So similar to a previous post I made here previously, I decided to take note of all of the football shirts that I saw on a week long cruise to the Norwegian Fjords.

Some interesting things to note:

  • I decided to split 'kids' and 'adults' shirts, not because I am some kind of predator as some alluded to last time, more because I feel that adults get to broadly choose the shirts they wear whereas kids are more likely to be gifted/given shirts or they may be forced to wear them by adults (my daughter has many Derby shirts for example - she is 2 and doesn't know what they mean!). I don't think this is predatory because I looked at the shirts for no longer than 2 seconds and it is the kind of thing I notice without having to stare.
  • This cruise was to the Norwegian Fjords. Even though it was great weather, a lot of people were wearing jumpers! Far more than in center parcs. Bear that in mind with the results.
  • This was over a week and the previous post was 4 days. Bear that in mind with the results.
  • I have put the shirts I wore in for interest only. I felt that if I was counting, I should wear a different shirt everyday!

Finally, because I don't have unlimited time to do this, I asked AI to give me some interesting points it notices about the lists. Ignore if you hate AI:

The really interesting split

If we classify the shirts as:

Type Adults Kids Total English club 33 17 50 Other club 5* 13 18 National team 6 13 19 Total 44 43 87

*The adult "other club" figure includes Celtic as a Scottish club and four genuinely overseas clubs; I'll come back to that distinction.

So overall, 50 of the 87 shirts (57.5%) were English club shirts.

But the adult/kids difference is much more interesting:

  • 75% of adult shirts were English clubs (33/44)
  • Only 40% of kids' shirts were English clubs (17/43)
  • 30% of kids' shirts were national teams
  • Only 14% of adult shirts were national teams

That is probably the biggest finding in the whole dataset.

There's a lovely "proper football" element to the adult list

You weren't just seeing the obvious giant-club shirts.

So the adults look much more like football supporters wearing their actual club shirts, rather than people simply wearing the globally recognisable brands.

And then there's the weirdly strong lower-league representation

So there's a lot of EFL football in this dataset.

The Premier League gets 29 sightings, but the Championship alone gets 14, and then another 7 across League One and League Two.

That means 23 of the 50 English club shirts were from outside the Premier League.

So among English club shirts, 46% weren't Premier League shirts.

That's a really good statistic.

The most obvious difference: Center Parcs was absolutely shirt-heavy Center Parcs Norwegian Fjords Days 4 7 Shirts 167 87 Shirts/day 41.8 12.4 And the kids changed dramatically

This is my favourite comparison.

Kids — where were the shirts from? Center Parcs Fjords English clubs 51 (44%) 11 (26%) National teams 35 (30%) 13 (30%) Overseas clubs 29 (25%) 19 (44%) Total 115 43

So the proportion of kids wearing English club shirts almost halved:

44% → 26%

Meanwhile, overseas club shirts went from:

25% → 44%

That's a huge shift.

The cruise kids were much more international.

And the names tell the story:

Real Madrid, Barcelona, AC Milan, Juventus, PSG, Inter Miami, Al Hilal.

You had 19 overseas-club shirts among 43 children.

At Center Parcs you had 29, but among 115 children.

So in proportional terms, a child on the fjords cruise was about 1.75× as likely to be wearing an overseas club shirt as a child at Center Parcs.

That's probably the strongest piece of evidence that the two populations were very different.

Adults were much more consistent

This is where your original hypothesis about adults choosing their own shirts gets some support.

Adults Center Parcs Fjords English clubs 40 / 52 = 77% 33 / 44 = 75% National teams 10 / 52 = 19% 6 / 44 = 14% Overseas clubs 2 / 52 = 4% 5 / 44 = 11%

The headline is:

Adults were remarkably loyal to English clubs in both places.

77% at Center Parcs.

75% on the cruise.

That's basically the same.

The adults' overseas-club representation did increase, but from a tiny base — 4% to 11%.

So the huge internationalisation of the cruise sample is almost entirely driven by the children, not the adults.

That's fascinating.

Your kids/adults theory looks quite plausible from this data

Obviously, this doesn't prove why children are wearing the shirts they are wearing.

But compare the two environments.

Adult behaviour

Center Parcs: 77% English club
Cruise: 75% English club

Almost unchanged.

Children's behaviour

Center Parcs: 44% English club
Cruise: 26% English club

Huge change.

Hope you enjoyed the post.

Have a fantastic day!

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