Ever wondered why football kits leak, every summer?
We’re deep into football kit season now. As kit manufacturers gear up to launch their new shirts for the upcoming 2020/21 season, leaks are dropping left right and centre. The good people at footyheadlines.com are working overtime to keep us all up to date, and each one generates a lot of traction online. This happens every summer.
But why? Surely, the people responsible for keeping the designs under wraps until the launch date could do a better job of keeping them secret? Probably. But it’s not an accident, according to Phil Delves, kit connoisseur and content creator.
“Sites like Sports Direct and Lovell Soccer list new shirts way before the official release of a kit, in order to gain traction on price comparison sites and SERPS (search engine results pages),” Delves explained in a Twitter thread.
Have you ever wondered why some sites 'accidentally' list new shirts weeks ahead of everyone else, year after year? Why isn't someone in the company passing on some learnings so that the next guy won't press the red button prematurely? 🔴
Well, it's not an accident…
[THREAD] pic.twitter.com/qnCmMfcmxf
— Phil Delves (@phildelves) July 29, 2020
“By briefing listing the new kits, sites can get their product pages indexed on Google, and listed on comparison sites like footy.com. I don’t have any data to show, but the general principle is that the earlier you can get a page indexed, the better chance you have of ranking higher on SERPS when people come to look for the kit.”
“It’s strange that brands don’t do anything to clamp down on this sort of practice , but at the same time leaks are so prevalent now that you virtually never see any ‘new’ information from these ‘leaks’,” he added.
So there you have it. The sites that sell them want to be higher up on the google search results, and therefore index the pages as early as possible. Not a lot the manufacturers can do about that. But as the saying goes, all publicity is good publicity.
