FIFA world cup leads to spike in sales on e-commerce firms

By

Maverick Martins

Published
Jun 25, 2018

E-commerce firms in India are witnessing a sharp increase in sales, especially in the sportswear segment, as football fans across the country are showing their love for the ‘beautiful game’ by buying their favourite jerseys and other football merchandise.

India’s leading e-commerce major Flipkart has seen sales of jerseys jump 20 times, as compared to normal days during this period.
 
Flipkart had earlier tied up with Alcis Sports, which owns the rights for the official merchandise for 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia, to exclusively sell the 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia apparel merchandise on its platform.

"Clothing and jerseys have seen close to 20x jump in sales with 95 per cent of sales in jerseys and fan t-shirts alone. Flipkart this year saw an opportunity and stocked official merchandise for men, women and kids. This has paid off with a third of the sales coming from women's merchandise," Flipkart VP (Fashion) Rishi Vasudev was quoted as saying by PTI.
 
Other e-commerce firms like Myntra, Shopclues and Snapdeal are also cashing in on the football fever and scaling up their offerings in this segment to meet the growing demand.
 
"We have witnessed a sharp spike in football-related products which includes footballs, jerseys, shorts and tracks. The football world cup is a big revenue driver for the sports business with football contribution to business increasing by 40 per cent over April-June," Myntra VP and Head (Sports, Footwear and Accessories) Puspen Maity told PTI.
 
“The platform has seen an average sale of around 4,000 footballs per day for the last 16 days. Other merchandise like jerseys etc has also seen a spike. We are selling about 300-350 fan jerseys every day," ShopClues spokesperson said.
 
“There have been a big jump in demand for football-related merchandise on their platform from Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Goa, Chennai, Kolkata and the North-eastern markets,” said a Snapdeal spokesperson.