Survey: Man City Leads Way In Localization Efforts

A survey by One Hour Translation examined the websites of 32 teams participating in this year's Champions League to determine how far clubs, "eager for global fans and regional sponsors, go locally," according to Paul Nicholson of INSIDE WORLD FOOTBALL. The study showed that 14 competing clubs have performed Chinese-language localization, 12 clubs have localized to Spanish, 11 to Arabic, nine to Japanese and French and eight to Indonesian. All 26 teams representing non-English speaking countries have a website localized to English. Of the teams surveyed, Man City "invests most heavily" in its localization efforts. The Cityzens’ website is localized for 12 languages other than English. Barcelona came in second, "with websites in nine other languages in addition to Spanish." Bayern Munich is tied in third with Superleague Greece side Olympiakos with eight localized languages. La Liga side Sevilla is the "fastest growing in terms of new languages," adding four new localized versions (INSIDE WORLD FOOTBALL, 3/28).