How we helped Chelsea FC to understand fans globally

Segmenting the modern football supporter

The puzzle

Chelsea FC is a club with big achievements, big ambitions and fans all over the world.

• It knows these fans may have different needs and motivations, but may also have underlying similarities.
• It needed a way to understand its fans on a global level – to help with its communications and fan activities, without resorting to either one-size-fits-all or simplistic country-level campaigns.

The pieces

We conducted an international segmentation of football supporters.

• We started with qual in UK, USA, Thailand and China
• Then we conducted 11,000 online interviews in 11 markets in 6 continents.
• We used the data from these interviews to build a robust and comprehensive segmentation.

 The picture

The segmentation has been adopted by Chelsea Football Club.

• It’s being used to inform the club’s marketing and comms strategy.
• Importantly, it has been really valuable in understanding the difference between the UK and the emerging football markets.