A comprehensive analysis of the TV coverage covering European club football across all national and international competitions carried out in five European football markets (UK, France, Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands) has revealed that the international media impact a club can generate does not only depend on its success on the pitch.
In the study carried out by leading international media analysts IFM International the top European football club remains Real Madrid with an international club index of 1975.3 points from over 620 hours of coverage, despite the fact that they failed to win a trophy this year and were eliminated at the quarter final stage of the UEFA Champions League.
The club index directly links the length of the coverage dedicated to each club to the audiences watching this coverage on a broadcast per broadcast basis, thus allowing direct comparison of long broadcasts with low audiences on Pay-TV to shorter broadcasts with high audiences on national broadcasters. This tool therefore enables a fair comparison of the media impact for each club. The value for Real Madrid is triple the value generated by Manchester United and more than twice what the finalist of the UEFA Champions League final – AS Monaco – generated.
Club Index
1. Real Madrid 1,975.3
2. AC Milan 1,241.7
3. AS Monaco 945.9
4. FC Chelsea 679.3
5. Man Utd 637.8
6. FC Valencia 553.6
However, the result generated by AS Monaco underlines the importance of success on the international stage, especially for clubs from the ‘smaller’ leagues, which do not generate the air time such as the Barclays Premier League or the Primera Division. When considering this, the result for AS Monaco is quite considerable, especially as the French league does not generate any significant amount of air time outside its home market.
This is in stark contrast to the Premier League or the Primera Division which generate more than 500 hours of TV coverage outside their home market alone with the Premier League still winning this battle. As an example, the Premier League received 332 hours of coverage in France alone (over half an hour on national news broadcasts) reaching just over 440 million viewing contacts.
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