BA (Hons) Football Business & Marketing (UCAS ref: CN65)

Course Content

The football business is inextricably linked with the marketing industry. Indeed, football is a multi-billion pound global industry driven by marketing. There are particular challenges and opportunities because of the special relationships between clubs and their supporters, from fans queuing at the stadium shop for the new home and away shirts through to those from different continents who follow them on-line and who also want to demonstrate their identification with their favourite clubs and global brands using football as a platform.

Marketing football is not only about individual clubs, however, as shown by the phenomenal global marketing success of the English Premier League and indeed the Championship. Understanding how this growth is achieved makes this rapidly expanding but unusual economic environment an ideal context for studying marketing.

Beyond football clubs, leagues and associations, the manufacturers and retailers of football shirts, boots and other kit are well known as among the most successful, fast-changing, fashionable and technologically advanced businesses in the world. Their brands are interwoven with the football business and with the marketing industry.

What’s more, many of the world’s biggest brands which at first sight seem unrelated to football, from credit cards, banks and insurance to fast food and the soft drinks industry, increasingly use the power of football as a marketing tool in their own businesses.

Football business offers a flexible marketing platform with exciting job prospects for those who can thrive in its multi-cultural, multi-lingual, technologically sophisticated world.

Understanding buying behaviour is at the heart of this marketing and informs important decisions about segmenting and targeting customers, the products and services that the organisation needs to provide and the pricing, distribution and communications that will help build successful brands.

Year 1

The first year of the course focuses on the foundations of marketing and how it relates to the football business and surrounding industries. This focus on buyer behaviour develops an understanding of consumer psychology and customer relationship management.

Year 2

The second year develops your understanding of how football’s global brands are built and managed, how to assess the role of direct marketing and the role of digital technologies in marketing programmes.

Year 3

The final year sees the development of a marketing and football-related research project on a topic chosen by you, together with modules providing a strategic view of international marketing management and a bridge into marketing practice.