsor pitches. An ever-growing source of living data, with more than 2 million data variables from YouGov’s 26 million+ registered panel members, YouGov Profiles helped build a comprehensive portrait of the club’s audience, and the value of a partner sponsorship. Beyond partnerships, Southampton FC have been able to build out their non-sports related events strategy by leveraging YouGov Profiles’ comprehensive demographic, psychographic, attitudinal and behavioral consumer metrics to understand who may be interested in attending entertainment and business events at their stadium venue.
Business outcomes
Using YouGov Profiles, Southampton FC were immediately able to see an increase in success rates for partner identification, acquisition, and retention. After one year of using YouGov Profiles, the club now view its insights as a ‘must-have’ in their marketing and sales strategy. Results have been clear: a distinct increase in conversion rates for engaging and signing new and existing partners. YouGov Profiles has also helped Southampton FC to better manage their non-football events strategy, helping them to meet their objective to diversify revenue streams by proving the viability of offering non-sporting events to local audiences. Having gained a deeper understanding of both their fans and their local audience, Southampton FC are in a strong position to meet their objectives – both on and off the field.
Client testimonial
“YouGov Sport’s assistance and expertise have proved key in progressing insight for our Commercial team. The data provided is used in almost all of our conversations with strategic partners, providing a valuable tool that enables us to tell our unique story to a greater extent than before. The flexibility and ease of use has been critical in managing the real-world challenges of engaging with prospects and partners. Whilst these benefits were central to our purchase decision, our continued usage of their tools is reinforced by the numerous unexpected ad hoc uses of the tool that we encounter on a weekly basis and this regularly demonstrates to us that we made the correct decision in partnering with YouGov.”
- TOM WATSON, Research & Insights Manager, Southhampton FC