How many fans do we have - I have an answer!

[cannockwolves]

We have all spoke about the age-old question of who has more fans and what is our potential. Well, I have an answer, but before I start I want to issue a note of caution.

Market Research is not perfect and as we have seen in elections making predictions on small sample sizes can be risky, but in the absence of anything else governments, businesses, and football clubs use research to inform strategic decisions.

Now for the interesting bit.

I have worked in Data and Data analysis roles for more than twenty years and I have access to certain tools and pooled market research data. I don’t want to go into too much detail about what it is, but trust me when I say lots of major businesses buy into this research package and it’s about as good as it gets (but not perfect)

I have been playing with a tool that gives me access to thousands of data points, and one of these data elements relates to ‘Sports Team Followed’ This is an unprompted research question which basically means people are not given a list to choose from, they have to say which teams comes into their head first.

The beauty of this research is the small samples can be statistically grossed up to give an indication of ‘Market Size’ – in this case, how big the market researchers believe the different levels of support each team can call, and I have to say there are some interesting results.

I am not going to publish detail tables but will give you some headlines.

Firstly as you would expect Manchester United have the biggest support in the UK (estimated at just under 8m supporters), Liverpool are next at just over 5m). Then Arsenal, Tottenham, Chelsea, and Newcastle United are followed by West Ham (with an estimated fan base of 1.7m supporters across the country!). Interestingly Manchester City are 8th just under the Hammers. I have to say the Hammers surprised me.

Everton have an estimate of 1.1m fans, Southampton 700k and our lads – Wolves have an estimated fan base of 690,000. Remember this is based on market research where people have self-volunteered the sports team they support and then these samples have been statistically grossed up based on populations.

What is interesting is when you look back a year ago our support was estimated at 600,000 fans so maybe the premier league factor is working as we are seeing a fairly dramatic growth?

Outside the Premier League, there are some interesting results. The research puts Leeds on 1.5m fans (more than double ourselves). The two Glasgow clubs are about the same as Leeds (with Rangers having a slight edge).

Then there is our European cup winning neighbours, estimated to have just under 1.1m fans. So yes the researchers at a well-known market research company believe they are the biggest club in the Midlands, but not double or treble the size of Wolves as some of their knuckle draggers would have you believe.

What has surprised me is Forrest and Norwich. Based on this research both have considerably bigger fan bases than Wolves at about 850,000 fans! As you move down the list there are not many surprises – Portsmouth, Bristol, Reading, and even Swansea are considered bigger than the Albion (who have 300,000 fewer fans than Wolves!) Coventry are bigger than Blues.

I am not making any big claims to the accuracy of this research, the methodology is sound and big companies use this sort of stuff to make big decisions, but I accept there is a very big difference with people identifying as supporting a club and actually buying a ticket (Reading is a very good example where some geographical affiliation is not matched by a tradition of going to the game).

But this research does give you some broad sense of scale and in Wolves case a direction of travel. Premier League exposure is making more people (who are taking research questionnaires) to think about the Wolves as their team.

It really would not surprise me at all if Laurie and his advisors have not used research like this to inform the stadium capacity proposals, without it you only have gut feel.

 

[E is for idiot.]

I would imagine if we sign Raul then our worldwide total would put a different slant onto that table. Just as continued success will increase the number in the UK. It would be interesting to have figures in ten years time.

 

[ShropshireLad]

We have all spoke about the age-old question of who has more fans and what is our potential. Well, I have an answer, but before I start I want to issue a note of caution...

WOW! What a fantastic post! Many thanks. mate.

 

[Stafford]

It looks a litttle London biased to me, especially with how many people living there are non English heritage. The Midlands has a population of over 10 million, so who do they all support?... Probably Manchester United

 

[reanswolf]

Fascinating stuff Cannock, appreciate your post.
So those clubs above us are: -

Manure 8m
Liverpool 5m
Arsenal
Totenham
Chelsea
Newcastle
West Ham 1.5m
Man City
Leeds 1.5m
Rangers 1.5m
Celtic 1.5m
Everton 1.1m
Villa 1.1m
Forest 850000
Norwich 850000
Southampton 700000
Wolves 690000

Which puts us about 17th??

What about Sunderland, Sheff Wed, Cardiff, Derby, Leicester, Stoke, Pompey, Boro?

I think a better way of establishing club fan size is simply to find out how many people each club have on their data base. I know Wolves have well over 300,000. It sounds an easy way but it means soemone actually writing to each club to find out.

 

[Bill S Preston Esq.]

We have all spoke about the age-old question of who has more fans and what is our potential. Well, I have an answer, but before I start I want to issue a note of caution.

Market Research is not perfect and as we have seen in elections making predictions on small sample sizes can be risky, but in the absence of anything else governments, businesses, and football clubs use research to inform strategic decisions.

Now for the interesting bit.

I have worked in Data and Data analysis roles for more than twenty years and I have access to certain tools and pooled market research data. I don’t want to go into too much detail about what it is, but trust me when I say lots of major businesses buy into this research package and it’s about as good as it gets (but not perfect)

I have been playing with a tool that gives me access to thousands of data points, and one of these data elements relates to ‘Sports Team Followed’ This is an unprompted research question which basically means people are not given a list to choose from, they have to say which teams comes into their head first.

The beauty of this research is the small samples can be statistically grossed up to give an indication of ‘Market Size’ – in this case, how big the market researchers believe the different levels of support each team can call, and I have to say there are some interesting results.

I am not going to publish detail tables but will give you some headlines.

Firstly as you would expect Manchester United have the biggest support in the UK (estimated at just under 8m supporters), Liverpool are next at just over 5m). Then Arsenal, Tottenham, Chelsea, and Newcastle United are followed by West Ham (with an estimated fan base of 1.7m supporters across the country!). Interestingly Manchester City are 8th just under the Hammers. I have to say the Hammers surprised me.

Everton have an estimate of 1.1m fans, Southampton 700k and our lads – Wolves have an estimated fan base of 690,000. Remember this is based on market research where people have self-volunteered the sports team they support and then these samples have been statistically grossed up based on populations.

What is interesting is when you look back a year ago our support was estimated at 600,000 fans so maybe the premier league factor is working as we are seeing a fairly dramatic growth?

Outside the Premier League, there are some interesting results. The research puts Leads on 1.5m fans (more than double ourselves). The two Glasgow clubs are about the same as Leeds (with Rangers having a slight edge).

Then there is our European cup winning neighbours, estimated to have just under 1.1m fans. So yes the researchers at a well-known market research company believe they are the biggest club in the Midlands, but not double or treble the size of Wolves as some of their knuckle draggers would have you believe.

What has surprised me is Forrest and Norwich. Based on this research both have considerably bigger fan bases than Wolves at about 850,000 fans! As you move down the list there are not many surprises – Portsmouth, Bristol, Reading, and even Swansea are considered bigger than the Albion (who have 300,000 fewer fans than Wolves!) Coventry are bigger than Blues.

I am not making any big claims to the accuracy of this research, the methodology is sound and big companies use this sort of stuff to make big decisions, but I accept there is a very big difference with people identifying as supporting a club and actually buying a ticket (Reading is a very good example where some geographical affiliation is not matched by a tradition of going to the game).

But this research does give you some broad sense of scale and in Wolves case a direction of travel. Premier League exposure is making more people (who are taking research questionnaires) to think about the Wolves as their team.

It really would not surprise me at all if Laurie and his advisors have not used research like this to inform the stadium capacity proposals, without it you only have gut feel.

I'm not saying this isn't right but the one thing that makes me think it's not at all accurate is the estimate on Celtic. The only club where many people have them as a second team or a team on equal billing with another (I'm not one of those people btw)
But I think Celtic are huge, far bigger than Rangers (who if I had to pick a Scottish team it would be them).

 

[Stafford]

I'm not saying this isn't right but the one thing that makes me think it's not at all accurate is the estimate on Celtic. The only club where many people have them as a second team or a team on equal billing with another (I'm not one of those people btw)
But I think Celtic are huge, far bigger than Rangers (who if I had to pick a Scottish team it would be them).

I thought the majority of English preferred Rangers due to their political background?

 

[cannockwolves]

It looks a litttle London biased to me, especially with how many people living there are non English heritage. The Midlands has a population of over 10 million, so who do they all support?... Probably Manchester United

You are right up to a point, as much as researchers use weightings to remove bias you always get some errors. You only have to look at the different interpretations pollsters put on election research. Looking at the data almost all premier league clubs have been mentioned, with the exception of Huddersfield. If you took the raw data at face value you may conclude Huddersfield have zero fans, which is clearly not true. Like I say treat all market research with caution its not a census where every person is asked.

 

[Wolf in Kenilworth]

The important thing is we are bigger than the ****e.

Always have been always will be.

Success breeds higher supporter numbers so ours should only climb.

 

[WW1963]

Surprised that West Brom have that many. So many people I've met across the world have heard about Wolves but don't have a clue who they are.

 

[HKWolf]

We have all spoke about the age-old question of who has more fans and what is our potential. Well, I have an answer, but before I start I want to issue a note of caution.

Market Research is not perfect and as we have seen in elections making predictions on small sample sizes can be risky, but in the absence of anything else governments, businesses, and football clubs use research to inform strategic decisions.

Now for the interesting bit.

I have worked in Data and Data analysis roles for more than twenty years and I have access to certain tools and pooled market research data. I don’t want to go into too much detail about what it is, but trust me when I say lots of major businesses buy into this research package and it’s about as good as it gets (but not perfect)

I have been playing with a tool that gives me access to thousands of data points, and one of these data elements relates to ‘Sports Team Followed’ This is an unprompted research question which basically means people are not given a list to choose from, they have to say which teams comes into their head first.

The beauty of this research is the small samples can be statistically grossed up to give an indication of ‘Market Size’ – in this case, how big the market researchers believe the different levels of support each team can call, and I have to say there are some interesting results.

I am not going to publish detail tables but will give you some headlines.

Firstly as you would expect Manchester United have the biggest support in the UK (estimated at just under 8m supporters), Liverpool are next at just over 5m). Then Arsenal, Tottenham, Chelsea, and Newcastle United are followed by West Ham (with an estimated fan base of 1.7m supporters across the country!). Interestingly Manchester City are 8th just under the Hammers. I have to say the Hammers surprised me.

Everton have an estimate of 1.1m fans, Southampton 700k and our lads – Wolves have an estimated fan base of 690,000. Remember this is based on market research where people have self-volunteered the sports team they support and then these samples have been statistically grossed up based on populations.

What is interesting is when you look back a year ago our support was estimated at 600,000 fans so maybe the premier league factor is working as we are seeing a fairly dramatic growth?

Outside the Premier League, there are some interesting results. The research puts Leads on 1.5m fans (more than double ourselves). The two Glasgow clubs are about the same as Leeds (with Rangers having a slight edge).

Then there is our European cup winning neighbours, estimated to have just under 1.1m fans. So yes the researchers at a well-known market research company believe they are the biggest club in the Midlands, but not double or treble the size of Wolves as some of their knuckle draggers would have you believe.

What has surprised me is Forrest and Norwich. Based on this research both have considerably bigger fan bases than Wolves at about 850,000 fans! As you move down the list there are not many surprises – Portsmouth, Bristol, Reading, and even Swansea are considered bigger than the Albion (who have 300,000 fewer fans than Wolves!) Coventry are bigger than Blues.

I am not making any big claims to the accuracy of this research, the methodology is sound and big companies use this sort of stuff to make big decisions, but I accept there is a very big difference with people identifying as supporting a club and actually buying a ticket (Reading is a very good example where some geographical affiliation is not matched by a tradition of going to the game).

But this research does give you some broad sense of scale and in Wolves case a direction of travel. Premier League exposure is making more people (who are taking research questionnaires) to think about the Wolves as their team.

It really would not surprise me at all if Laurie and his advisors have not used research like this to inform the stadium capacity proposals, without it you only have gut feel.

Thanks for the info. I think what the above shows is that research companies shouldn’t be used to determine the customer/support base of a company/club. Wolves need to determine it for themselves via the amount of members they have, the size of the catchment area they operate, and also the number of new fans appearing.

To give an example of why the above is quite clearly wrong, there is no way on this earth Southampton, Norwich and Notts Forest have more fans than us. No way.

What they will have failed to recognise are the sheer number of dormant Wolves fans. I don’t blame them for that as it’s hard to identify them, but can anyone on here honestly say they have ever met a Southampton or Norwich fan? Laughable. Just watch the England T20 game tonight, I GUARUNTEE you will see a Wolves flag, probably a couple. You might see a ****ty Tree, but you definitely won’t see any farmers or fishermen.

Notts Forest can be explained by them still living off their ‘recentish’ Clough legacy, and the misplaced belief they are a big club. Nottingham is also a decent sized city so appears to have a decent catchment area. What they won’t have realised is that it isn’t a footballing hotbed, it has **** loads of students for starters and stupid sports like Ice Hockey. I doubt the researchers realise this, or failing that they came from Nottingham.

 

[mcwolf]

How long before world domination?

 

[QB Wolf]

Forest have a lot of ‘fans’ in the late 40s early 50s bracket, due to their purple patch under Clough.

 

[glorybox]

Norwich ****ing no chance!!!!

 

[reanswolf]

I don't think Norwich or Southampton are small clubs, they have a large catchment area to themselves even if the cities themselves are not greater than population-wise than Wolves.

 

[cannockwolves]

Fascinating stuff Cannock, appreciate your post.
So those clubs above us are: -

Manure 8m
Liverpool 5m
Arsenal
Tottenham
Chelsea
Newcastle
West Ham 1.5m
Man City
Leeds 1.5m
Rangers 1.5m
Celtic 1.5m
Everton 1.1m
Villa 1.1m
Forest 850000
Norwich 850000
Southampton 700000
Wolves 690000

Which puts us about 17th??

What about Sunderland, Sheff Wed, Cardiff, Derby, Leicester, Stoke, Pompey, Boro?

I think a better way of establishing club fan size is simply to find out how many people each club have on their data base. I know Wolves have well over 300,000. It sounds an easy way but it means someone actually writing to each club to find out.

Looking back at the data I missed Sunderland, they are more or less the same as Villa. But the rest in your list are below Wolves - I was surprised that Wednesday are not higher in the list.

Like have said to other posts, the methodology of these sorts of research projects is sound and researchers do try to remove bias, but you have all sorts of issues trying to get the right demographic (age), socio-graphic ('class'/wealth), and geography samples right to say the results are truly representative.

Market Research is not the same as a 'Census' where everyone answers the question and you have 100% completion rates. You are using small cost-effective samples to extrapolate what is going on in border populations.

 

[glorybox]

The thing is I imagine there's a lot of people in London and the south of the country who have no true allegiance to a football team but when pressed would say Chelsea, Arsenal or Tottenham...or god forbid West Ham!!!

 

[cannockwolves]

Norwich ****ing no chance!!!!

On first look I thought the same, but as Reens says they have a big catchment. The county of Norfolk has almost 900,000 people with another 700,000 people in Suffolk. It's not impossible many of these people identify with the main club in their area, even if they don't go to the games - I have always been impressed with the consistent level of their attendances.

I think it's fair to say Norwich are bigger than you think, and this 'evidence' provides some scientific evidence to back that up.

 

[Deleted member 4594]

So if reading this correctly 12 clubs out of 92 in England plus 30 odd in Scotland plus non league clubs...

Manure 8m
Liverpool 5m
West Ham 1.5m
Leeds 1.5m
Rangers 1.5m
Celtic 1.5m
Everton 1.1m
Villa 1.1m
Forest 850000
Norwich 850000
Southampton 700000
Wolves 680000

...add up to 25 million people which is well over a third of every single person in the UK.

No offence to the OP but that’s tripe.

Edit- don’t mean to be rude but it just doesn’t add up. Millions of people in this country have no interest in football at all.

 

[cannockwolves]

The thing is I imagine there's a lot of people in London and the south of the country who have no true allegiance to a football team but when pressed would say Chelsea, Arsenal or Tottenham...or god forbid West Ham!!!

Totally agree.

Although these sorts of research questionnaires don't force people to complete the question they are at least asking a question directly. It's like a researcher asking me what is my favourite opera - I might say Madame Butterfly (as its the only one I know), it does not mean I am going to be buying a ticket any time soon.

 

[HKWolf]

However they calculated it, they didn’t do a very good job.

Look below to see how big Notts Forest really are:

England historical attendance and performance

Largest average attendance in their history is 32501. Ours is 45466.

Only 3 times in their entire history have they averaged over 30000. By contrast this year will be our 20th time and we have had capacity restrictions a fair few season in 2002/03 and 2009-12.

In 1995 they finished 3rd in the Premier league averaging 23633. We averaged almost 2500 more in Division 1 that year.

As for catchment areas being an excuse for Norwich etc. We are in the West Midlands, the second largest region in the country with not one team at all to the West. We have a whole bloody country on our doorstep, and not one decent team until you reach Manchester or London.

My point is this; if you are reading Jeff don’t waste your time, it’s utter *******s. Wolves are massive.

 

[ShropshireLad]

Totally agree.

Although these sorts of research questionnaires don't force people to complete the question they are at least asking a question directly. It's like a researcher asking me what is my favourite opera - I might say Madame Butterfly (as its the only one I know), it does not mean I am going to be buying a ticket any time soon.

Hey, matey, if you think Madam Butterfly's OK get to listen to La Boheme.

 

[ShropshireLad]

However they calculated it, they didn’t do a very good job.

Look below to see how big Notts Forest really are:

England historical attendance and performance

Largest average attendance in their history is 32501. Ours is 45466.

Only 3 times in their entire history have they averaged over 30000. By contrast this year will be our 20th time and we have had capacity restrictions a fair few season in 2002/03 and 2009-12.

In 1995 they finished 3rd in the Premier league averaging 23633. We averaged almost 2500 more in Division 1 that year.

As for catchment areas being an excuse for Norwich etc. We are in the West Midlands, the second largest region in the country with not one team at all to the West. We have a whole bloody country on our doorstep, and not one decent team until you reach Manchester or London.

My point is this; if you are reading Jeff don’t waste your time, it’s utter *******s. Wolves are massive.

The thing is I'm within reason of assuming that that questionnaire asks about preferences and doesn't stipulate regularity of attendance.

 

[Beer Wolf]

In Norwich a brother and sister dating probably counts as one.

 

[cannockwolves]

So if reading this correctly 12 clubs out of 92 in England plus 30 odd in Scotland plus non league clubs...

Manure 8m
Liverpool 5m
West Ham 1.5m
Leeds 1.5m
Rangers 1.5m
Celtic 1.5m
Everton 1.1m
Villa 1.1m
Forest 850000
Norwich 850000
Southampton 700000
Wolves 680000

...add up to 25 million people which is well over a third of every single person in the UK.

No offence to the OP but that’s tripe.

Edit- don’t mean to be rude but it just doesn’t add up. Millions of people in this country have no interest in football at all.

No offence taken

In many ways your logic is correct, this is the challenge we have when communicating research findings. The research is valid for the question it sets about to answer. The biggest challenge is when one set of research is used to answer different questions (either through lack of understanding or support a viewpoint). This research is not structured to answer the question you are posing, it's not about neatly pigeon-holing the exact UK population. Its to see when asked which sports club they identify at that moment. It's indicative rather than any sort of 'census'

You also have to say that businesses use this sort of stuff because there is nothing else, Reen's suggestion of writing to all football clubs and asking how many fans they have on their database would give you a far better answer and 92 letters is doable but you would not get 100% response.

How do businesses make decisions in the absence of perfect information? - they take samples and carefully and scientifically extrapolate the results to larger populations - which does give errors. In reality, those fans estimates should be expressed between two confidence intervals. So the researcher might say 'we have a 95% statistical confidence that Wolves fan base lies between 550,000 and 750,000 fans'. If you want a more accurate figure you increase the size of the sample (and costs).

So like I said at the beginning you have to treat all market research with caution

 

[Pagey]

Its all a bit vague tho, are Norwich fan base bigger than Forest or smaller.
I want stats not ball park figures

 

[HKWolf]

The thing is I'm within reason of assuming that that questionnaire asks about preferences and doesn't stipulate regularity of attendance.

I think it paints a truer picture all things considered, especially since their league position hasn’t been massively different to ours in the last 20 years.

I think where these surveys will fall down is in trying to find fans of clubs outside their club’s typical catchment area. For example say they asked 1 person in every 100,000 who they support, they will get artificially high numbers from big cities, and artificially small numbers from small cities. Clubs with widespread national fan bases will suffer unless it can be identified. Say for example we have 500 fans in London and Forest have 100, the chances of any being identified from either club at all is almost 0 in 10million people. The conclusion would be us both having a similar presence in London which is false.

For us Birmingham on our doorstep will also artificially lower our fan base numbers. I think Wolves are a very unique case, which normal research practices will fail to recognise.

 

[derbyrameater]

How many companies implementing this have come to regret that decision ?

 

[ShropshireLad]

I think it paints a truer picture all things considered, especially since their league position hasn’t been massively different to ours in the last 20 years.

I think where these surveys will fall down is in trying to find fans of clubs outside their club’s typical catchment area. For example say they asked 1 person in every 100,000 who they support, they will get artificially high numbers from big cities, and artificially small numbers from small cities. Clubs with widespread national fan bases will suffer unless it can be identified. Say for example we have 500 fans in London and Forest have 100, the chances of any being identified from either club at all is almost 0 in 10million people. The conclusion would be us both having a similar presence in London which is false.

For us Birmingham on our doorstep will also artificially lower our fan base numbers. I think Wolves are a very unique case, which normal research practices will fail to recognise.

It is a difficult statistical exercise as @cannockwolves says. There are about 250 London Wolves SC members but not all live in London, very far from it. There are plenty of other Wolves fans who live here but aren't members. However, I'm astonished at the number of Albion fans that I come across. I wouldn't say that they outnumber us (it's impossible to say one way or another) but it's a goodly number...and I'd expect Wolves fans to acknowledge me (as they do) because I wear Wolves lapel badges and a scarf quite often whilst Albion fans wouldn't.

 

[cannockwolves]

I think it paints a truer picture all things considered, especially since their league position hasn’t been massively different to ours in the last 20 years.

I think where these surveys will fall down is in trying to find fans of clubs outside their club’s typical catchment area. For example say they asked 1 person in every 100,000 who they support, they will get artificially high numbers from big cities, and artificially small numbers from small cities. Clubs with widespread national fan bases will suffer unless it can be identified. Say for example we have 500 fans in London and Forest have 100, the chances of any being identified from either club at all is almost 0 in 10million people. The conclusion would be us both having a similar presence in London which is false.

For us Birmingham on our doorstep will also artificially lower our fan base numbers. I think Wolves are a very unique case, which normal research practices will fail to recognise.

I think you have made an excellent point. The Forrest and Norwich data surprised me. I suspect its more to do with some geographical affiliation rather than 'real' support for the club.

I do think we have more appeal outside our traditional geographical area, and to be honest I can prove this by splitting the data by postal areas. But I don't want to get into that because the sample sizes are very small and it will just throw up more arguments, let just say that we have a lot of growth potential out towards Shropshire and Herefordshire - nothing we probably all don't know.

 

[WickedWolfie]

It is a difficult statistical exercise as @cannockwolves says. There are about 250 London Wolves SXC members but not all live in London, very far from it. There are plenty of other Wolves fans who live here but aren't members. However, I'm astonished at the number of Albion fans that I come across. I wouldn't say that they outnumber us (it's impossible to say one way or another) but it's a goodly number...and I'd expect Wolves fans to acknowledge me (as they do) because I wear Wolves lapel badges and a scarf quite often whilst Albion fans wouldn't.

Interesting. I've hardly ever come across a Boggie in the Smoke.... Perhaps my selection of places to frequent is better, lol

 

[HKWolf]

It is a difficult statistical exercise as @cannockwolves says. There are about 250 London Wolves SXC members but not all live in London, very far from it. There are plenty of other Wolves fans who live here but aren't members. However, I'm astonished at the number of Albion fans that I come across. I wouldn't say that they outnumber us (it's impossible to say one way or another) but it's a goodly number...and I'd expect Wolves fans to acknowledge me (as they do) because I wear Wolves lapel badges and a scarf quite often whilst Albion fans wouldn't.

The smell is probably bringing them to your attention, that’s all. Never seen one in HK, seen a few Wolves fans though, even a local Chinese bloke!

 

[HKWolf]

I think you have made an excellent point. The Forrest and Norwich data surprised me. I suspect its more to do with some geographical affiliation rather than 'real' support for the club.

I do think we have more appeal outside our traditional geographical area, and to be honest I can prove this by splitting the data by postal areas. But I don't want to get into that because the sample sizes are very small and it will just throw up more arguments, let just say that we have a lot of growth potential out towards Shropshire and Herefordshire - nothing we probably all don't know.

If you can get hold of the data, I think a very good way of identifying the current number of young fans would be FIFA 19. I suspect it would be highly accurate.

 

[Bill S Preston Esq.]

I thought the majority of English preferred Rangers due to their political background?

There's preferring and supporting though. I prefer Rangers. My Irish Catholic mates born in England support Celtic.

 

[cannockwolves]

How many companies implementing this have come to regret that decision ?

As someone who has been involved in data analysis most of my life, I would say nowhere nears as many as regret not doing some sort of research or analysis before making big decisions - but I would say that wouldn't I

Working with decision makers you get two schools of thought;

1. Knowledge is power and research is critical
2. or as Henry Ford said in the 1900's - "If I ask my customers what they wanted they would have said faster horses - not the motor car"

On the whole, I think it's better to do some research before making big decisions, but it can stop real visionaries changing the world. The guy as Sony who launched the Walkman in the 1980s completely ignored market research that said people did not want to carry music with them (because they could not conceive a small devise at the time)

 

[Bill S Preston Esq.]

If you can get hold of the data, I think a very good way of identifying the current number of young fans would be FIFA 19. I suspect it would be highly accurate.

Not a bad shout that.

 

[ShropshireLad]

Interesting. I've hardly ever come across a Boggie in the Smoke.... Perhaps my selection of places to frequent is better, lol

I've had 3 neighbours in two separate households, my girls' science teacher, a chap in one of my locals, a colleague and a few temporary colleagues when I was a supply teacher but one who actually supports Wolves sits 5 rows in front of me in J1. I've met some down in Greenwich but I've also met a few Wolves fans there as well. However, I've never seen either a stripy shirt nor one of ours unless I'm wearing one.

 

[WickedWolfie]

I've had 3 neighbours in two separate households, my girls' science teacher, a chap in one of my locals, a colleague and a few temporary colleagues when I was a supply teacher but one who actually supports Wolves sits 5 rows in front of me in J1. I've met some down in Greenwich but I've also met a few Wolves fans there as well. However, I've never seen either a stripy shirt nor one of ours unless I'm wearing one.

Hmmmm.... all Sarf Lundun....ideal for lower forms of life like Boggies lol.....

 

[ShropshireLad]

Hmmmm.... all Sarf Lundun....ideal for lower forms of life like Boggies lol.....

That's not your best post.

 

[HKWolf]

I've had 3 neighbours in two separate households, my girls' science teacher, a chap in one of my locals, a colleague and a few temporary colleagues when I was a supply teacher but one who actually supports Wolves sits 5 rows in front of me in J1. I've met some down in Greenwich but I've also met a few Wolves fans there as well. However, I've never seen either a stripy shirt nor one of ours unless I'm wearing one.

No wonder the education system has gone to **** if all of the teachers are Albion fans!!