Listed football clubs: assessing their online financial communication

There is a lot to do about the AFC Ajax lately. Latest years’ results are disappointing, there is a lot of criticism on the clubs management and there is doubt whether to stay listed on the Amsterdam stock exchange. Developments like these are very interesting to follow, in particular for investors. A club’s website is an excellent way to communicate to this group. But how well do listed football clubs serve the financial world's needs on their website?

Research setup

To answer the above question, we have assessed the websites of the eight biggest European football clubs which are listed on a stock exchange (see figure).

 
The eight biggest European listed football clubs (source: ‘de Telegraaf’)

To judge the quality of the websites, we used the 10 criteria that are also used in the ‘FD Henri Sijthoff-award’. This is a yearly award which is presented to the Dutch stock-quoted company with the best investor relations department on its website. The 10 criteria are based on the OCQ-model (see figure) and can be divided in two groups:

Website quality

• Accessibility
• Interactivity
• Multimediality
• Personalisation

Content accessibility

• Company profile
• Corporate Governance
• Topical information
• Financial reporting
• Stock information
• Financial information

Jungle Rating Online Communications Quality Model

The fans are treated very well

In general, it can be stated that football clubs use their website primarily for branding and commercial purposes. Clubs use a broad variety of functionalities like pictures, webcasts, podcasts, games and online videos etc. (see screenshots below). Another online commercial trend is that the clubs approach the visitors in a very personal manner. Fans can order all kinds of personalized products like club Credit Cards and open personal accounts.

Interview with Arsenal-coach Arsène Wenger

Games on Tottenham Hotspurs website

Investors seem to have less priority

In contrast with the fans, the investor relations are not served very well on the clubs’ websites in general. Here are some important findings:

• Only Juventus has got a separate investor relations link in the main navigation on the homepage (see below). The other clubs ‘hide’ their financial section in the sub-navigation or in a separate banner (Borussia Dortmund)
• Only Juventus presents a specific investor relations e-mail address and telephone number
  Borussia Dortmund, and Juventus to some extent, present key financial information (e.g. results, balance sheet, ratio’s)
• None of the clubs use audio or video in the financial section (e.g. webcasts, interviews)
• None of the clubs offer an alert service for important financial dates
• Borussia Dortmund is the only club that extensively discusses Corporate Governance on its website
• Only Juventus and Borussia Dortmund have online up to date share price information and graphs
• Financial reports on all the clubs’ websites are in PDF (and not in HTML, which is becoming increasingly popular for online reporting)
• The Roman clubs (A.S. & Lazio) do not speak to the international financial community, as their websites are in Italian only
   

Lazio Roma’s financial publications (PDF only)

Borussia Dortmund - Best in the class

Although the results on the field haven’t been what they used to, Borussia Dortmund finally comes out as the ‘champion’ again in this competition. The club has a separate investor relations website (http://www.borussia-aktie.de, see figure) which gives very complete information on for instance:

• Corporate Governance
• Organization of the club
• The share
• Key financials

Content wise the club delivers a very good job regarding investor relations needs.

Borussia Dortmund’s Investor relations website

Unfortunately, the website’s quality stays behind. As said, the link to the Investor Relations website isn’t placed in the main navigation, but as a separate inconspicuous banner. Another thing is that current website possibilities like Multimediality (video webcasts, CEO interviews) are also lacking in Borussia’s investor relations area.

Juventus – best of the rest

Runner up is Juventus. The club also delivers fairly complete content (less complete than Borussia Dortmund however) regarding financial and managerial issues (see figure below). But when it comes to website quality, same goes for Juventus as all the other clubs.

The Investor Relations section on the Juventus website

Conclusion

In general, it can be stated that listed football clubs serve their online target groups (fans & financial stakeholders) very differently. All the stops are pulled out when it comes to serving the fans’ needs. An ‘arsenal’ of online functionalities is brought into action to create the maximum user experience. However, when it comes to providing accurate and complete information to the financial world in a way that invites investors to use it, most clubs stay behind. Only Borussia Dortmund scores sufficient.

Football clubs’ shares are considered to be emotionally charged (performance on the pitch might directly influence the performance on the stock exchange). 
When online financial information (which has become the primary source of information for the financial world) is easy to access, transparent and complete, investors could gain better and faster insight in the clubs financial performance. This could have a positive contribution to the current performance of the clubs’ stocks (which are all substantially lower than the price at the time of the initial public offering) as decisions could be less based only on the performances in the stadium.

Maybe a thought to give the financial world the same online royal treatment as the fans get.