Interesting, but probably cack stats.

[webmaster]

6-7k is normally accepted as providing a representative random sample. However, it depends how the sample is selected, and whether or not it requires some demographic selection to be truly representative. We simplty don't know how it was done.

In the words of Vic Reeves: "94% of all statistics are wrong". :icon_bigg

They do explain how they collect the data:
http://www.roymorgan.com/resources/pdf/factsheets/UKFactSheet_A4scr.pdf

 

[MKFox]

Edinburgh isn't much bigger than Leicester, but there is more than one football team there.

450,000 in edinburgh, 280,000 in leicester

 

[Hazzman]

It looks unrealistic, but not hugely so, and is probably the result of the sample size being too small. I'm sure it's a more realistic survey than your suggestion. And I don't think I was being vicious.

Alright, a frank opinion, no-one likes to be wrong.

 

[weluvulesta]

very strange

 

[Fox From The Hudd]

Are they?

What if some clubs charge more for shirts than others?

Prices for the major clubs are the same due to the major retailers being in competition

What if a club only sells through their club shop, with no mail order or internet sales?

Only a small club would do this

What if the shirt looks hideous?

Works the other way in fact - a really good away shirt will sell more.


There are numerous factors that can affect shirt sales, not just how popular a club is.

The major brands know the worth of each club in terms of shirt sales - the core sales are pretty easy to predict.
Cetain factors do play a part i.e. success on the pitch, exceptional design but overall the numbers are pretty much fixed.

The key factor is how big the fanbase is - if another teams shirt was a great design and £20 the majority of people still wouldn't buy it!!

 

[glyn]

I'm sure there's a statistician among us, maybe he can tell us how accurate this kind of figure would be.

Well I claim to be one. I don't think it's particularly bad, we publish a lot of more detailed data based on a sample of less than 5000 (although with heavy caveats). It roughly (back of the envelope by me here) equates to around 50 people saying that they support Leicester. But the confidence intervals are quite large. Again using the back of an envelope, if 5 less actual people had said Leicester the estimate would be around 100k less.

Without doing a statistical test, I'd wager that you couldn't apply the rankings in the bottom half with any degree of statistical significance. i.e in this sample LCFC are above Norwich and Middlesbrough, but the evidence to me doesn't suggest that it is a statistically significant difference and if you re-sampled they may well be the other way round.

 

[glyn]

This kinda of stats are very false they take fans from say for example America, Desert Fox in Arizona and say well if there is one Leicester fan in Arizona, then that means there is 52 other Leicester fans from America.

The sample has been drawn from the UK population aged 14 or above.

This in itself cuts out a lot of glory hunting Man U/Chelsea kids, I would think :icon_razz

The best way to work out fan base for example would be take a general football forum and see how many Man U, Arsenal, Liverpool are on there. There will quite possibly be 10 of them and a couple of City fans.

Webbo is right, that is a far worse way of coming up with a reliable estimate than this survey!

 

[webmaster]

Prices for the major clubs are the same due to the major retailers being in competition

But we're not just talking about major clubs.

Only a small club would do this

We're not just talking about big clubs.

Works the other way in fact - a really good away shirt will sell more.

Of course it will, but that's just further proof that the number of shirts sold doesn't just reflect the number of fans a club has.

The key factor is how big the fanbase is - if another teams shirt was a great design and £20 the majority of people still wouldn't buy it!!

Of course, but you can't use the number of shirts sold to work out how many fans a club has compared to other clubs, because there are so many other factors involved.

 

[glyn]

although the most important thing is that we have no idea what question was asked. someone mentioned earlier that they may ask people for their first and second choice etc. who knows

so the further you look into it the more dodgy you might find it gets. Or you might find that it's not too bad. there we go, fence truly sat on.

 

[Fox From The Hudd]

Of course, but you can't use the number of shirts sold to work out how many fans a club has compared to other clubs, because there are so many other factors involved.

But going back to the original question "how do you determine the fan base for a club" it is still as good a yardstick as any for the following reasons...

1. It's a financial commitment to buy a shirt therefore defing a fan.
2. It's not dependent on availability unlike say a match ticket

However I acknowledge there are other factors e.g.

There are many genuine football fans who would never be seen dead in a replica shirt.
Some will only buy a shirt dependent on the price or the design.
Some will buy every shirt whatever the situation

I'm pretty sure though these figures are uniform across the teams and therefore would prove shirt sales give an indication of the total fan base for a team...

 

[Leesoh]

450,000 in edinburgh, 280,000 in leicester

I didn't think Edinburgh was that big? It'll all change when they make most of the suburbs part of the city of Leicester.

 

[webmaster]

I'm pretty sure though these figures are uniform across the teams and therefore would prove shirt sales give an indication of the total fan base for a team...

Disagree. Shirts don't have the same availability. For example a Man U fan in Cornwall has far more chance of buying his team's shirt than a Leicester fan in the same place. Tha Man U fan can go to his local high street and buy one from JJB etc. The Leicester fan will still be able to get one, but he won't be able to look at it, try it on, and buy one on the spur of the moment, it takes a lot more work, so reduces the number of sales.

Shirts with a two year life will sell at a different rate to those that will just last for a year.

"special" shirts (such as Arsenal's last year at Highbury shirt) will sell more than normal shirts.

Would you be measuring total shirt sales, or sales of just the home shirt?
Both have their drawbacks. Some clubs have three different shirts available, some have two. This can effect things in two ways. Some supporters will buy all of them. Some supporters might only buy one - so them buying a particular shirt (eg the home one) will be different, depending on how many different shirts are available.

It also depends on what colour the club plays in. For example some clubs rarely need a second shirt (Wolves, Norwich etc), so they'll sell a lot more home shirts than away ones, but this may mean the total number of shirts sold is lower.

 

[Fox From The Hudd]

Disagree. Shirts don't have the same availability. For example a Man U fan in Cornwall has far more chance of buying his team's shirt than a Leicester fan in the same place. Tha Man U fan can go to his local high street and buy one from JJB etc. The Leicester fan will still be able to get one, but he won't be able to look at it, try it on, and buy one on the spur of the moment, it takes a lot more work, so reduces the number of sales.

Shirts with a two year life will sell at a different rate to those that will just last for a year.

"special" shirts (such as Arsenal's last year at Highbury shirt) will sell more than normal shirts.

Would you be measuring total shirt sales, or sales of just the home shirt?
Both have their drawbacks. Some clubs have three different shirts available, some have two. This can effect things in two ways. Some supporters will buy all of them. Some supporters might only buy one - so them buying a particular shirt (eg the home one) will be different, depending on how many different shirts are available.

It also depends on what colour the club plays in. For example some clubs rarely need a second shirt (Wolves, Norwich etc), so they'll sell a lot more home shirts than away ones, but this may mean the total number of shirts sold is lower.

Ok then just phone someone up and ask them on the off chance.....

 

[DesertFox]

The reason we're *supposed* to have such a big fan base is that there are x-number of people in Leicestershire, not just Leicester (yes, even these oddballs from Melton, etc ) and City are the only professional club. With the exception of Cornwall there can't be many counties that applies to. Also, City have a decent following in Northants as they've never had a "big" club there either.

With that said, it never seems to translate into actual paying fans, does it? :icon_conf A bit like our current squad, bags of potential, but.... :icon_conf

 

[Melton Fox]

The reason we're *supposed* to have such a big fan base is that there are x-number of people in Leicestershire, not just Leicester (yes, even these oddballs from Melton, etc ) and City are the only professional club. With the exception of Cornwall there can't be many counties that applies to. Also, City have a decent following in Northants as they've never had a "big" club there either.

With that said, it never seems to translate into actual paying fans, does it? :icon_conf A bit like our current squad, bags of potential, but.... :icon_conf

 

[Melton Fox]

Kent

 

[Melton Fox]

Derbyshire

 

[Melton Fox]

E.Sussex

 

[Melton Fox]

Hereford, Worcester, Gloucester all have none

 

[newtonfox]

Tucson, Arizona