Tamar Study Reveals Cycling Retailers Have Overtaken Football as Britain's Best-Loved Kit Providers

LONDON, July 4, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --

Tamar, the UK's award-winning social, search and mobile agency, has launched the 4^thinfographic in their 'BrandLove' series - a series of infographics which aim to measure 'Brand Love':  the degree to which consumers are demonstrating their support & enthusiasm for brands online.

The latest release in the BrandLove series looks in detail at the sporting goods retail sector, comparing the revenue and community sizes of the Top 10 British sporting goods retailers.

    Brand Love Rank Brands
                  1 Chain Reaction Cycles
                  2 Wiggle
                  3 JD Sports
                  4 Kitbag
                  5 Sports Direct
                  6 Pro-Direct Sport
                  7 JJB Sports
                  8 Direct-Golf.co.uk
                  9 Cotswold Outdoor
                 10 Body Power Sports (fitness-superstore.co.uk)

For this latest version of the 'BrandLove' series, the focus was firmly on revenue and community sizes, with the results giving a clear indicator of the commercial success of these brands as well as their success in social communities. As well as Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest community sizes were measured for BrandLove league table.

Selected highlights

• The brand with the highest % Growth is Sports Direct, with a 97% year-on-year revenue growth
• The top two brands in the league table are predominantly known as cycling brands
• The brand with the highest reported revenue is Wiggle
• The total combined revenue of all 10 brands on the league table for 2011 is £256,977,647.00

Tamar's CEO Tanya Goodin said: "The Tour de France started this weekend and so it seems apt that we found that two cycling brands lead the table of best-loved sports retailers. The British have always seen themselves as a national of football fans but the discrepancy between spectating and participating is nowhere shown more clearly than in what they're buying online."

A note on the table:

When qualifying brands for inclusion, 'British' was defined as either being founded-in or currently 'run' from Great Britain. Tamar excluded sports clubs, media companies, professional services companies and individual personalities from the list. When searching for the official branded accounts of the relevant companies, the highest-volume (relevant) account was chosen as the 'official' presence. In a small number of cases, no official presence was found.

About Tamar

Tamar, the UK's award-winning social and search agency, combines extensive expertise in natural search engine optimisation combined with social media to generate more online sales for businesses. This results-focused delivery of campaigns is achieved through expertise in social media, search and mobile. Tamar specialises in working with major retail, non-profit and financial services brands. Its extensive, high-profile client base includes Peugeot, Halfords, The Arcadia Group, The Prince's Trust, Sk:n , Boohoo.com, and Citi Group.

Contact: Helen Booth, +44-(0)20-8995-7878.

SOURCE Tamar.com