3 countries, 3 stories: how Euro 2012 drives online sales

It's 2 days left to the final game Spain-Italy and everything's about football. The crucial games have paralysed the cities all over Europe with empty streets, whilst everybody's in front of the TV watching the games.

And all football fans know that the only thing better than a good game is a good game with a cold beer and a pizza. That's how the Eurocup drives ecommerce sales.

3 countries, 3 stories.

 

  Spain: 100% winners, 100% sales growth!

 

Spain, the current European and world champions, loves football. As much as they may be upset about the economic crisis, football, as the team coach Vincente del Bosque says, “gives them delight at a difficult time”.

With the heat outside, the Spanish prefer to watch football at home. And when supporting your national heroes, why not to have a pizza?

La Nevera Roja one of the biggest food ordering Spanish platforms, noted a 100% growth in sales during the first two weeks of Euro, with most orders on the days when Spain was playing and on Sundays. Altogether, 1500 food orders have been taken since the start of the EuroCup.

The customers of Nevera Roja stuck to their usual food preferences; the most popular order during the game was pizza, followed by Asian food and kebabs. And does it surprise anybody that 75% of these orders were placed by men?

The only thing better than a good game is a good game with a cold beer and a pizza!

   

Poland: who earns out of Euro 2012 in the host country?

It's the first time Poland has organized such a big event. The infrastructure spending associated with the Euro 2012 amounted to 110 billion zloty (about €25.6 billion). All these infrastructure projects added 1.5% to Polish GDP.

Official numbers confirm that 820,800 foreign tourists visited Poland during the Euro 2012. The Polish hotel prices have risen tenfold and so have their online reservations. The city that has earned most out of Euro 2012 is Warsaw, where up to 250.000 football fans stayed during the game.

Like the Spanish, Poles like to accompany a game with pizza; on the 12^th of June, the day of the game of Poland against Russia, Domino's Pizza observed a 65% growth in sales. On that day there were 66% more visits to the Domino's Pizza site, 75% more telephone orders, and 96% more cheese was used to prepare pizzas for football fans.

A curiosity: according to the Domino's Pizza press release, if all the pizza boxes used on that day had been used to make a tower, it would have been as high as the Palace of Culture and Science, the tallest building in Poland.

China: online retailers cash in on Euro 2012

While the Spanish football fever does not surprise anybody, who would have thought that the Chinese, despite the distance and the time difference between China and Europe, would go crazy about the game?

“European Cup” is the most searched phrase on the popular Chinese ecommerce consumer-to-consumer site taobao.com and, since the tournament kicked off, it has appeared in searches over 54.000 times. According to Xie Hui, an online vendor on the site, the mantra of that success is “if you cannot get to a Euro 2012 game in person, you can get a flavor of the world's top competition via my website”.

Best selling jerseys on taobao.com

Chinese football fans are great buyers of football kits; over 5.000 Spanish football kits were sold at taobao.com last month, followed by sales of German, Italian, French and Portuguese kits, which all topped 3,000.

Likewise in Europe, online sales of beer and food have grown significantly during the Eurocup. The beer culture, which developed in China during 2010, is set to grow even bigger; at Tmall.com, China's biggest B2C ecommerce site, beer sales over the first 2 weeks of Euro 2012 were up to five times the normal level.

Finally, foosball, also known as a table football and until recently a rarity in China, has become a popular game for many Chinese during the tournament. Over 200,000 foosball sets were sold on Taobao in May.

2 days left to the final game. Have you been shopping online during the Eurocup? We're looking forward to hearing your stories! Enjoy the game!