Since the legalization of football in 1885, the sport known as “the people’s game” has, for generations, fostered a sense of community and belonging among people from the working class to the elite, uniting individuals from all walks of life around one simple goal: putting the ball in the back of the net. This sense of unity came naturally at first, with locals who shared a passion for the game coming together to play or support their neighbourhood teams, giving football its deep-rooted sense of identity and community.

In the past, football fans were limited to supporting local teams and physically attending matches at stadiums. However, the rise of digital technologies has drastically expanded how people can follow teams and matches. This global reach and digital engagement have played a major role in transforming football clubs into well-established companies with diverse business operations focused primarily on profit maximization and brand expansion. Today, football clubs invest heavily in merchandising, social media, and brand management, among other sectors. The internal structure of a club has also become highly complex, involving many professionals working in different departments. This evolution has also transformed the economic framework of football, as the main sources of revenue for top professional clubs now come from broadcasting rights, commercial deals, and matchday income. In this dynamic environment, marketing plays a crucial role in promoting and managing clubs and international tournaments, and just as in any other industry, differentiation remains key. During our Insight Day at Internazionale Milano offices, Luca Adornato, their Brand & Marketing Director, stressed how, from a marketing perspective, having minimal control over your core business is what makes this sector unique. In other words, while clubs can shape their image and partnerships, they ultimately have limited control over their core product: the unpredictable sporting performance that drives their reputation and revenue. He then explained how, within a club, it is crucial to understand what your DNA is to define your identity and strategic direction. From a branding perspective, the storytelling a club develops should therefore blend the shared elements of the football industry with the unique traits of its predefined identity. Moreover, the content a club produces must reflect its brand promise while aligning with the expectations and needs of its target audience, maintaining coherence and consistency across all touchpoints.

In the current market, football generates a yearly turnover of €25 billion in Europe alone, with Gladden and Milne, marketing professors and creators of the “Team Brand Equity” concept, arguing that the rapid growth in revenue of football clubs is “independent of the teams’ sporting results and performance” but rather a cause of “[clubs’] utilization of brand equity”. And hence the question arises: ‘How does a football club make a brand of itself?’

It is argued that the key to becoming a global brand for football clubs is internationalization. Specifically, clubs are able to establish themselves internationally through communication and players. Montoto, a sport blogger, argues that one of the most effective ways for clubs to reach an international audience is to communicate in their local language, as for example, Real Madrid and Bayern Munich have their website available in 9 different languages. This allows the clubs to be recognized in every corner of the world, thus establishing them as a brand. However, such a relationship between an international audience and the club needs to not only be established but also nurtured, and this is done through the players. The players complete this function by making the fans emotionally invest in the direct success of these players and, by extension, the club. This, of course, largely helps increase the commercial revenue of the club. Specifically, this can be seen in the context of Everton. When Everton signed James Rodriguez, they displayed his shirt number on a skyscraper in Bogota and Miami, thus connecting with the Spanish-speaking fans. This allowed the club to “reach more than 400 million people, in line with the club’s internationalization strategy”, thus demonstrating the importance of internationalization in establishing a global brand.

The second key is ‘Brand Identity’. According to Kapferer, writer and creator of the brand identity prism concept, “[brand identity] is what helps an organization feel that it truly exists and that it is a coherent and unique being”. It allows football clubs to stand out from the crowd and draw focused attention to their unique character. A strong brand identity is built through the ‘Brand Identity Matrix’. The concept consists of the internal elements and the external elements. According to Mats Urde, author of the book “The Brand Matrix”, the internal elements are the club’s mission, vision, culture, and competencies, which define the identity of the club and describe its essence. The external elements, on the other hand, form the outside perception of the club, that of the customers and other external stakeholders, through the value proposition of the club and their external position. As such, brand identity is key as the combination of the internal and external elements allows clubs to reveal if the corporate identity is coherent and aligned. This, in turn, would allow the clubs to strengthen the brand built through internationalization, as discussed above, by identifying the weaknesses of their identity and fixing them.

As clubs undergo this digital transition, two recent examples, FC Internazionale Milano and AFC Ajax, clearly illustrate the different strategic approaches clubs can adopt when redefining their image, and the considerations that influence these choices.

FC Internazionale has always been a polarizing figure in the footballing world, being the first club to openly embrace an international identity, splitting from AC Milan specifically to include foreign players: a principle that endures to this day. The Milanese pioneers have long been trailblazers in Italian football, and when they observed Serie A lagging behind other European leagues in international market appeal, they initiated a bold rebrand centered around digital marketization. The redesign featured a minimalist visual identity and a global outreach strategy leveraging social media. Known as “Internazionale,” the club saw this move as perfectly aligned with its heritage. The newly produced “I M Inter” slogan cleverly ties the new badge (I for Internazionale and M for Milano) to its historical roots, reinforcing both modernity and tradition. This rebrand has proven highly successful: revenues rose from €364.7 million in 2020/21 to €439.6 million in 2021/22, a 20.7% year-on-year increase, which has continued upward, reaching €112 million in commercial revenue alone in 2024. Sponsorship revenue also grew, with Betsson.sport becoming the largest shirt sponsor in club history, while fan engagement metrics soared to 80 million followers across social media as of May 2025, making Inter the second-fastest-growing football fanbase globally, behind only Manchester City.

AFC Ajax on the other hand has proven that a different approach can also be successful when rebranding, more specifically, focusing on the coherence within your core fanbase and respecting the history of the club as the focal point of your rebrand. In the 2025/26 season, Ajax announced their rebrand and it was focused on the club’s 125th anniversary and marked by a deliberate move away from the minimalist trend seen in other rebrands, returning the classic crest seen during the club’s glory days. The club leveraged their history and strong relationship with their fans to center the rebrand around returning to the “Ajax DNA” at a key milestone, with the explicit mention of discussions with supporters’ groups along with the return of the classic crest outlining a clear strategic direction for the club’s brand: we are who we are. Unlike Inter, Ajax’s strategy focused on authenticity and local coherence rather than international expansion. Although financial data on the rebrand’s effects is not yet available, fan reception has been overwhelmingly positive, with significant engagement and renewed enthusiasm. Given Ajax’s historical prestige and strong domestic identity, this approach reinforced loyalty within their core fanbase while also laying the groundwork for gradual global growth rooted in authenticity.

Football has always been about more than goals and trophies; it has been about belonging, passion, and identity. What has changed is how those values are expressed. Today, clubs must navigate the tension between tradition and modernity, between preserving local roots and pursuing global reach. By defining and expressing their DNA through authentic storytelling, clubs like Inter and Ajax remind us that even in a world dominated by commercial metrics and digital followers, the essence of football still lies in the connection between a club, its fans, and the values they share.