Barça improves the health of its brand in front of the fans despite the Negreira case

2023-07-03 08:00:50

BarcelonaFootball, if you put your mind to it, can be used to do a master’s degree in economics, geopolitics, law, society, culture or architecture. Its tentacles are so large that it influences and is influenced by all these fields and more. But, in the end, what matters most to the fan is whether or not the ball enters the goal. This corroborates the Football Brand Tracker ranking, carried out jointly by YouGov and D2F Partners, which is drawn up with more than 6,000 annual surveys of Spanish football fans. From June 2022 until now, despite having suffered an institutional crisis following the Negreira case, according to this study, Barça has improved its brand health thanks, above all, to the conquered League.

Specifically, it has increased by 5.4 points, reaching 30.9. The Blaugrana team, therefore, has climbed from fourth position to second in a classification headed by Real Madrid with 53.4 points, although this year they have only won the Copa del Rey. “Barça has sold the sporting successes it has achieved well. First of all, it has managed to win the League title, something that was not done very often in the days of Ernesto Valverde on the bench. And it has made a rue for celebrate it,” explains Guillem Graell, former Barça brand director and managing director of D2F Partners, one of the companies that prepares the ranking, to ARA.

“The sports result by itself is not enough to improve the health of the brand. It is also very important how you communicate it. Barça has been able to sell the League title and elimination from the Champions League and the Europa League well the beginning of the season is already far away,” he adds.

Football Brand Tracker takes into account sixteen metrics, ranging from the way a club is managed to whether it is liked despite not being a fan, the recognition of its values ​​or the intention to buy its products. Another metric is how attractive a certain team’s style of play is. Barça is the team in the League that, according to the fans, has grown the most in this section during the 2022-23 academic year. “Our ranking is purely about how the fan has the brand in mind, it doesn’t take into account the economic aspects”, points out Graell.

Girona also fall in love with their attractive football

Another of the clubs that has grown the most in terms of brand health during the course that has ended is Girona, which has increased it by 3.5 points and thanks to this has moved from eighteenth to fourteenth . One of the aspects that the fans emphasize the most in order to have this good image of the Catalan team is precisely the attractive football played by Míchel Sánchez’s men, which had its peak moment with the 4-2 win against Real Madrid in the finals of April For its part, Espanyol, despite relegation to the Second Division, is sixteenth in the ranking and increases its brand health by 1.6 points.

Betis, the third in the ranking

After the two giants of Spanish football, Barça and Real Madrid, the third in disagreement is Betis, with 30.4 points. Fourth is Atlético de Madrid, which falls from second position following the loss of 5.8 points. But the most marked decline is that of Sevilla, seventh with a loss of 8.5 points despite the fact that in the last stretch of the season their metric of sporting success has increased significantly thanks to the conquest of the Europa League against the Jose Mourinho’s Rome.

Another of the teams that reduces brand health (albeit only by 0.2 points) is Real Sociedad, which is surprising considering the attractive game that Imanol Alguacil’s team has played this season and that qualified for the next edition of the Champions League. “As I said in the case of Barça, the sports result by itself is not enough to improve the health of the brand. It is also important how you communicate the success and the surveys show that this time Real Sociedad has not managed to do it from the best way”, considers Graell.