As a life long fan of Leicester City we did experience something very special happening during 5000/1. To get tickets for games that season was difficult, if you used the official channels.
Before that season it was no problems to get tickets as capacity was good enough. Leicester today do fill the stadium and to see an expansion are positive news.
Still the club has not been able to expand their fanbase a lot since 5000/1. Leicester City have one major struggle on their hands, to convince people that they are a big club. To compete on this arena against other clubs such as Celtic, Arsenal, Tottenham, Chelsea, Liverpool and Manchester United is a tall order and looks impossible.
These clubs speaks to an audience that Leicester are far from. Rangers, Newcastle, Aston Villa and Manchester City are also getting massive support, but more local support.
Leicester City did call on the masses of their own city when they won the league but we all know that this community is part of a multisports environment and many are favoring cricket and rugby. The job must be set on getting to local community to rate football as the major sport to follow or do both.
To be able to grow your fanbase on an international scale you need more than one single league triumph to count. Masses outside your own city will not be bothered much and being in a place with local rivals very close in Derby, Nottingham and Coventry you will not get those fans over the fence.
The new stadium project in front looks great. But the job to build a broader fanbase are more about the football team performing and not about an arena. Hand in hand fantastic, but if it mean you have to sell players or seeing a struggle from a sporting point of view, it might be problematic.
Looking forward to the stadium expansion and facilities build but hopefully the lift be about Leicester City winning football games and nothing else, the opposite will of course not work well.
Leicester City as a football club struggles to attract new fans outside their own city and also in it. The core fanbase of this club are around 20.000. The hope must be that the team over years will be able to attract an even larger base of support.
Sadly you need to win Champions League and Premier League titles to grow good support outside your own local area. The challenge for Leicester City is to be able to compete as a football club with the best and six years are gone since the club last had a sniff of a trophy that counts.
Following closely the support for Leicester City in the Scandinavian countries you did see the interest growing from about 100 fans and up to 250 paying members in and around that special season. Manchester United have 43 000 registered members in Scandinavia, but do have close to a million people supporting their club up here.
Arsenal and Leeds are other clubs with massive support. Sadly little or no real respond from media and such when you are 5 or 6 in the league, but being at the top got Leicester City recognized.
We do see trends in Scandinavia that Champions League clubs do get more and more support as their games goes live on telly at general view. Premier League alone are shown on pay channels and support are dropping for those not also attending Champions League.
Football is in change and sadly English football are in decline in Scandinavia as children will not be approached in the same way as they were before.
US and Asia might be a market to expand for Leicester City, but in all the job must be to be able to convince local people that they should support their own club and of course get people not involved in football to understand the fun of this sport and being a fan of Leicester City.
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