By 2013, that figure had soared to a staggering £5.5bn, and around half the Premier League’s billion-strong global fan base now hail from Asia. When the Premier League began in 1992-93, global TV rights were worth some £8 million a year. In Japan – where Arsenal vie with Chelsea as the country’s most popular team – J Sports and NHK make sure it all sounds familiar and throughout the Indian sub-continent, Manchester United’s millions of devotees get to watch their team’s progress in Hindi. The story is similar right across the region. China, for example, has no English language broadcasts at all but fans, 26% of whom support Manchester United can choose from a staggering 18 different channels to watch the Premier League in Mandarin. The vast majority of matches shown live in Asia have local presenters who improve fan engagement by augmenting Sky and BT feeds with commentary in local languages. Localisation is also a key factor in football’s growing popularity in Asia. Perhaps no surprise then that Spain’s La Liga is lagging behind in popularity their 8 pm matches air at around 3am/4am in Asia. There’s no doubt that Premier League matches are conveniently timed for Asia: matches which start at 33 pm in England air at 10 pm or 11 pm in Southeast Asia. These have created a vast army of shirt-wearing, anthem-chanting, merchandise-hungry fans but it’s the sport’s accessibility which is fuelling the business of soccer in Asia. Businesses have leveraged this exposure, tying in their brands and raising awareness of players and teams with multi-million-pound commercial sponsorship deals. By 2014, 98% of all Premier League matches were available to TV viewers outside of England – with North Korea and Albania the only two countries with no officially licensed access. Long before Europe’s other leagues had even begun to think about expanding their exposure overseas, the BBC and ITV were already dominating screens across Asia, bringing multi-million-dollar windfalls to League clubs in the form of lucrative broadcast rights. There are several key factors behind British football’s soaring fan engagement in Asia, but one of the key reasons is just the Premier League got in there first. Since 2011, soccer viewership in India has grown by 134%. In India, some 170 million fans tuned in for the first ever Indian Super League two years ago and football is now the second most followed sport in the nation. That figure is set to soar to more than 480 million by the year 2020 and – at present – most of those fans get their League match fix in Hindi. India is home to some 170 million fans, a sum greater than all the fans in the UK, Spain, Italy, Germany and USA combined. While China’s 400 million football fans are arguably the most passionate in the world, other Asian countries have also seen tremendous growth in fan engagement. According to sports research company Repucom, more than 820 million of those fans follow the Premier League. British football in Asia has enjoyed phenomenal growth in recent years, and Asia’s total soccer fan base is already estimated at more than a billion. In fact, they’re not even in Europe – they’re located up to 5,000 miles away in China, and they’ll be watching the matches – in the early hours of the morning – in Mandarin. Iron Fans are not, as you might suspect, in the UK. ![]() But what’s fascinating about Iron Fans is not how much they love the game, but where they are. When the 2016-17 Premier League season kicks off on August 13, the Iron Fans will be glued to their screens. They’re known as Iron Fans, football enthusiasts whose passion for the Beautiful Game – and the Premier League in particular – makes them among the sport’s most ardent and valuable followers.
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