Why is Arsenal so popular in Scandinavia?

We meet the Gunners’ Nordic fans and ask why the club’s appeal is so strong in Norway, Sweden and Denmark.

I was in Stockholm recently on business. While I was there Arsenal was eliminated from the Champions League by surprise package Monaco prompting a bunch of Arsenal-related terms to trend on Twitter. It got me thinking about a rumour I’d heard – that Arsenal was the most popular English team in the Nordics. 

If you’re from England, when you talk to any cabbie in the world many will tell you their favourite Premier League team. This will often be “Manchester”, as many incorrectly call United despite City’s recent rise to prominence. One article from 2013 puts the figure at a staggering 659 million Manchester United fans worldwide. Liverpool and more recently Chelsea also have big followings, but what about the other perennial top four finisher Arsenal?

In the Nordics at least, the Gunners can claim above average popularity compared to United and Liverpool, but why? Plenty of English clubs have fielded way more Scandinavians than Arsenal, popular though Messrs Limpar, Jensen and Ljungberg were. OW asked around for answers.

Northern Exposure

Ben Frost helps run REDaction, an Arsenal fans’ group dedicated to improving the atmosphere at games.  He says that the seeds for Arsenal’s success in Scandinavia stems from TV scheduling in the 1970s.

“From talking to our Scandinavian fans, English games were shown on terrestrial TV, and Arsenal (along with Manchester United and Liverpool) were shown a lot,” Frost told OW. “For much of this time, you could see English games but not local league games on TV.”

Frost added that large, well-established fan groups have helped build on that early momentum.

“Arsenal are very lucky in this respect in lots of places – the local supporters clubs are very strong and proactive in getting across for games.  The Scandinavian players from the 1990s helped too, of course,” he added. [Continues]

Beyond the decades-old popularity of top-flight English football another reason for Arsenal’s popularity, according to Arsenal Sweden’s local operations manager Malin Hägg, is easy access to London.

“There are so many flights to London, every day, and it doesn’t have to cost a fortune to go over for a game,” she said. “Quite a few of us supporters, including myself, go over several times a year to watch the Arsenal play. I think anyone who has been to a game, especially around the Emirates these days, can testify to the massive amount of Scandinavians around the stadium.”

Arsenal Sweden has been around since 2001 and now has more than 6,500 members, and is possibly the most active of all the Premier League club supporters groups in the region.

“We are all active members as well, as you need to renew your membership every year, and as far as I know we’re one of the biggest supporter groups in Sweden,” Hägg added.

Arsenal Sweden has its own shop, a magazine that comes out six times a year, it sells match day tickets, organises tours and events across the country.

“For example, this autumn we had a big meeting in Helsingborg together with David Hillier who came over to watch the game again Manchester United and do a Q&A with us,” Hägg explained. “We organise meetings all around Sweden for the games, sometimes it’s a few games every season and sometimes, like in Stockholm, we meet up for every game. The pub we go to (O’Learys in the Old Town) always make sure that we can watch every game – whether it’s a FA Cup final or a pre-season game against Boreham Wood. We average about 40 people a game, but I think the record this season was around 100 people for the Spurs game in February.”

Parental Guidance

The popularity of Arsenal thanks to early TV access has been passed down through the generations, according to Carl Abrahamsson, an Arsenal fan from southern Sweden.

“My generation has probably been affected by our fathers, who out of nowhere for the first time had the chance to watch international (English) football back in the 70s. TV did only show the English league, which is the reason why that generation do mostly support English teams,” he told OW. “Since I was a son to a Wolves fan, I had the freedom to choose by myself.”

Wolves did have a good 1970s and were involved in the first English match to be shown in the Nordics – Wolves v Sunderland on 29 November 1969. It just goes to show that you need both success and marketing to keep cross-generation appeal, as Arsenal won the double just two years later.

The Scene in Norway

Bjørn Furuheim is chairman of Arsenal Norway, the third biggest supporters club in Norway after Manchester United and Liverpool. Arsenal isn’t the most popular club there, if official supporters’ club numbers are the benchmark, but Furuheim and co. are working hard to change that.

“Arsenal Norway is working hard to promote Arsenal in a positive way, here in Norway,” he said. “We have arranged parties in Norway several times, bringing ex players to Norway, joining Norwegian Gooners. We would have liked to have some good Norwegian players in the team…”

So no one can put a single reason on why Arsenal enjoys comparatively high support in Scandinavia compared with the support the ‘usual suspects’ of Manchester United, Liverpool and Chelsea enjoy in other parts of the world. Early access to the club, proximity to London, and enough local players to keep the club in the local news seem to be the main factors.

Arsenal Sweden’s Malin Hägg concludes: “I think we all have our own reasons to love the club. And no matter how much you look at supporters groups, the closeness to London, the television deals…it doesn’t take away from the biggest reason of them all: Arsenal is a fucking awesome club.”