Data on Ronaldo’s Commercial Muscle Makes Him a Sure Bet in the Premier League

There is no doubt that the biggest sporting story of the year so far was Cristiano Ronaldo returning to Manchester United. The Portuguese star re-signed for the Red Devils after leaving the club in 2009 for stints with Real Madrid and Juventus. This was not just a win for the team on the pitch, the Commercial power of a star like Ronaldo has already caused a huge jump in revenues for the club.

The fact that the star striker’s announcement sent the Man United share price up by 8%, adding €250M in shareholder value, shows what a smart signing this was by the Glazers. The share price has since retreated, but you can be sure that if the media hype generated by this signing can be matched by success on the pitch, then the organisations market value will be climbing once more.

The most important revenue drivers for Sports Organisations & Rights Holders are Broadcast Rights, Merchandise Sales, Ticket Sales, and Sponsorship. In this blog post we take a look at how each of these core business units of a sports organisation are utilised as part of overall business strategy.   

Broadcast Rights

The value of the Premier League has always been driven by the size of their Broadcast deals which in turn swells transfer fees and ultimately ends up with players earning eye watering weekly wages that is now led by Ronaldo at £510,000 a week. Man United players occupy five of the top ten player wages in the league this season (Ronaldo, De Gea, Sancho, Varane, Pogba), so they must ensure they maximise commercial results to cover their marquee names.

The Premier League announced earlier this year that it has renewed a £4.8bn (over €5.5bn) TV rights deal with its existing partners Sky, BT, and Amazon, avoiding an auction that could have led to hundreds of millions being wiped off the value of the next deal. This huge sum is nearly double that of their closest rivals, La Liga (£2.95bn) and Bundesliga (£2.84bn), for their most recent three-year equivalent deals which goes some way to explaining why the Premier League is luring the greatest football talent to British shores.

Merchandise Sales

The iconic No. 7 shirt at United had been worn by Edinson Cavani when Ronaldo originally signed, the club were able to persuade the Uruguayan to change number though so that the ‘CR7’ brand could be reignited at Old Trafford. Fans flooded online when the replica jersey went on sale, and it only took four hours to smash the record as the highest daily sale on a single sports merchandise site outside North America.

United's official retail partner, Fanatics, confirmed the shirt sales hit record figures and the first hour alone bettered the best full day of global sales for the club's online store. Across the Fanatics network, Ronaldo became the biggest-selling player in the 24 hours following a transfer to a new club - leading Lionel Messi (to PSG), Tom Brady (to Tampa Bay Buccaneers) and LeBron James (to LA Lakers). The power of the merchandise sales data show that fans align themselves to global athletes more than they do to a particular team.  

It is actually Adidas that will see the initial benefit of these sales, with the German kit manufacturer paying a license fee to reproduce the famous red shirts on a £750m 10-year deal. That said, United’s current deal with Adidas is already football’s biggest, and the Ronaldo effect should allow the club’s executives to push up the price when it comes to renewal.

In monetary terms, Ronaldo shirt sales passed £187m in his first week at the club, in contrast to the near £104m Messi shirt sales generated in his first week at PGS. This shows that Ronaldo’s transfer fee of £12.9m was comfortably recouped before he even kicked a ball. With their reacquisition of Ronaldo, Manchester United now has the highest overall jersey sales in the Premier League, up from its third-place spot in the previous season. Chelsea remains in the second spot, while Liverpool sits firm at third, and Arsenal has fallen all the way from first to fourth, according to I Love Sports.

If you were interested in understanding fan buyer behaviour to optimise Merchandise Sales across Club Shop, e-Commerce, & third party supplier sites you can find out more about the Fulltime Analytics solution here.

Ticket Sales

To the delight of fans, and club accountants, supporters have come streaming back to stadia all over the world as the vaccine roll-out has gained pace. This will be particularly welcomed by the executives at Old Trafford as the stadium has the largest capacity with 74,000, followed by three London clubs with Tottenham, Arsenal, and West Ham, who made the move to the Olympic Stadium, rounding out the top-four.

With such a large capacity, it is no wonder that United also lead the charge for annual number of season ticket holders at 52,000. The Ronaldo effect was evident here again as single match tickets for his ‘second-debut’ at the club were going for over £2,000 (usually £35) for the game against Newcastle in August. These multiples were not lining the clubs’ coffers though, instead they were fueling the sleezy secondary ticket market with many fans being duped by fake tickets.

Ticketing is an integral revenue source for all professional teams and sports organisations, by using real-time data to track ticketing performance a club can tailor their marketing strategy to enhance match day revenues.   

Sponsorship

Manchester United have one of the most enviable sponsor lists in world sport with the likes of Aon, Adidas, and DHL aligning themselves with the club. The largest deal is of course held for the main shirt sponsor though, with Germany-based software firm TeamViewer agreeing £235m 5-year deal back in March.

While the majority of the clubs’ deals were in place before the signing of the Portuguese sensation, there is no doubt that the clubs’ renewals will be a lot more lucrative since he has donned the red jersey. The power of Ronaldo’s media presence was evident immediately, with that best shown by United's growth on their Instagram account which gained over 2m followers in less than a day on the back of his signing, it is now up a further 5m to a total of 50.2 million followers.

Ronaldo currently boasts half a billion followers across social media, compared to Manchester United’s 140 million, you can be sure that the teams sponsors will be lobbying the commercial department for CR7 to be rolled out at their latest product launches.

Sponsorship valuation can be a tough this to accurately assess, that is why Fulltime Analytics have developed a marketing leading Sponsor Exposure solution which accurately values the impact a partner receives through AI powered analytics.

Fulltime Analytics is a data analytics business with advanced Merchandise, Ticketing, and Sponsorship solutions built for Sports Organisations and Rights Holders. We are a team of data scientists and sports marketers, solely focused on Audience & Revenue growth for our clients.