West Park Rovers 2 - The Business Case
Why Sports Clubs Are Taking Retail and E-Commerce In-House
The old model for sports merchandise is simple: outsource it. A third-party runs your online store, designs your products, prints the shirts, manages fulfilment, and pays you a royalty for the privilege of using your crest.
It’s low effort. It’s predictable. And it quietly limits you.
That model worked when “merch” meant a replica kit and a mug. But now, fans expect the same seamless experience they get from the brands they buy from every day; fast shipping, personalisation, limited drops, transparency, and emotion. They don’t want to shop at “the club shop”. They want to shop with the club.
And that’s the shift.
Clubs across sports, football, rugby, motorsport, cricket, even cycling, are starting to treat retail not as a licensing opportunity, but as a core business function.
They’re moving commerce in-house.
The margin story (and the myth behind it)
Let’s start with the obvious one: money.
When clubs look at bringing e-commerce and retail in-house, margin is usually the headline. The maths looks simple enough.
License your brand, and you take 10–20% of sales. Run it yourself, and that number jumps, even after accounting for staff, systems, fulfilment, and the general chaos of running an online store.
But it’s not just about bigger margins. It’s about where those margins come from.
Outsourced partners are optimised for efficiency, not storytelling. They’ll stock what sells easily, not what connects deeply. They’ll prioritise their inventory model, not your brand. The result is a store that might make money, but rarely strengthens the relationship between club and supporter.
Bring it in-house, and suddenly you can play the long game. You can experiment with product lines, invest in quality, and price strategically instead of reactively. You can respond to what’s happening on and off the field, and you can do it in real time.
That control, financial and creative, is where the real business case begins.
The control dividend
Margins might be the motivation, but control is the reward.
When a club owns its commerce stack, it owns the experience. It can decide how a fan interacts, what’s sold, when, and why. That opens doors that no licensing model ever could.
Take personalisation. For most clubs, adding a name and number to a shirt is a logistical headache handled by someone else. In-house, it becomes a value engine. Every letter, number, and patch is stock-tracked and assembled into a finished product. That’s not a gimmick; it’s high-margin manufacturing at scale.
Or consider agility. A win, a farewell, a record-breaking goal, fans want to celebrate now, not next quarter. Outsourced partners move at the speed of contracts. Internal teams can turn moments into merchandise in days.
Then there’s data. Running your own commerce operation means you see what fans actually buy, how often they return, what sizes sell fastest, what markets perform best. It’s insight that fuels every part of the organisation, from marketing to inventory planning to sponsorship value.
In short, in-house operations turn commerce from a side hustle into an intelligence function.
Authenticity sells
When a third-party sells your products, it feels transactional. When the club sells them, it feels personal.
That matters more than it sounds. Fans don’t just buy things, they buy belonging. When the messaging, design, packaging, and tone of voice all come from the club, the connection feels real. A farewell shirt feels like a thank-you, not a cash grab. A limited drop feels like a celebration, not a clearance sale.
And fans can tell. Authenticity has commercial value. It increases repeat purchases, drives higher conversion rates, and creates the kind of cultural stickiness that no marketing budget can fake.
That’s something the best-run clubs, in any sport, are already proving.
Inside West Park Rovers
For our fictional club, West Park Rovers, borrowed from Kieran Maguire’s The Price of Football series, the conversation has already started. Their commercial director has just returned from a season review with a spreadsheet full of numbers that don’t quite make sense. Merchandising revenue is up, but profit isn’t. The fans complain about delivery times, and the “official store” feels anything but official.
In their current setup, a licensing partner handles everything from design to fulfilment. West Park’s involvement stops at approving mock-ups and signing off seasonal campaigns. It’s safe, but stifling.
Now the board is asking the right questions: What if we ran this ourselves? What if every fan purchase actually felt like buying from the club, not just branded stock? They’re starting to sketch what their commerce stack might look like; an ERP to manage inventory, a connected warehouse, and maybe, a small in-house team that can turn match-day moments into new product lines by Monday morning.
For now, they’re still assessing. But once you start looking at the numbers, and the missed opportunities, it’s hard to look away.
Complexity: the part nobody talks about
Of course, none of this is simple. Bringing retail and e-commerce in-house isn’t like launching a DTC brand. It’s harder.
You’re not starting with a clean slate, you’re unpicking a licensing structure, rethinking supply chains, and often rebuilding systems from the ground up. You’re moving from a single royalty payment on a spreadsheet to hundreds of moving parts: ERP systems, warehouse management, purchase orders, work orders, and forecasting models.
You’ll need staff who understand operations, not just merchandise. You’ll need processes that connect physical and digital inventory, and data that can be trusted by finance, fulfilment, and marketing teams alike.
And you’ll need patience. The first year isn’t glamorous. It’s systems work. It’s process work. It’s ironing out the thousand small inefficiencies that come with running your own retail business. But every season that follows gets easier, and more profitable.
Playing the long game
The truth is, sports clubs are built for the long term. They don’t think in product cycles or fiscal quarters; they think in decades.
That’s what makes the in-house model so powerful. The investment pays back over time. Every year, more of the infrastructure, data, and expertise compounds. What starts as a cost centre becomes a capability, something that defines how the club operates, not just how it sells.
It’s also insurance. The next time licensing economics shift, or a partner’s logistics fail, or a platform changes its rules, clubs that own their systems and data won’t blink. They’ll already have the infrastructure in place.
The short version
Margins matter. But control, authenticity, and longevity matter more.
When a club brings its retail operation in-house, it’s not just selling shirts. It’s building resilience, capability, and a direct line to its community.
That’s the real business case.
Over the next articles in this series, we’ll look at how to assess readiness, design the right tech stack, and build the operational muscle needed to make it work.
We’ll keep following West Park Rovers as they go through the same process, the board meetings, the spreadsheets, the systems diagrams, to show what the journey really looks like.
Because whether you’re running a football club, a rugby team, or a motorsport outfit, the logic holds. Fans don’t just want to support you on match day. They want to buy from you, directly, and expect you to get it right.