Competing with English Football

[Melanius Mullarkey]

To be fair the only folk thinking we should be compared to England are the cockwomble and English fanboys.

[Buddist Monk]

1 hour ago, Melanius Mullarkey said:

To be fair the only folk thinking we should be compared to England are the cockwomble and English fanboys.

You mean the man who made such a rip roaring c**t of arranging new sponsors for the league, while lying to the fans, that he was rewarded by a cushy number at the SFA?

Gotta love the goldfish bowl of Scottish football.

 

[EdTheDuck]

Jim Spence been inspired by reading P&B I reckon

https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/opinion/jim-spence/695968/jim-spence-football-is-still-about-more-than-just-money/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

[SweeperDee]

12 minutes ago, EdTheDuck said:

Jim Spence been inspired by reading P&B I reckon

https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/opinion/jim-spence/695968/jim-spence-football-is-still-about-more-than-just-money/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

Actually readable for once, considering it's Spence. 

[The Real Saints]

Josh Magennis will soon be plying his trade in the English Championship. Josh. Magennis. Let's not overestimate English football too much.

[Austinho]

We can’t and IMO shouldn’t be trying to compete with the English game. I don’t really want to see an Old Firm League match being played in America in front of a sea of green and blue half & half scarves, League Cup draws being made in Thailand brought to you by FunXX721Xbet.com™, or clubs having official noodle and tractor partners (not a bad option for St Johnstone mind you).

The Scottish game does need money though, and it does need marketed differently. If anything, we should be doing the exact opposite of what England does and play up the ‘proper football’ for ‘proper people’ angle more. Advertising should revolve around the fans, the passion, the smell of pies and bovril, the gritty unkept terraces and the silly and absurd stuff that can only be found in Scottish football. Think balls getting stuck in hedges etc. There is a niche out there for it - look at the success of FC United for example. Fans who were sick of seeing the soul being stripped from their club who were attracted to something more honest. We can be tongue in cheek about our game without taking the piss out of it.

Some say we are stuck in the past, romancing about the glory years of Scottish football, but they should rightly be celebrated. Stop blindly following the English structure of Prem, Championship, League 1 etc. Call them their proper names - Division 1, Division 2, Division 3. Introduce more safe standing. Introduce more singing sections right behind the goals. Make the game more appealing on TV by banning (or encouraging) clubs from filling other areas of the stadium when there are masses of empty seats visible on camera (I’m looking at you Kilmarnock). Everyone is attracted to a full looking stadium and a good atmosphere - both when watching on TV and when actually deciding to attend the game. 

Without selling our soul, we need to appeal to television audiences outside Scotland. TV deals in America, Australia, Ireland and the like. Niche audiences in other countries. How about a tongue in cheek ad campaign in Qatar promoting the Scottish leagues to the locals because ‘we don’t want you missing out when we don’t qualify for 2022’. Or St Johnstone adverts in Perth, Australia saying ‘Don’t just follow the glory - support Perth’s finest’. Oops... I’m brainstorming out loud.

[Monkey Tennis]

2 hours ago, Austinho said:

We can’t and IMO shouldn’t be trying to compete with the English game. I don’t really want to see an Old Firm League match being played in America in front of green and blue half scarf wavers, League Cup draws being made in Thailand brought to you buy FunXX721Xbet.com™, or clubs having official noodle and tractor partners (not a bad option for St Johnstone mind you).

The Scottish game does need money though, and it does need marketed differently. If anything, we should be doing the exact opposite of what England does and play up the ‘proper football’ for ‘proper people’ angle more. Advertising should revolve around the fans, the passion, the smell of pies and bovril, the gritty unkept terraces and the silly and absurd stuff that can only be found in Scottish football. Think balls getting stuck in hedges etc. There is a niche out there for it - look at the success of FC United for example. Fans who were sick of seeing the soul being stripped from their club who were attracted to something more honest. We can be tongue in cheek about our game without taking the piss out of it.

Some say we are stuck in the past, romancing about the glory years of Scottish football, but they should rightly be celebrated. Stop blindly following the English structure of Prem, Championship, League 1 etc. Call them their proper names - Division 1, Division 2, Division 3. Introduce more safe standing. Introduce more singing sections right behind the goals. Make the game more appealing on TV by banning (or encourage) clubs from filling other areas of the stadium, when there are huge glaring areas of empty seats facing the camera (I’m looking at you Kilmarnock). Everyone is attracted to a full looking stadium and a good atmosphere - both when watching on TV and when actually deciding to attend the game. 

Without selling our soul, we need to television audiences outside Scotland. TV deals in America, Australia, Ireland and the like. Niche audiences in other countries. How about a tongue in cheek ad campaign in Qatar promoting the Scottish leagues seeing as ‘we don’t want you missing out when we don’t qualify for 2022’. Or St Johnstone adverts in Perth, Australia saying ‘Don’t just follow the glory - support Perth’s finest’. Oops... I’m brainstorming out loud.

I agree with much of that, but I would be annoyed if my choice of where to sit or stand at the football was dictated by what might look best on the telly.

[Lord Snooty]

22 hours ago, EdTheDuck said:

Jim Spence been inspired by reading P&B I reckon

https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/opinion/jim-spence/695968/jim-spence-football-is-still-about-more-than-just-money/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

I like Jim.

 

[Austinho]

1 hour ago, Monkey Tennis said:

I agree with much of that, but I would be annoyed if my choice of where to sit or stand at the football was dictated by what might look best on the telly.

I hear what you are saying, and not sure what the solution is that doesn’t inconvenience fans too much. I do think it’s an important issue though. 

Here are two photos of the same moment from different angles during the Hibs game this week. Easter Road was absolutely rocking that night, but one photo make it look like we’ve scored in a League Cup tie against Cove Rangers and the other looks like we’ve scored the winner in Baku:

 

[Swello]

3 hours ago, Austinho said:

We can’t and IMO shouldn’t be trying to compete with the English game. I don’t really want to see an Old Firm League match being played in America in front of green and blue half scarf wavers, League Cup draws being made in Thailand brought to you buy FunXX721Xbet.com™, or clubs having official noodle and tractor partners (not a bad option for St Johnstone mind you).

The Scottish game does need money though, and it does need marketed differently. If anything, we should be doing the exact opposite of what England does and play up the ‘proper football’ for ‘proper people’ angle more. Advertising should revolve around the fans, the passion, the smell of pies and bovril, the gritty unkept terraces and the silly and absurd stuff that can only be found in Scottish football. Think balls getting stuck in hedges etc. There is a niche out there for it - look at the success of FC United for example. Fans who were sick of seeing the soul being stripped from their club who were attracted to something more honest. We can be tongue in cheek about our game without taking the piss out of it.

Some say we are stuck in the past, romancing about the glory years of Scottish football, but they should rightly be celebrated. Stop blindly following the English structure of Prem, Championship, League 1 etc. Call them their proper names - Division 1, Division 2, Division 3. Introduce more safe standing. Introduce more singing sections right behind the goals. Make the game more appealing on TV by banning (or encourage) clubs from filling other areas of the stadium, when there are huge glaring areas of empty seats facing the camera (I’m looking at you Kilmarnock). Everyone is attracted to a full looking stadium and a good atmosphere - both when watching on TV and when actually deciding to attend the game. 

Without selling our soul, we need to television audiences outside Scotland. TV deals in America, Australia, Ireland and the like. Niche audiences in other countries. How about a tongue in cheek ad campaign in Qatar promoting the Scottish leagues seeing as ‘we don’t want you missing out when we don’t qualify for 2022’. Or St Johnstone adverts in Perth, Australia saying ‘Don’t just follow the glory - support Perth’s finest’. Oops... I’m brainstorming out loud.

Great post.

The thing that winds me up most about the imagination-vacuum at the top of the SPFL is that instead of differentiating themselves from the corporate giant next door, as you would imagine any "small business" would do, they instead go for the full cringe and as a result make us look like a poor facsimile of a league setup that we should have no interest in copying in the first place.

On the TV deal - I wonder if we should be looking to do something really different there and not go for the bargain basement effort that we have at the moment - as we will never be treated as anything other than an afterthought. Currently, the situation is totally unsatisfying - if I want to see the highlights of 'Well games, I wait until after midnight on the day of the game for our in-house highlights. If I want to see other teams games, I either trawl the internet for individual highlights of various quality (assuming they exist), or I wait until Sunday evening (a genuinely ridiculous period of time) to see curtailed highlights packages with canned commentary. If I want to see any pro-shot footage of non-Premier games, fucking forget it. Live games are "who are the OF away to this week?", with some (bafflingly chosen) make-weight games thrown in. How is this in any way fit for purpose 2018? It's the only aspect of Scottish Football that is as genuinely small-time as metropolitan sportswriters would have you believe.

A couple of years back, an american colleague of mine who is based over here showed me what he gets for Major League Baseball (a sport I've got zero interest in). From memory, for something like £80 a year, he got to watch any game in that league live or on-demand on a huge bunch of devices and platforms (although I think he couldn't watch games for the team in his area live), I think he got videos of incidents as they happened, he got highlights packages, all the stats and interviews, etc - they even had a radio channel which was nicely retro. There was an ability to tailor it to the team you support IIRC and the whole thing just felt very well put together. 

All of this may not cross directly to our game and the economies of scale are clearly different - but if there was a proper service as seems standard for US sport - why not go via that route? The idea of sitting down in front of a big telly and watching a full 90 mins as it happens is a dying concept in any case - we need to get ahead of this part of it and cater for the other ways that people want to get involved.

[Buddist Monk]

I agree we shouldn't be competing with the English, they have resources almost beyond imagination. However, a fair recompense in regard to TV money would at least allow us to compete with similar sized leagues as us.

Our "top brass" has monumentally failed in this task and to see the likes of Doncaster rewarded for this failure only shows that we'll never get that recompense.

[Green Day]

30 minutes ago, Buddist Monk said:

I agree we shouldn't be competing with the English, they have resources almost beyond imagination. However, a fair recompense in regard to TV money would at least allow us to compete with similar sized leagues as us.

Our "top brass" has monumentally failed in this task and to see the likes of Doncaster rewarded for this failure only shows that we'll never get that recompense.

Posted this in another thread, but probably more relevant here - 

IMO I dont think we have a chance of competing on anything like a level playing field - the TV / Oligarch / State funds in clubs in England / Spain / Germany / France is just too big a hurdle these days.

I think that ship has sailed and while we have a very good "product"many clubs are doing it all with one hand tied behind their back.

I cant speak for all, but Hibs are generally deemed to be well run got 13000 STs. However even we are scrabbling around the free transfer and "guys that cannae get in the Man City reserves" market. 

13000 ST sales look good, but dont really do much more than pay the bills or maybe get you slightly better players than teams around you - there is no chance at the moment of making a dent in Euro competition (would love to be proved wrong).

What Scotland needs is a half decent TV deal for size of country -

SPFL £18.75m pa, Belgium £60m pa, Denmark £46m pa, Holland £70m pa

We will get nowhere near England etc, but at least we might be able to attract players good enough for clubs (outside Celtic)  to get to the group stages where the real money is with an improved deal.

Thats the kind of commentary I would have liked Jim White to have said rather than the usual "how pish is Scottish fitba" line.

[Guest Moomintroll]

Posted this in another thread, but probably more relevant here - 

IMO I dont think we have a chance of competing on anything like a level playing field - the TV / Oligarch / State funds in clubs in England / Spain / Germany / France is just too big a hurdle these days.

I think that ship has sailed and while we have a very good "product"many clubs are doing it all with one hand tied behind their back.

I cant speak for all, but Hibs are generally deemed to be well run got 13000 STs. However even we are scrabbling around the free transfer and "guys that cannae get in the Man City reserves" market. 

13000 ST sales look good, but dont really do much more than pay the bills or maybe get you slightly better players than teams around you - there is no chance at the moment of making a dent in Euro competition (would love to be proved wrong).

What Scotland needs is a half decent TV deal for size of country -

SPFL £18.75m pa, Belgium £60m pa, Denmark £46m pa, Holland £70m pa

We will get nowhere near England etc, but at least we might be able to attract players good enough for clubs (outside Celtic)  to get to the group stages where the real money is with an improved deal.

Thats the kind of commentary I would have liked Jim White to have said rather than the usual "how pish is Scottish fitba" line.

100% this, loathe them or hate them, the ugly sisters do give us an usp over other leagues and we should be maximising this especially in expat marketplaces. Has anyone ever been excited about the Brondby v FK Kobenhavn derby outside of Denmark? We will never compete with England but we have to market our own league better, when the smaller clubs can offer attractive terms we will push our own standards up, get more coefficient points and will improve in European competitions thus creating a virtuous circle.

[Buddist Monk]

6 minutes ago, Green Day said:

What Scotland needs is a half decent TV deal for size of country -

SPFL £18.75m pa, Belgium £60m pa, Denmark £46m pa, Holland £70m pa

We will get nowhere near England etc, but at least we might be able to attract players good enough for clubs (outside Celtic)  to get to the group stages where the real money is with an improved deal.

They television companies have treated us like an English seaside league, which is fucking great for them. What's even more galling is that while the UK Gov feeds OpenReach a fuckton of cash to sort out broadband, it somehow gets siphoned back to it's "parent company" and used to purchase sporting rights. So in many ways your taxes go towards giving BT the money to plough into the English game.

I wholly blame those at the SFA and SPFL for failing to arrange something that is commensurate. 

6 minutes ago, Green Day said:

Thats the kind of commentary I would have liked Jim White to have said rather than the usual "how pish is Scottish fitba" line.

Jim White is a c**t and a complete irrelevance, he shouldn't even be mentioned other than in the context of snivelling apologist for Rangers.

[EdTheDuck]

50 minutes ago, Green Day said:

Posted this in another thread, but probably more relevant here - 

IMO I dont think we have a chance of competing on anything like a level playing field - the TV / Oligarch / State funds in clubs in England / Spain / Germany / France is just too big a hurdle these days.

I think that ship has sailed and while we have a very good "product"many clubs are doing it all with one hand tied behind their back.

I cant speak for all, but Hibs are generally deemed to be well run got 13000 STs. However even we are scrabbling around the free transfer and "guys that cannae get in the Man City reserves" market. 

13000 ST sales look good, but dont really do much more than pay the bills or maybe get you slightly better players than teams around you - there is no chance at the moment of making a dent in Euro competition (would love to be proved wrong).

What Scotland needs is a half decent TV deal for size of country -

SPFL £18.75m pa, Belgium £60m pa, Denmark £46m pa, Holland £70m pa

We will get nowhere near England etc, but at least we might be able to attract players good enough for clubs (outside Celtic)  to get to the group stages where the real money is with an improved deal.

Thats the kind of commentary I would have liked Jim White to have said rather than the usual "how pish is Scottish fitba" line.

Comparing the TV deals in Belgium, Denmark, Netherlands (and Norway and Sweden) is not comparing like with like; for one thing Belgium has more than twice Scotland's population (and therefore TVs) and the Netherlands has more than 3 times our population. Furthermore, these deals cover every game in the top league plus second division games and the national KO/Cup (the national team might be included too, but I can;t be arsed checking).

Yes, our deal is abysmal but unless you want every game staggered over the whole weekend we won't get close to these deals. Besides which as long as our football is broadcast on, effectively, 'foreign' television who concentrate on their own league we'll be a filler item and get filler item payments.

[HaikuHibee]

12 minutes ago, EdTheDuck said:

as long as our football is broadcast on, effectively, 'foreign' television who concentrate on their own league we'll be a filler item and get filler item payments.

That's the bottom line. Lot of folk hate to hear that, but it is bang on.

[Estragon]

As a side issue, I wish the media would f**k off with all this talking up of Burnley.  You even had Tam Cowan read through the list of transfer fees spent to accumulate this group of galacticos like they were some unstoppable object sent on a mission to obliterate Aberdeen.

They're pish, they've had their season, and now they'll be back to bottom half fodder for <5 years before they get relegated.

[Buddist Monk]

19 minutes ago, EdTheDuck said:

Comparing the TV deals in Belgium, Denmark, Netherlands (and Norway and Sweden) is not comparing like with like; for one thing Belgium has more than twice Scotland's population (and therefore TVs) and the Netherlands has more than 3 times our population.

The population has little to do with it, it's coverage/attendance that matter. The OF for all their shitty laundry that constantly gets aired in public, are a big draw to the likes of Sky or BT, even more than most run of the mill English Premier games. This should be factored in way before the population is.

[Buddist Monk]

1 minute ago, Estragon said:

They're pish, they've had their season, and now they'll be back to bottom half fodder for <5 years before they get relegated.

I think that's unfairly harsh. Decent wee club. Hate those spouting the pish about them, not them themselves.

 

[Guest Moomintroll]

Comparing the TV deals in Belgium, Denmark, Netherlands (and Norway and Sweden) is not comparing like with like; for one thing Belgium has more than twice Scotland's population (and therefore TVs) and the Netherlands has more than 3 times our population. Furthermore, these deals cover every game in the top league plus second division games and the national KO/Cup (the national team might be included too, but I can;t be arsed checking).
Yes, our deal is abysmal but unless you want every game staggered over the whole weekend we won't get close to these deals. Besides which as long as our football is broadcast on, effectively, 'foreign' television who concentrate on their own league we'll be a filler item and get filler item payments.

I specifically singled out Denmark as they have a similar population to Scotland but no usp as I stated originally. I am stretching the analogy somewhat but imagine what Pepsico's share price would be in comparison to Coca Cola if they were leading with Pepsi cola and Cokes market leader was Fanta or Sprite. That is what Scottish football is trying to compete against, forget that and play to its strengths, be more Irn Bru, (the good stuff obv Gman). If Scottish football had a similar deal to Denmark then what could SSC, Derek McInnes, Neil Lennon and Martin Canning do with a 150% increase in their budgets from tv revenue?