The thinking behind football marketing
Football marketing is about more than social media posts, sponsorship announcements and matchday campaigns. It’s about building brands, understanding supporters, creating meaningful connections, and finding new ways to grow.
The Online Rule is an independent newsletter exploring the ideas, decision-making, and people behind football marketing.
Written by Scott Goodacre, it brings together original analysis, research, industry insights, and conversations with the people doing the work inside football clubs.
The aim is simple: to help you understand your industry more deeply, discover interesting approaches, and develop your own thinking.
Going beyond the campaign
There is no shortage of football marketing content online. Every week brings new campaigns, creative ideas, partnerships and social media trends.
But seeing what a club has done is only part of the story.
Why did they take that approach? What were they trying to achieve? What influenced their decisions? And what can other clubs learn from it?
These are the questions The Online Rule explores.
Through detailed breakdowns, original research, and interviews with industry practitioners, the newsletter looks beyond the finished product to understand the thinking behind it.
That might mean examining how a club has developed its brand, analysing social media activity across a league, exploring the psychology of football supporters, or speaking to the people responsible for delivering a campaign.
While football is our primary focus, we’ll occasionally look at other sports where there are interesting ideas and lessons worth exploring.
The focus isn’t on finding fault or declaring winners and losers. It’s about recognising good work, asking useful questions, and sharing ideas that can help move the industry forward.
For the people doing the work
The Online Rule is written primarily for the people working day to day in football marketing.
The social media managers, content creators, marketing executives, designers, campaign managers, and generalists who help clubs communicate with supporters and build their brands.
Many people working in these roles have developed their skills through experience rather than formal marketing education. They’re learning as they go, balancing competing priorities and finding their own ways of working.
They’re also ambitious. They want to understand more than the latest tactics. They want to develop the knowledge, confidence and perspective to take the next step in their careers.
The Online Rule exists to support that curiosity and ambition.
Whether you’re working in a Premier League marketing department, managing communications at a non-league club, or supporting teams through an agency, the aim is to share ideas and insights that are relevant to your work.
Not every example will be something you can replicate directly. But there should always be something worth understanding, questioning, or considering.
Who’s behind The Online Rule?
I’m Scott Goodacre, a marketing consultant, educator, and sports marketing specialist.
My work spans marketing consultancy, professional education, curriculum development, and training, including work connected to the football industry through FBIN and my own consultancy.
A significant part of my professional life involves helping people understand marketing concepts and apply them to real situations.
One thing I’ve seen repeatedly is that people can become very good at delivering marketing activity without always having the opportunity to explore the strategy and theory behind what they’re doing.
That’s particularly relevant in football, where marketing teams are often working at pace, responding to the demands of the season, and balancing the expectations of supporters, commercial partners, and colleagues.
I started The Online Rule in 2013 to explore the industry with that perspective.
I’m interested in why clubs make the decisions they do, how marketing teams approach their work, and what we can learn from the people and organisations doing interesting things.
I also believe that valuable ideas can come from anywhere. A small club with limited resources can offer just as much to learn from as one of the biggest clubs in the world.
The Online Rule is where I bring together that curiosity, my experience in marketing and education, and my interest in the business of football.
Join the conversation
The Online Rule is published on Substack, with new articles delivered directly to subscribers by email.
It’s free to subscribe.
If you work in football marketing, I’d also like to hear from you.
Whether you’ve worked on an interesting campaign, have a story worth sharing, want to suggest something for analysis, or simply have a different perspective on something I’ve written, you’re welcome to get in touch.
Some of the most valuable insights come from the people doing the work every day, and I want The Online Rule to reflect those experiences.
Subscribe to The Online Rule and get a deeper understanding of the thinking behind football marketing.
