The issue of foreign Premier League players, specifically non-EU players, is at an all-time high. Current and former footballers and managers have all aired their, mostly tepid if not negative, opinions on the Premier League’s obsession with acquiring foreign talent. The general consensus, clubs purchasing and utilizing large amounts of foreign players weakens England’s national team and crowds out opportunities for domestic talent to thrive in the Premier League.
club ownership of non-EU players has the potential to be a shrewd business move for clubs looking to expand their reach into emerging football markets.
Regardless of how you feel on the matter of foreign Premier League players and their impact on English football and England’s national squad, club ownership of non-EU players has the potential to be a shrewd business move for clubs looking to expand their reach into emerging football markets.
Consider Park Ji-sung, former South Korean international, former Manchester United midfielder, four-time Premier League winner, Champions League winner, and according to Andrea Pirlo the ‘first nuclear-powered South Korean in history‘. As far as foreign Premier League players go Park was immense. On the pitch he won fifteen trophies with United over seven seasons. He became known as one of Sir Alex Ferguson’s ‘big game players’ and earned the moniker ‘Three Lungs Park’ for his boundless energy and incredibly high work rate. He appeared over 200 times for the Red Devils and in his final season Park captained the side against Ajax in the Europa League.
Off the pitch, Park was marketing dynamite. His role at United made him an axiom in his home country, Park was arguably the face of South Korean football and United swam in the wake of Park’s popularity. Park Ji-sung jerseys became a multi-million pound earner in South Korea. Pre-season matches in Seoul in 2005, 2007, and 2009 drew sellout crowds. In a country of 48 million, an estimated 1.2 million South Koreans held a Manchester United branded credit card. Perhaps most importantly, approximately 40 million South Koreans were watching United on television per season.
This data is of course, old. Park left United in 2012 and retired from club football in 2014. While Park’s star is certainly no longer on the rise, the Premier League has undoubtedly established itself as the world’s football league. The best metric to illustrate the growing popularity of the Premier League is the value of recent Premier League television deals outside of Europe.
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The Premier League stands to earn just under £1 billion in Asian broadcasting revenue between 2013 and 2016. Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East/North Africa regions account for an additional £410 million in TV revenue. While television revenue in North America is comparatively low (£162 million), major networks such as ESPN, Fox, and newcomers BeIN are beginning to jockey for television rights after existing contracts lapse in 2016.
Overseas Premier League viewership is up across the board. There are new markets consuming English football at growing rates and supporters overseas are feeling increasingly connected to football clubs thousands of miles away from them. Outside of their football abilities foreign Premier League players, that is to say non-EU players, provide clubs with a unique approach for liaising with new fans in emerging football markets.
The recent transfer window saw rumours swirling about Chelsea being linked with Guangzhou Evergrande defender Zhang Linpeng. More cynical supporters and commentators deduced that the move for Zhang was more of a business derived transfer than one to build the squad. While comment section and forum chatter could easily be dismissed as conjecture, there is a nugget of truth to it. Especially when you consider that Chinese sports channel, Super Sports, recently agreed to a six-year deal with the Premier League to broadcast all 380 matches over 21 different free-to-air
stations across the entire country (a market of 1.3 billion people). If Zhang were to receive regular playtime at Chelsea he would be the only active Chinese player in the Premier League.
Foreign Premier League players provide a direct marketing link to the audience in their home country. If you’re a casual football fan from a country where football isn’t the national sport (or a major one), chances are you’ll rally around a player that makes it to a major league. When you look at the success Park had with United and in using that success to draw in South Korean football fans to the United fan base, it’s hard to ignore the potential foreign Premier League players have for unlocking new sources of revenue for clubs.
A major caveat to this is that said foreign player has to actually play. For every Park, Dwight Yorke, and Dider Drogba there are scores of foreign Premier League players that seldom play, let alone make the team sheet come game day. Players like Juan Cuadrado, Ryo Miyachi, Mohamed Salah, Giovani dos Santos, and Dong Fangzhuo may have caught the attention of potential foreign fans but their lack of play gave them no staying power. For foreign players to pay dividends, they need to play.
For foreign players to pay dividends, they need to play.
Other factors may play a role in whether a foreign Premier League player actually generates a fan base for their club abroad. Footballers like Park, Yorke, Chicharito, and Drogba were all successful in attaining major trophies with their respective clubs along with individual honours. Does club success for a foreign player affect the amount of fans that rally around them in their home country? What about club size and reach? Larger ‘top four’ clubs may have the means to penetrate into foreign markets where less financially powerful teams may not. Larger clubs may also gain easier viewership with major games (say, Manchester United v Liverpool) being broadcast on free-to-air channels, while smaller club matches may only be broadcast on specialty sport channel packages.
Building a fan base around a foreign player in an emerging football market means the potential for a greater share of television ratings for a club, along with greater kit sales, and new avenues for club sponsors to market to potential customers. With new FA regulations being passed and put into effect next season permitting only ‘top tier’ non-EU talent to receive work permits to play in England, Premier League clubs should allocate their work permits strategically. Not just to maximize their on pitch capabilities, but to maximize their revenue generation in burgeoning football markets abroad.