Liverpool Football Club has launched a cut-price version of its new shirt in China to compete with the ubiquitous counterfeits that sell for just a few dollars and undermine
European clubs’ ambitions to boost revenues in this fast-growing market.
After it unveiled its 2017/18 season shirt last month, the Premier League club started selling a budget version in China at a cost of just $30 compared with $87 for the normal shirt.
The low-cost shirt looks similar at first glance, featuring the club crest that has been redesigned to commemorate Liverpool’s 125th anniversary. But it is made of simpler materials and is not produced by New Balance, the club’s kit supplier.
A person close to the club said that the idea was to promote official merchandise “at a competitive price for fans in that part of the world”.
“The club does not condone counterfeit goods and hopes fans will chose an official product rather than a copy,” the person said.
President Xi Jinping’s call for a
football revolution in China has prompted a renewed surge of interest in the Chinese market by European clubs, which are keen to find new sources of revenue to offset soaring wage bills.
If there’s a perception that home-based fans are being discriminated against, there could be some disquiet
Simon Chadwick,Salford Business School
But, despite the size of the market and the strong interest in European football, clubs have struggled to make money from kit sales because of the ubiquity of fake merchandise, which is freely available in markets, sports shops and online shopping platforms such as Alibaba.
The budget shirt, which features the logo of sponsor Standard Chartered, is being sold on Liverpool’s official online shop on Alibaba’s Tmall website for Rmb210 ($30). Meanwhile, on Alibaba’s Taobao website, independent sellers are offering counterfeit shirts for Liverpool and other leading European clubs for as little as Rmb35.
Alibaba has said it is committed to fighting counterfeiting but that China needs stronger law enforcement measures if it is to combat the problem effectively.
The lack of intellectual property protection for foreign brands in China also undermines the value of television rights — an important revenue generator for European clubs — because pirated live streams of matches are widespread.
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Simon Chadwick, a professor of sports enterprise at Salford Business School, said that although clubs had been targeting China since the early 2000s, they had failed to understand the behaviour of Chinese consumers and, hence, struggled to
monetise the value of their brands.
“Buying counterfeit shirts is cheaper and easier for many Chinese consumers,” he added.
Professor Chadwick said that Liverpool’s initiative showed it was taking more care to respond to market needs and he suggested that the cut-price shirts could also be appropriate for other emerging markets like India, where China-made counterfeits are also widespread.
But he warned that there could be a backlash from UK fans who are already unhappy about the high cost of replica kits.
“If there’s a perception that home-based fans are being discriminated against, there could be some disquiet, especially at time when fan groups are becoming especially vocal about the costs of following their team,” he said.
