Fan demographics and commercial information

[Clyde1998]

There was an interesting thread on Twitter from about eighteen months ago detailing the demographics of Reading supporters listed in the club's commercial brochure. Makes for interesting* reading:

Key Statistics
• 10th Oldest Football Club in the world / 4th Oldest in UK
• 71 Academy Graduates to First Team
• 919k Social Media Followers
• 480k Newsletter Database
• 34k Partner opt in database
• 1m annual stadium visitors
• Highest Affluence Fanbase in the EFL

Fan Demographics
Gender
• 76% male
• 24% female- the highest percentage in UK football

Age
• 0-17 yrs - 12%
• 18-30 yrs - 20%
• 31 - 60 yrs - 44%
• 61+ yrs - 10%

Juniors (0-17)
• 0-7 yrs - 1.3%
• 8-11 yrs - 2.7%
• 11-15 yrs - 4.9%
• 16-17 yrs - 3.1%

Location
• 0-10 miles - 53%
• 10-20 miles - 21%
• 20-30 miles - 7%
• 30-50 miles - 9%
• 50+ miles - 10%
• Outside UK - 3%

Socio Economic
ABC1
• Reading FC - 58%
• UK Average - 32%

C2DE
• Reading FC - 42%
• UK Average - 68%

Audience

58% - Of Reading Fans are classified in the top four socio-economic groups (UK average is 32%)

Fan Affluence
41% Upmarket
37% Mid-market
22% Less Affluent

This is the key part for any brands who want exposure.

Reading FC fans are 3 x more likely to buy brands they associate with Reading FC, compared to average UK football fan.

Our area

A thriving business catchment area

- 10m population within 40 miles
- 2nd Highest Density of SME’s in UK
- Fastest Growing Economy in UK
- UK’s Fastest Growing Tech hub
- Stadium is largest business/events area in Thames Valley

Major HQs include:
@Oracle @Microsoft @Dell @PepsiCo @BayerPharma @Verizon


Anyone who wants to help, #readingfc need you

I don't know how any of this data was collected, but having the largest share of female fans and the most affluent fans among any League club would be worth noting.

Certainly our fans being three times more likely than the average fan to buy into club sponsors has got to be beneficial for us.

71 academy graduates to the first team suggests it was written at some point between August and November 2021 however - so roughly four years ago.

Thoughts?

[Snowflake Royal]

It's interesting, and good to.see we lead the way on women, at the time anyway, but I'm not sure there's much to comment on or discuss.

[Clyde1998]

It's interesting, and good to.see we lead the way on women, at the time anyway, but I'm not sure there's much to comment on or discuss.

Always good to see us do so well among women.

I think location is intriguing:

• 0-10 miles - 53% [Radius includes Reading; Wokingham / ~580,000 population]
• 10-20 miles - 21% [Radius includes Basingstoke; Bracknell; Farnborough; Newbury; Slough; Wycombe / ~1.36m additional population]
• 20-30 miles - 7% [Radius includes Andover; Guildford; Oxford; Winchester; west London (up to Brentford/Ealing) / ~2.77m additional population
• 30-50 miles - 9% [Radius includes Luton; Milton Keynes; Portsmouth; Salisbury; Southampton; Swindon; the rest of London / ~12.49m additional population]
• 50+ miles - 10%
• Outside UK - 3%

If this is accurate, that's a good 22% minimum of our fan base living in areas that are not realistically within a distance to regularly go to matches (30+ miles) and perhaps nearer 30% once you consider some of the places in the 30 mile radius like Winchester or Guildford.

[rabidbee]

Doesn’t surprise me - most of my school mates have ended up in London, or moved to uni and stayed there. Admittedly, most of my school friends weren’t Reading fans, but I can imagine mobility towards London is high.

[Clyde1998]

Doesn’t surprise me - most of my school mates have ended up in London, or moved to uni and stayed there. Admittedly, most of my school friends weren’t Reading fans, but I can imagine mobility towards London is high.

True. I know plenty who've left the area (and I'm from the Newbury-Thatcham area). Possibly explains the surprisingly high (to my mind) share of our support from outside the UK.

[Snowflake Royal]

Well I certainly left the area

[Hound]

Do a few of those who move to London come back? Esp when they have kids - certainly know of a few

It’s quite an interesting read, but not completely suprising

[PieEater]

It's quite incredible that the club has never had a relationship with any of the local tech vendors located here.

Major HQs include:
@Oracle @Microsoft @Dell @PepsiCo @BayerPharma @Verizon

The closest we got was probably Waitrose in Bracknell.

[Clyde1998]

It's quite incredible that the club has never had a relationship with any of the local tech vendors located here.

Major HQs include:
@Oracle @Microsoft @Dell @PepsiCo @BayerPharma @Verizon

The closest we got was probably Waitrose in Bracknell.

I think Westcoast (IT distribution) are based in Theale; Kyocera (electronics?) have/had their UK headquarters in Reading. IIRC, Panasonic used to sponsor the East/SJM Stand in the early days when they had a major R&D plant in Thatcham. Although you're going back a while now.

But for these companies to not even do ad-boards at the ground seems like missed opportunities for them, although I imagine most of their clients are businesses not consumers.

I do wonder with Couhig wanting to push AI and improvements in technology within the club whether some partnership could emerge with one of our big local tech companies - there's also 3 in Maidenhead (who tbf do screen ads) and Vodafone in Newbury (of companies I'm aware of locally) to consider.

[Fox Talbot]

Looks pretty sloppy to me.

Where are the six non UK football clubs older than Reading? I doubt very much we are the fourth oldest club in UK. Notts C, Forest, Wednesday, Sheffield FC, Maidenhead, Marlow, Kilmarnock for starters all earlier than us.

The age breaks add up to only 86%. No way is the UK population only 32% ABC1.

[Clyde1998]

Looks pretty sloppy to me.

Where are the six non UK football clubs older than Reading? I doubt very much we are the fourth oldest club in UK. Notts C, Forest, Wednesday, Sheffield FC, Maidenhead, Marlow, Kilmarnock for starters all earlier than us.

The age breaks add up to only 86%. No way is the UK population only 32% ABC1.

I imagine they're talking about older professional clubs (two are reformed versions of an earlier club). In England there's: Notts County (1862); Stoke City (1863; refounded 1908); Wrexham (1864; refounded 1883); Nottingham Forest (1865); Sheffield Wednesday (1867) and Chesterfield (1867). There are two older professional clubs in Scotland: Queen's Park (1867) and Kilmarnock (1869; disputed date, could be as late as 1872). Cliftonville (1879) seem to be the oldest in Northern Ireland.

It's possible, for the purposes of marketing, the club considered Notts County; Nottingham Forest and Sheffield Wednesday as older than us; Kilmarnock, Stoke and Wrexham as being younger than us due to disputes/uncertainty and Chesterfield as not being 'professional' as they weren't in the EFL at the time. They probably hadn't realised Queen's Park had gone professional in November 2019.

The age breaks issue is a good spot. I don't know if that's a club figure or the person posting it problem. The club's most recently published survey results from the 2015-16 season had a response by age breakdown (slightly different bins) of 0-17: 12%; 18-34: 31%; 35-64: 46%; 65+: 11%. I would imagine the 18-30 years category would be closer to 30%, although responses to the club's end of season survey won't entirely match the general support (and that survey is nine years old now). That survey incidentally had a 88-12 split between men and women, but it's possible the share of female supporters has grown a lot in that time.

The UK average socio-economic figures relate specifically to football supporters: so 32% of football fans would be ABC1, with Reading fans being 58% ABC1.