Measuring demand means observing behaviour; declaring it means asking people what they would do. Both produce numbers, but they answer different questions. This page sets out the method Noyzee applies, its indicators and its limits.
Stated and revealed: a known gap, rarely corrected
The gap between what people say and what they do has been documented in social science for decades. In sport it takes a particular form: stated attachment to a club far exceeds observed purchasing behaviour, and stated willingness to pay for a subscription always exceeds actual conversion.
This is not a flaw in surveys: it is their nature. A question suggests an answer, a scale shapes its distribution, and a respondent presents a coherent version of themselves. A search has no audience: nobody searches to make a good impression.
The three indicators that structure the measure
- Intent volume: the number of qualified searches across a given perimeter (discipline, club, athlete, territory) over a dated window.
- Territorial density: that volume relative to population, which reveals strong interest in a small market where gross volume shows nothing.
- Intent depth: the share of searches close to the decision (access, price, purchase) within the total, which separates curiosity from buying intent.
None of the three means anything alone. High volume without depth describes awareness; high depth without volume describes a niche. It is their intersection that supports a decision.
What the method cannot do
It does not forecast revenue. It establishes no causality: a rise in searches alongside a campaign does not prove the campaign caused it. And it says nothing about audiences who do not search: decisions made offline, by habit or by recommendation, escape it.
Turning a measure into a decision
Data is only useful against a dated decision. The method starts from the decision, not the data: which trade-off has to be made, by when, and what difference in measurement would tip it.
- Choosing a sponsorship asset: compare candidate assets on territorial density against the brand’s target, not on their overall reach.
- Opening a market: look for high intent depth in an underserved territory, the mark of demand that is already mature.
- Calibrating an on-sale: follow the rise in intent volume to place the opening at the right moment rather than on a fixed date.
- Defending a budget: document how intent moved before and after an action, stating plainly that it is a correlation.
Reproducibility
A measure is only worth something if it can be repeated identically. Every analysis published here states its perimeter, its time window and its source. The definitions used are in the glossary.
