Partner Article

Wales trumps England in online football merchandise battle

The UEFA European Championship is fast approaching, and the last few fans are kitting themselves out in their heroes’ jerseys. The majority of football associations sell fan merchandise in their own online shops. Trusted Shops put the Championship participant’s shops under the microscope. The sobering result, from England’s perspective: it’s goodbye in the final sixteen for the England Football Association shop. England came 9th in the shop comparison.

21 of the 24 UEFA European Championship participants, or their football associations, have their own online shop. Trusted Shops examined these in the areas of identity and accessibility, data protection and security, cancellation, product presentation and costs, delivery and payment, and the order process. The result: none of the shops managed to fully meet all of Trusted Shops’ strict criteria.

The title of “European fan shop champion” goes to… Turkey. The Turkish fan shop scored the best in the examination of the online shops run by the football associations of European Championship participants, making it the “European fan shop champion” in our comparison. 82 per cent of the audit criteria were met. “This is a very good figure for an initial audit of an online shop,” confirms Arne Lawrenz, one of Trusted Shop’s audit experts. The Spaniards also lived up to their position as a major football nation when it came to the fan shop, only just missing out on victory with a result of 80.3 per cent. The Swiss Football Association’s shop came in at a respectable 3rd (80 per cent). The England Football Association shop received 9th place (71.7 per cent), over 10 per cent behind the winner. The shop run by the Championship’s host, France, came in as low as 15th place (66.6 per cent).

Red cards: The worst “fair play violations” at a glance
A game lasts 90 minutes – that’s something football fans can generally rely on. In the online shops, however, it is more difficult for fans to discern a concrete timeframe. For example, information on a concrete delivery period was often missing. In addition, some of the fan shops showed the following considerable defects:

Cancellation:

·Impermissible restrictions of the 14-day EU-wide right cancel (e.g. only possible to return the product if unused or in original packaging, or limitation of the cooling off period down to 7 days)

·Shifting of the transport risk to the consumer in the event of cancellation (the retailer is liable for this by law)

Data protection:

·Mandatory provision of a date of birth as a condition for registration

·No pre-checked boxes that the consumer has to activate in order to opt out of a newsletter

Delivery: Impermissible formulations such as “usual delivery period”

Payment: The payment methods on offer are not listed before the start of the order process.

Order process: Incomplete listing of all costs incurred on the order page or pre-selected charged additional services (e.g. ticket insurance)

Product descriptions: Use of impermissible clauses, such as exclusion of liability for erroneous descriptions of products

The overall ranking of online shops run by European football associations:

1. Turkey (82 %*)

2. Spain (80.3 %)

3. Switzerland (80%)

4. Hungary (78.2 %)

5. Austria (78%)

6. Italy (75%)

7. Croatia (73.9%)

8. Wales (73%)

9. England (71.7%)

10. Germany (70.9%)

11. Romania (69.5 %)

12. Sweden (69.5 %)

13. Poland (68 %)

14. Czech Republic (67.3%)

15. France (66.6 %)

16. Russia (65 %)

17. Northern Ireland (63 %)

18. Belgium (62.5 %)

19. Albania (58.6 %)

20. Slovakia (52 %)

21. Ireland (50 %)

* Percentage of audit criteria met

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Arne Lawrenz .