Research Tips (4): Market shares and rankings

Market share for a company or a brand is usually expressed as a percentage of the total market. Or, at least, it should be, but it's often the case that shares can be massaged upwards by taking a narrow view of the "total market".

Let's say we read in a press release that "Brand X has a dominant 60% market share". We need to ask a few questions:

1. Is the share of volume or value? (sometimes, "unit" or "Sterling" share respectively). If Brand X is an economy brand it could have a dominant position in units but the Sterling leaders could be those selling fewer units at a much higher price.


2. Share of which distribution channel? For many products, sales through multiple retailers are exhaustively researched (by retail audit systems) but what about independent shops, mail order, outdoor markets, and of course, e-commerce?


3. Is own label share included in total sales? Manufacturers understandably like to measure their brands' performances against other brands, but the picture becomes distorted when the stores' own label accounts for much of the market.

So, Brand X could have 60% of the total market by value. Or it could have 60% of branded unit sales (excluding own label) through multiple grocers, and its overall market value share could fall to 30% or less if the comprehensive market, by value through all outlets, was measured.

How important is brand share? How much does it matter? For manufacturers, gaining and keeping a listing in multiple retailers depends on proving that their brand is in demand and ahead of its competitors. Changes in brand share, up or down, are also a vital indicator of the strength of a brand, including its marketing and pricing strategies.

Outside the conventional retail channels, brand shares are usually harder to calculate, and that includes many leisure markets. Ascribing market share to Alton Towers or JD Wetherspoon would depend on agreeing value/volume totals for the theme parks or pub markets - not an easy task. Where statistical shares of a total are impossible to come by, researchers may have to make do with rankings based on objective data (e.g. turnover, from financial reports). If that fails, the subjective opinion of companies in the trade in question, or suppliers to that trade, may be the last resort. B2B market research often includes questions to responding companies about major competitors.

Finally, there are occasions when market shares can be massaged down, not up! This is usually done to satisfy government regulators whose aim is to prevent monopolies developing. As more industries consolidate around a handful of major players, this temptation to under-estimate market shares may become more common.

Corporate sponsorship - risk or reward?

Sponsoring either sport or the arts is always a risky sort of marketing venture, although the rewards can, if events turn out right, easily outweigh the benefits of ordinary advertising.

In sport, the thrills and spills involved in attaching one's corporate name or brand to teams or events were amply illustrated, across the British Isles, in the closing months of 2007:

• Rugby Union's World Cup, hosted by France and televised by ITV across six weeks of autumn action, turned out to be a boon for the sponsors of England and South Africa, both making the Final in place of the anticipated clash between the hosts and/or the Antipodean giants. England's sponsors, including O2, did well out of coverage considering that South Africa had thrashed England 36-0 earlier in the tournament.
• England's football team took over the flag-flying duty in November, but if the rugby team had stunned its supporters by reaching a Final, the English football fans had a shock to come as their team narrowly failed to qualify for Euro 2008, the national championships.
• Scotland and Northern Ireland were nearly given the chance to gloat over English failure but they, too, fell at the final hurdle for qualifying for Euro 2008. Neither did Scotland, Ireland or Wales cover themselves with glory in the Rugby World Cup.

England's Euro 2008 failure was broadcast as a matter of concern for sponsors like Umbro, the team's kit supplier. (Ironically, Umbro was the subject of a takeover bid by Nike - an even more lavish global "soccer" sponsor - at the time of England's untimely exit.) But the old PR idea that "any news is good news" does carry some weight in sponsorship. Nationwide, the building society with the biggest sponsorship commitment to British football, has a far-reaching programme that covers all four 'home nations' at amateur, women's and junior level, not just the famous senior men's team.

Smaller companies than Nationwide or Nike can identify, through sponsorship, with plucky under-dogs rather than predictable champions. There are endless opportunities for sports sponsorship at grass-roots level, including public/private "matched" funding through the Sportsmatch scheme.

Another tactic for sponsors is to spread the risk across more than one sport. Vodafone has been prominent in this respect for more than a decade, paying handsomely to attach its name to the England cricket team, Manchester United, the UEFA Champions League and horse racing (including the Vodafone Derby). In motor racing, the second biggest sponsored sport after football (mainly attributable to Formula One races), Vodafone's sponsorship of the McLaren Mercedes team came up trumps in 2007 when the young English driver, Lewis Hamilton, broke through as a major new star of Formula One.

Putting all the "deals" together, sports sponsorship is worth at least £1 billion a year in the UK and the forthcoming London Olympics (2012), Glasgow Commonwealth Games (2014) and, possibly, the FIFA World Cup in 2018, will guarantee record spending over a long period. The organisers of the London event have already targeted £625m worth of sponsorship income.

For arts and culture, the burgeoning growth of sports sponsorship is worrying in that the sector has been struggling to regain the heights of the Millennium celebrations. Arts & Business, the official forum for the arts and their sponsors, has recorded static figures from businesses although the arts, more so than sports, are also supported by non-commercial donations from individuals and trusts.

To offset the overwhelming appeal of the Olympics to sponsors, the DCMS (Department for Culture, Media and Sport) is planning a Cultural Olympiad - "a four-year celebration of the UK’s cultural life that will be a perfect curtain-raiser to the Games in 2012" - which will embrace everything from a World Cultural Festival, the International Shakespeare Festival and the 5-rings Exhibition down to grass-roots community arts.

References:

Photo: woodym555 (Wikipedia)

http://www.aandb.org.uk/

http://www.culture.gov.uk/

BBC buys Lonely Planet.... unfair, they cry!

The news that the BBC had bought up Lonely Planet, the famous travel guide publisher, brought out the expected cries of anguish from commercial publishers. The Financial Times asked how a BBC-owned Lonely Planet would make a contribution to "the cultural life of the UK", supposing that to be the remit of the BBC, while the Conservative party reaction was that the BBC was "nationalising" a publisher.

The Lonely Planet purchase may have escaped even louder cries of Unfair! from the private sector because its HQ is in Australia and it was controlled privately by its founders. Competing with Lonely Planet in guides to budget, independent travel are Let's Go, the Harvard-based grandaddy of backpacker advice (founded 1960), the Rough Guides and Time Out.

Low-cost flights have fuelled the demand for guidebooks which tell you where to stay and eat on a budget, although green-aware young people are worrying about the extra low-cost flights and, in some cases, about how the budget guides prevent travellers from contributing much cash to their destinations, often poorer countries.

The deal certainly has tantalising implications for the leisure side of UK media. Lonely Planet was actually bought by BBC Worldwide, a commercial subsidiary of the publicly-funded Corporation. The BBC is paid for by the Television Licence Fee, effectively a form of taxation to support public-service broadcasting; the latest government review means that the Fee will continue until at least 2016, taking the BBC well into the new digital era of broadcasting as a tax-subsidised corporation.

BBC Worldwide had sales of £810m in 2006/07, generating handsome profits of £111m, and there is no doubt that the BBC has benefited from its public television and radio franchise in launching into other media and entertainment markets (video, music, books, magazines etc). The Worldwide arm is believed to have several hundred million Pounds to spend and is likely to focus its investment on digital media, particularly online products. The BBC's main website is already one of the first ports of call for surfing the Web in the UK, with highly rated news and sports pages.

Lonely Planet may have been a pioneer among travellers researching their trips before setting off but independent "reviewing" has flourished, even for package holiday and luxury hotel users. TripAdvisor is the main player but sites like Holidays Uncovered tell you where to go for the best (or worst) karaoke nights and, in one case, which hotel to avoid because of the wild dogs running around the hotel gardens....

Photo source: lvivlviv.com

The price is right: leisure markets and inflation

There has been much debate in 2007 about the need to keep a grip on inflation. Energy prices, in particular, have increased and while the media focus is usually on household bills, higher energy costs have a big impact on leisure industries (the costs, for example, of heating and lighting swimming pools, football stadiums, hotels).

But the big story on prices must still be the extraordinary historic change in the UK economy since the early 1990s: the movement to an economy with seemingly permanent low inflation (i.e. under 5% a year), accompanied by low unemployment and other general indicators of prosperity.

Apart from the economic benefits of low inflation, there are psychological effects. Anyone under the age of 20 can only have been aware, in their lives so far, of living under a Blair-style New Labour government (just as there was a Thatcher Generation), and the memory of a high-inflation economy is a distant one (for the over-30s). But the psychology of pricing is a complex matter and it is human nature to feel that ‘things are getting expensive’, even in an era of low inflation.

To put this in context, a look back at the past is worthwhile.

1960s prosperity and stability: RPI +3.5%

Taking the general, long-running Retail Price Index (RPI) as the measure of inflation, the annual average in the 1960s was +3.5% although the highest rate of the decade was +5.4% in 1969, heralding the decade of oil-price inflation and general economic crisis.

1970s oil crises: RPI +12.6%

Average inflation in the 1970s was +12.6% a year, which seems extraordinary enough to today’s RPI-watchers, but the annual peak for the decade of +24.2% in 1975 alone seems almost bizarre from the standpoint of 2007’s ‘worrying’ increase to over +3%.

1980s recession and Thatcherism: RPI +7.5%

The 1980s had an annual rate of +7.5% although this average was influenced by the +18% rate for the first year of the decade. Thatcherite economics brought the rate down to a low of 3.4% by 1986, at the expense of high unemployment, but the RPI crept up again to reach an unsustainable +9.5% in 1990.

1990s stability under Labour: RPI +3.7%

Apart from 1990, the 1990s were a decade of modest inflation - and economic stability - for which both outgoing Conservative and incoming Labour governments can take some of the credit.

Leisure prices in the 2000s

Inflation has averaged at just over +3% so far in the 2000s (2000-2007) but prices are polarising. The averaged-out RPI (+20% in that period) is now a hotch-potch of varying price trends across sectors of the economy. At one extreme, energy prices for the household were up 73%, whereas clothing and footwear prices actually declined by 17%. (Within clothing, Women's Outerwear is cheaper in 2007 than it was 20 years ago, thanks to globalised sourcing and an ultra-competitive High Street.)

Leisure goods is another official category that has suffered deflation, not inflation, since 2000: a 20% decline in prices averaged across items such as toys and electronic equipment. Leisure services, on the other hand, are 33% more expensive than in 2000. In the leisure market, this means it has become much cheaper to stay home than to go out for leisure activities, exacerbating the underlying social trend towards ‘cocooning’ in the home.

There is no better example of this than the beer market, where the 2000-2007 period saw a 6% decrease in take-home (or ‘off-trade’) prices, whereas a pint in a typical pub or bar costs 24% more. Hence the argument that it is supermarkets, not pubs, that have fuelled binge drinking. The pubs have had to charge higher prices for beer to pay for improvements to their premises, including the provisions for disabled access, stricter health and safety and smoking bans that have affected all leisure premises.

Beer is by no means the only market affected by the in-home option for leisure being cheaper than ‘going out’. Cinema prices have increased steadily – partly to pay for more attractive multiplexes – but there are now so many options for watching a movie cheaply at home (maybe on a home cinema set-up, helping recreate the cinema experience). Eating out is more popular than ever, but the option of entertaining in the home around a table stocked with home-delivered food or supermarket ready-meals is also enticing more consumers, and once again the pricing balance is in favour of the home, with household food prices up 15% since 2000, but restaurant meals up 23%.

Health clubs - how healthy a market?

The health club business would make a good choice for a business-degree thesis on how markets are born, grow and reach maturity. There have been three phases so far:

PHASE ONE: In the beginning was the sweaty urban gym, transformed in the 1990s into a new leisure destination: a hybrid of the local leisure centres and the best of the pumping-iron gyms. City money flooded in as company after company floated on the Stock Exchange, an entirely natural phenomenon because sharply dressed dealers and analysts were among the most to cough up for a subscription to an exclusive health club. (Like so many leisure sectors, private equity has since stepped in at most of the major club companies.)

PHASE TWO: Market maturity came quickly, and by the early 2000s there were plenty of clubs (5,000+, according to the Fitness Industry Association) serving all the UK's cities and large towns. Most were standalone, but hotel clubs and semi-private gyms within leisure centres added to the wide choice. Several UK companies, fearing saturation, started to expand abroad, into Europe, Australia or South Africa.

PHASE THREE: Saturation, consolidation and differentiation are the ugly but inevitable words to describe this market (2005-2008) as it reaches middle age:

Saturation: by 2006, there were too many names competing for the same customers.

Consolidation: late 2006 and early 2007 saw Virgin taking over Holmes Place, Bannatyne buying up the standalone LivingWell clubs and the merger of market leader David Lloyd Leisure with Next Generation. At mid-2007, with the possibility of more mergers still on the cards, the largest companies - all of which have at some point bought up a competitor - were David Lloyd, Fitness First, Virgin Active, LA Fitness, Esporta, Bannatyne and Cannons. They operate some 600 clubs across the UK with just over 2 millon members.

Differentiation: brands can be similar to each other in a growth phase, but now they need to start differentiating themselves. For adults or families (or women only)? Budget or premium? For sports or exercise? "Wellness" or traditional fitness and weight loss?

So, is the market heading for a Phase Four (decline) from the current plateau of Phase Three? Probably not. The enlarged (consolidated) club companies are still full of ideas to attract new customers, recent examples including Family Yoga at LA Fitness, a BUPA health check at Fitness First, evening classes at Esporta or open-air aerobics classes at Virgin Active.

And there is no immediate sign of the prices that clubs can charge falling off, which would be the first sign of market decline. Already, there is a wide choice of price brackets: eight different types of membership by price at Fitness First, for instance.

Underpinning the club market are some solidly favourable trends: the movement away from complicated, time-consuming team sports and towards simple fitness pursuits; the public-private initiatives at fighting obesity; and the way that larger clubs are filling a demand as family-friendly venues for healthy, safe activities under one roof.

Research Tips (3): Market size sources

Market size is both the starting point and the Holy Grail for assessing markets. Usually expressed in value of spending (sometimes in volume of goods), the market size description should contain something like this, at the bare minimum:

"The market for Product X was worth £150m at retail prices in 2006, having grown by 5% over 2005."

This statement is usually accompanied by a statistical table showing sales over the most recent 5-6 years. Usually 5-6 years, simply because that fits across the width of an A4 sheet! Also because a five-year period will give a guide to growth trends and will often include a boom or bust phase.

This may seem like a very basic analysis but many things stem from here:

• How much is £150m, relative to other markets, and the overall economy?

• Is 5% a reasonable rate of growth in the current economic climate, assuming it includes inflation (i.e. at current prices)?

• If we know Company A's turnover, we can give it a market share (by converting manufacturer or wholesaler prices into retail prices)

• From the total market size, we can then start the all-important segmentation analysis which will tell us where the gaps are in the market and which products are selling well

• The 5-6 year analysis also gives us a start on calculating the all-important future of the market. Without a projected trend of some sort, no rational business decisions can be taken.

So what are the sources for these market size figures? There are several:

• For many consumer products, the most widely quoted come from retail audits which should, in principle, give accurate data of actual sales. The problem is that this works fine for branded, fast-moving consumer goods sold through store chains - the type of market where market research originated - but audit-quality data are rare in services, leisure industries, B2B markets and industrial sectors. Audit data is also expensive and usually very confidential to the large companies that fund its collection. A further problem may be that the audit does not adequately cover all distribution channels - a growing problem in the e-commerce era.

• Government statistics include expenditure series which, with some qualification, can be used as commercial market sizes. Consumer Trends, for example, gives variable coverage of many consumer markets (products and services, often based on the official Expenditure & Food Survey of households). The Product Sales and Trade series has aggregate sales for larger companies in an industry and includes imports and exports.

• "Apparent consumption" is a calculation of national market size using domestic company sales ("production", or "output"), less exports, plus imports. This is rarely a precise method (often interfered with by re-exporting) but is useful for measuring an industry's export ratio (exports % output) and import penetration (imports % consumption). A domestic market might be tough to get into (high import penetration) but some segments of it might show potential for developing exports.

• The term "Trade estimates" is often seen as a source for market sizes. If the "traders" in question are not simply quoting retail audits or other data sources, it is usually a matter of major players in the market knowing (or estimating) their own market shares, thus letting them gross up their turnovers (and those of competitors) to a total market size.

• The grossing up of major companies' sales into a market size is also a method used for another source, the trade association survey of members. Association data based on member surveys varies from the skimpy or non-existent up to detailed documentation produced by associations like the Cinema Advertising Association or the Society of Motor Manufacturers & Trades (see also Research Tip 2: Trade associations ).

• Finally, market research in its narrow definition of field research to obtain data on consumer or B2B activities is another source for estimating markets. If we know how many consumers/businesses buy something, how often in the year, and the average prices in the market, we can come up with a market size, although this method is a long way from the accuracy of the retail audit.

Where possible, market sizes emanating from one of these sources should be checked against other data sources - does the given market size (and growth rate) stack up against major players' turnovers, import statistics, government retail statistics, statements from trade associations and so on.

Eiffel Tower, London Eye: similarities and contrasts

The Eiffel Tower had 6.7m visitors in 2006 - a new record - and the London Eye sells 'over 3.5m' tickets a year, making it the UK's most popular paid-for attraction. These two icons of mass-market, urban tourism offer up some interesting contrasts - as well as similarities - for anyone examining leisure markets in Europe.

The Eiffel and the Eye are in some ways symbolic of the economic and cultural differences that have been deepening between the UK and France. Take your child to climb some of the 1,665 steps to the top of the Eiffel Tower and you will be doing what you did as a child and perhaps what your own parents or grandparents did. The Eiffel is fun to visit but, after 117 years at the heart of a city, it has plenty to teach about history, technology and keeping fit by climbing stairs.

In contrast, the London Eye is an overtly commercial 'ride', taking its inspiration from ferris wheels in the old amusement parks that have evolved into today's theme parks. No better reminder of the commercial reality than the permanent title-sponsorship: it should always be referred to as the British Airways London Eye. As of March 2007, the Eye is just one of many European attractions owned by the private equity giant, Blackstone Group, bringing it to the forefront of cutting-edge investment in leisure. Another contrast, then: the Eiffel Tower remains steadfastly owned by the Paris municipal authority although operation is sub-contracted to a private company. (To complicate matters, part of the land on which the Eye sits is municipal, but this does not affect its operation.)

Tourism needs this combination of hard-nosed commercial reality with more profound cultural experiences. France still has the edge as a destination because it attracted Walt Disney to build its only European park near Paris, so visitors to the region can have a kaleidoscope of experiences. Not that London is lacking in cultural appeal; a short walk from the queues to ride the Eye, the Tate Modern (free admission) is already attracting over 4m visitors a year to puzzle over ground-breaking works of installation art.

What about the similarities?

Firstly, both monuments are centrally positioned in their cities and offer splendid views over the many attractions of Europe's two most popular cities: by nights spent in hotels, London and Paris remain head and shoulders above all other European cities.

Inevitably, both attractions are extremely busy and expensive to visit in peak periods. In 2007, a 'flight' on the Eye costs an adult £14.50, while the Tower is charging €11.50, about £8, for an elevator ride to the top. Fortunately, both are situated in pleasant surroundings where tourists can sit and watch the world go by - the Trocadero fountains and Champ de Mars in Paris, the redeveloped South Bank of the Thames in London.

Another similarity is the excellence of the two attractions' websites with the Eiffel Tower operators, in particular, providing in-depth visitor statistics. The fully private Tussauds Group, immediate owner of The Eye, is understandably more coy about revealing operational data.
www.londoneye.com
www.tour-eiffel.fr/teiffel/uk/ - English version

EMI and Warner: what's in a label?

Anyone who grew up in the Glory Days of vinyl will remember how resonant record labels could be: Sinatra's Capitol Years, The Beatles on Parlophone then their own Apple label, Bob Marley on Island, the rubber-stamp of Motown for so many stars, the joyful soul of Stax and so on.

Labels may have reached their PR climax in 1977 when Johnnie Rotten signed off the Sex Pistols "Never Mind the Bollocks" LP with a song mocking EMI and A&M, both labels which failed to cope with the maelstrom of punk. But EMI won in the end, buying the label on which the Pistols actually recorded, Virgin Records, in 1992.

By the early 1990s, much of the romance of being signed to a particular famous label was gone for young musicians. EMI and the three other global majors (Universal, Warner, Sony BMG) have swallowed up dozens of labels which once stood proudly for independence (or an attitude). EMI alone owns the likes of Parlophone, Capitol, Virgin, Chrysalis and Mute. The need for labels is only recognised in miniscule writing and logos on the CD and cover of the Beatles 2006 compilation, "Love". "Parlophone is a Capitol music label." "Marketed and distributed by EMI".

Labels lost importance as records and cassettes gave way to CD, and downloading now turns the concept of a physical label - if not the idea of a small, independent production company - into a recording industry dinosaur. Selective downloading of individual tracks, combined with the almighty iPod/iTunes system, is also undermining the whole idea of producing "singles" or "albums" which need labels. When you make up your own playlist (or your personal compilation album) you are effectively creating your own, personal music label.

So it's become a struggle to make money out of music, at least enough to keep a multinational ticking over. Hence the label-swallowing and mega-mergers that have produced just four majors:

• Universal Music Group - leader with 25% of the world music market, labels include MCA, Polygram, Decca, Motown and Island). UMG is part of the French media group, Vivendi Universal.

• Sony BMG - over 20% market share, product of a 2004 joint venture (still under investigation: see below) between Sony and Bertelsmann. Famous labels include RCA, CBS, Epic and Rough Trade but Sony Music or Sony BMG are increasingly used.

• Warner Music Group bought out the music division of Time Warner in 2003 (just as UMG is now separate from Universal Studios). Historic labels under WMG include Atlantic, Elektra and Asylum (label for The Eagles in the 1970s: their first hits compilation is the top-selling album of all time.)

• EMI - UK-based although a USA major through Capitol since the 1960s.

The four majors could become three if Warner and EMI can get round to merging, a possibility since the early 2000s but one which seems some way off in early 2007. The problem is that the European Commission (plus the US government) would have to agree to a merger, and the Commission is spending the first half of 2007 investigating whether the 2004 Sony-BMG merger was legal after all.

Tour ops: then there were two?

Hard on the heels of the planned merger of MyTravel and Thomas Cook, two of the UK's 'big four' tour operators, came news that the other two, TUI and First Choice, also wanted to merge. The timing of the deals, within a month of each other in early 2007, means that the companies must have been talking to each other confidentially for a long time about the benefits of consolidating their package holiday businesses.


But why the rush to get married? Unusually candid statements from the air travel regulatory body, the Civil Aviation Authority, about changes in the holiday market are revealing. The CAA, which issues the licences (called ATOLs) to companies selling package holidays, has commented on a fall in the number of package holidays -those 'fully bonded', or insured - sold in 2006. It has taken a few years, but the effect of people organising their own flights and hotels on the Internet, instead of buying ready-made packages at the travel agent, is at least beginning to show through in the statistics. Even the 'big four' are contributing to the trend through their websites, where they offer the flexibility to book flights and hotels seperately.

There were some other reasons for the decline in 2006. Fuel-cost supplements added to the brochure prices were offputting, and the operators are steadily cutting capacity, removing some of the poor-quality hotels that consumers with 30 years of Mediterranean experience are rejecting. But the long term trend is away from the packages and towards independent bookings, which means that online sellers like Expedia and Cendant Flightbookers, Travel 2, etc) are creeping up on the tour ops.

The EU will have to ratify the mergers because the 'big four' operate across Europe. Germany's TUI, if it included the UK's First Choice, would sell around 7.5m holidays out of the UK (a third of our market) but globally it would be a giant with 27m customers a year. The enlarged Thomas Cook Group would sell about 6.5m UK-outbound holidays a year, giving just two companies a market share in excess of 60% of the package holiday business.

The new 'big two' would be German-controlled. TUI (Touristik Union International) is a German company and the enlarged Thomas Cook Group would be 52% owned by KarstadtQuelle, 48% by MyTravel shareholders.

Cost-saving consolidation is the order of the day but the groups are not monolithic in structure. The new number two will take the Thomas Cook name in recognition of trust consumers place in the world's oldest "tour" brand, but MyTravel was an umbrella for many specialist brands which will survive: Cresta (city breaks), Manos (Greece), Direct Holidays (direct-sell), and probably the big general brand at the core of MyTravel, Airtours. These will join former Thomas Cook brochures like JMC and Club 18-30 in the new group.

Thomson Holidays and First Choice are the big TUI brands but the united group brings together a startling range of familiar holiday brands: Simply, Meon, Trek America, Exodus, Hayes & Jarvis, Skibound et al. The specialist holidays - upmarket, long-haul, adventure, clubbing, sporting etc - have been preserved but when booking on their websites, the brochure name is no longer as important as it was when High Street travel agents sold nearly all the packages.

Research Tips (2): Trade Associations

After finding out about market research reports that have been published on a topic (see Research Tip), an industry's trade associations (TA) are a first port of call. These associations, sometimes called federations, bring together companies rather than individual professional members (usually, societies or institutes). Lobbying government on legislation or taxation is a primary aim, but many TA also gather and disseminate product information and statistics from their members - a reliable and useful source for leisure research.

TA websites should include important industry news, publications, events and lists of members, in better cases including market reviews derived either from government statistics or, better still, from surveys of members. (Detailed stats. are often confidential to members, although reasonably priced yearbooks may be published). Some good examples in the leisure sphere are:

• British Hospitality Association, covering mainly hotels and restaurants. Publishes Trends & Statistics yearly, free on the website.

• British Beer & Pub Association, whose comprehensive Statistical Handbook can be ordered for £47.50 (2006 edition). Also some free brewing and pubs data on the website.

• Cinema Advertising Association represents the two cinema advertising contractors, Carlton Screen and Pearl & Dean, whose websites both publish CAA data.

• British Video Association and British Phonographic Industry both publish market data in considerable depth on the recorded media industries

• The sports and play sectors reorganised in 2005/2006 into a Federation of Sports and Play Associations, bringing together individual associations (eg for golf, angling) under a new umbrella body. FSPA has a separate sportsdata.co.uk website for ordering reports, although reports on the more esoteric topics are research and published only sporadically. (As a general rule, it is worth checking that the smaller TA websites are being kept up to date.)

For the researcher, TA provide "insider" insight into the workings of an industry and, with any luck, free or reasonably priced data on the market. They are often run by enthusiasts for their industries whose PR role means they are usually willing to interview. It is always wise, however, to ask a few questions of the association:

- how representative is it of the whole industry (large and smaller companies)?
- has the website, and its information, been kept up to date?
- given the protective PR function of the TA, is the information skewed in any way?

A major portal to finding a TA is the Trade Association Forum, administered by the CBI (Confederation of British Industry) and partly government-funded. The TAF Directory is a comprehensive online database of TA contacts (www.taforum.org/searchgroup.pl?n=500&directory)

Smoking bans - don't despair "down south"

UK leisure venues will be smoke-free from July 2007: the bans reach England last of all (1st July), after Wales (1st April) and Northern Ireland (30th April).

Scotland has had the advantage of an early ban on smoking in leisure venues. So what has been the experience, halfway through the bleak midwinter outside Scotland's pubs?

After nearly a year of the ban, publicans in Scotland are admitting to have lost some 'wet sales' but the feeling is that it could have been far worse. At Belhaven, part of Greene King since 2005, pub sales were down 2.8% in 2006. Smaller pubs may have fared worse, especially if 'landlocked' (nowhere to build a smoking area) but the range of reactions to the smoking ban have been interesting:


- Smokers have responded in different ways: some have given up, some cut down (and welcomed the ban), others have stayed at home.

- Anecdotal evidence is that the bans can have a feel-good effect: less animosity towards smokers in the pub, smokers enjoying a chat outside, and of course yet another driver for selling food instead of alcohol.

There are plenty of companies lined up with suitable outdoor furnishing products e.g. www.indigoawnings.co.uk, www.parasolar.com) and the patio lifestyle is part of the outdoor megatrend, anyway.

Football's rich clubs by Deloitte

Got €500m to spare? Here's how your team might look made up of the most expensive players from Europe's 13 richest clubs:

FORWARDS: Ronaldinho (Barcelona) Henry (Barcelona) Ronaldo (Man Utd) MIDFIELD: Kaka (Milan), Vieira (Inter), Juninho (Lyon), Gerrard (Liverpool) DEFENCE: Lahm (Bayern Munich), Terry (Chelsea), Cannavaro (Real Madrid) Alves (Seville) GOALKEEPER: Buffon (Juventus) SUBS: De Rossi (Roma), Owen (Newcastle)

The fascinating Football Money League, an annual report from Deloitte published since 2006, reveals that the two Spanish giants currently top the European league table for "turnover from day-to-day football operations". Real Madrid retained top spot at the end of the 2005/06 season and Barcelona was up from fourth to second place. Their respective earnings were €292m and €259m.

The largest UK clubs on this scale of success are Manchester Utd, fourth with earnings of €242m in 2005/06, and Chelsea (sixth, €221m). Italy has four clubs in the top 20 although the UK is dominant in this respect with nine of the top 20.

But a glance at the bottom of Deloitte's top 20 reveals the gulf between the elite and the rest: West Ham, in 19th position, only earned €87m in 2005/06 and its status in the English Premiership, let alone in the Deloitte Top 20, is severely threatened by relegation in 2006/07. (The Hammers last game of the season is away to Manchester United, the likely champions this year.....)

The new three-year television rights deals (for 2007-2011) will boost English Premiership incomes from broadcasting by no less than 70%. The TV rights account for at least a third of most big clubs' income, with other media-related incomes (sponsorship, merchandising, licensing) contributing another third or more. This means that 'matchday' income can account for as little as 25% of club revenues (eg Real Madrid) although a bigger stadium can restore the balance in favour of matchday revenues, the traditional sign of a club's financial strength.

For Manchester Utd, matchday still brings in over 40% of its revenues and its Quadrant expansion of the Old Trafford ground has taken ground capacity up to 76,000. Chelsea will struggle to compete, despite the generosity of its owner, Roman Abramovich, as long as its capacity remains at 42,000. Across London, Arsenal's revenues have soared during 2006/07 thanks to the club's move from Highbury (capacity, 38,500) to the new 60,000-seater Emirates stadium.

Having retained the old Highbury site to build over 700 houses and flats, Arsenal FC has moved into property development, an interesting move considering the number of property developers (or builders) that have occupied board positions in football over the years. It is also an interesting model for other clubs with prime inner-city stadiums to consider. In the lower leagues, the pressure to sell up and quit the inner city is growing all the time as urban property values rise.

Source Notes: Football Money League is free after registration at www.deloitte.co.uk. Deloitte also publishes the Annual Review of Football Finance.