While major sports leagues in the United States prepare to launch towards the regular season, the English Premier League is already giving way to some interesting competition. We are less than two weeks into the campaign and a lot has already taken place.
We’ve seen Arsenal — whose coach promised fans that the club would win the 2015-16 Premier League title — get thrashed by West Ham at home, 2-0. Additionally, Chelsea, the defending champs, got smothered by rival Manchester City, 3-0, at Etihad Stadium. Meanwhile, Manchester United just scraped through their two matches with 1- 0 victories against Tottenham and Aston Villa. All in all, this season has the potential to be one of the most competitive the Premier League has had in awhile.
In the process, fans from around the world have responded accordingly, as Ticketbis has registered international ticket sales at their highest-ever peak for the first two weeks of the season. According to the secondary ticketing platform, which has presence in over 40 countries, 64.7 percent of ticket sales for the top five Premier League teams have been registered on domains outside the UK. This is significantly higher than the 46.8 percent that was recorded at the same time a year ago.
Interestingly enough, 5.1 percent of total sales for 2015/16 Premier League matches featuring top clubs Chelsea, Arsenal, Man United, Man City, and Liverpool are coming from Ticketbis’ U.S. domain, the highest percentage after the UK. Right behind the U.S, South Korea is responsible for 4.6 percent, and then Australia with 4.2 percent of sales for this year’s matchups.
One thing we can deduce from these figures is that the world is intrigued by the uppermost elite competition. As far as soccer goes, that label could easily go to the Premier League, which contains the highest caliber of talent among top-tier and lower-tier clubs compared to their European counterparts such as La Liga, Serie A and Ligue 1, who have a more unequal income distribution across them. However, that is not to undermine marketing efforts and the ability Premier League clubs have in capturing international attention, especially outside Europe.
