Football is the top sporting draw for international visitors to the UK and almost 10% of Australians who visited in 2019, 92,000, attended a football game or watched a match on TV during their trip, spending a total of £290 million.
VisitBritain’s advertising campaign in Australia gets underway from 17 July and runs throughout the Women’s World Cup, promoting football related experiences and attractions across Britain, alongside messages of welcome celebrating a shared love of sport.
The campaign is building on the strong recovery in spending from Australian visitors in the UK. Latest statistics show that Australians spent £1.1 billion overall on their trips in 2022, with Australia the UK’s fourth most valuable inbound tourism market. Australians are also spending more during their trips, £1,547 in 2022, a 40% increase on 2019 and almost double the global spending average of £848.
VisitBritain CEO Patricia Yates said: “With the Lioness’s roaring into action for the FIFA Women’s World Cup, we’re putting Britain’s football tourism offer in the spotlight, harnessing the strong recovery from the Australian market. Encouraging visitors to travel to Britain and enjoy football is part of our drive to get visitors out exploring more, spreading the season and the economic benefits of tourism across the nations and regions.
“Britain is the home of football and packed full of amazing experiences that visitors can only have here. From the thrill of a live match to exploring our vibrant football cities to walking in the footsteps of heroes on a stadium tour, we can’t wait to welcome Australians to our home turf to experience these amazing moments for themselves!”
VisitBritain’s campaign is using a mix of channels including digital billboards in high visibility locations in Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney, showing fans enjoying matches in Britain with fun headlines, promoting Britain as the home of football and more.
Social media activity will drive consumers to a dedicated page on VisitBritain’s global consumer website, featuring football-inspired destinations, attractions and experiences themed around its GREAT Britain umbrella campaign for 2023 to come and ‘See Things Differently.’
As well as its digital advertising campaign, VisitBritain is also working on a content partnership with Australian broadcaster Optus Sport to extend the campaign’s reach with content driving ‘go now’ messaging. It includes a branded series of short films exploring Britain’s football cities running across Optus’s digital content platforms during live and on-demand football matches from August to October 2023.
VisitBritain latest research demonstrates the increasing importance of football in driving inbound tourism to the UK. There were 1.5 million visits overall to the UK in 2019 that included watching a live football match with those visitors spending £1.4 billion in total during their trip in 2019, 5% of all visitor spending that year
Tags: FIFA Women’s World Cup 2023, Patricia Yates, VisitBritain
