SPFL Review

[pansjambo]

8 minutes ago, Leith Green said:

Perhaps its to do with different people being in charge of their club now?

Its not always clever to hark back to previous owners and the absolute fuckup they made of some clubs......................

Leave Duff and Gray out of it

[Leith Green]

3 minutes ago, pansjambo said:

Leave Duff and Gray out of it

I wont bite.

I agree on that pair, they were terrible for us and we almost ended up losing our club.

Perhaps (some) clubs are not like (some) fans and have decided its time to put the points scoring to bed for the good of our game?

[Monkey Tennis]

This review sounds like a nonsense.

The figure plucked is just an example of wishful thinking.  

The means of realising it seem to involve having to shift more games around for screening on TV, as well as tying in the women's game which will naturally enough, want to see any resulting increased income come its way. 

Discussion should be about the division of income, rather than the scale of it overall.

[Theyellowbox]

4 minutes ago, Monkey Tennis said:

This review sounds like a nonsense.

The figure plucked is just an example of wishful thinking.  

The means of realising it seem to involve having to shift more games around for screening on TV, as well as tying in the women's game which will naturally enough, want to see any resulting increased income come its way. 

Discussion should be about the division of income, rather than the scale of it overall.

Actually, tying in the women's game is a pretty clever way of growing distributions in both the men's and womens game more together than separately.

You just need to look down south to see how much sponsors want to throw at moment football. Sell scottish football as being multi gendered to sponsors ticks many boxes for a lot of sponsors. Tied in shirt sponsors across men's and womens teams means larger revenues at individual club levels too.

It wouldn't be a stretch to assume you might end up seeing 'double billed games' in the years to come. Eg Dundee United vs Aberdeen women at 12 at Tannadice and then Dundee United v Abedeen men's at 3pm on same pitch. Fans in spending money for longer, sponsors getting extra exposure and potentially double tv showings.

 

[Monkey Tennis]

3 minutes ago, Theyellowbox said:

Actually, tying in the women's game is a pretty clever way of growing distributions in both the men's and womens game more together than separately.

You just need to look down south to see how much sponsors want to throw at moment football. Sell scottish football as being multi gendered to sponsors ticks many boxes for a lot of sponsors. Tied in shirt sponsors across men's and womens teams means larger revenues at individual club levels too.

It wouldn't be a stretch to assume you might end up seeing 'double billed games' in the years to come. Eg Dundee United vs Aberdeen women at 12 at Tannadice and then Dundee United v Abedeen men's at 3pm on same pitch. Fans in spending money for longer, sponsors getting extra exposure and potentially double tv showings.

 

With the income needing split.

[craigkillie]

With the income needing split.

It's mostly the same clubs anyway, and several of them already run full-time or at least hybrid women's teams.

[Theyellowbox]

10 minutes ago, Monkey Tennis said:

With the income needing split.

Yes, but at club level, you could split by saying anything up to 2pm is womens revenue or a % of a total. Same at an overall level. 

Edited August 15, 2022 by Theyellowbox

[Monkey Tennis]

Yes, so more money might be raised but it'll be required to finance additional competitions.

A certain alchemy is required to see how the income for the men's league is significantly raised by doing this.

[Leith Green]

Ron Gordon is about to be interviewed on Radio Scotland....................I will post a report, but predict that we know no more after this interview than before.

 

As predicted yesterday, RG confirmed that the SPFL saw itself " as an administrator for the clubs", without enough strength / expertise commercially to grow the revenues etc.

Asked how to increase revenues, talked up the Sky deal, as well as bringing in other tv / sponsorship packages. 

Trying to find balance of protecting the gate income, and increasing the revenue / games sky show (maybe up to 60 / 80 games).

Asked about womens game, one of the 5 pillars of the review was the womens football, support and grow it. Talked about growing partnerships and ideas to enhance the revenues.

So, didnt really hear much more but its a wee bit of a redder for Doncaster et al if 5 clubs have to pay a consultancy to tell us the league are not doing their jobs properly............

 

I should add that - despite our current shambolic state on the pitch, RG told Hibs fans that he was going to massively increase our revenues (from those under Petrie, where our commercial income trailed the likes of Aberdeen by a long way) and he is already delivering this for us, so you can see the common thread here. 

Edited August 16, 2022 by Leith Green

[AJF]

Is it just me that thinks telling everyone publicly how much you want for our product is a bad idea? It kind of limits you to that amount.

[Alert Mongoose]

There's more than an element of the Emperor's new clothes about this thing.

[Leith Green]

Just now, Alert Mongoose said:

There's more than an element of the Emperor's new clothes about this thing.

I would be concerned if I were the SPFL, as this report does seem to state the obvious - but if its not already being addressed, and if this group can in some way prod and push the SPFL down a road to give all of our clubs a lot more money, then I dont see it as being a bad thing.

As I mention above, Hibs previous regime fell asleep at the wheel, relied massively on the fan income and largely ignored commercial deals - and its taken about 3 years to turn that round.

Seems similar here but on a wider scale impacting all clubs.

 

[lubo_blaha]

I would be concerned if I were the SPFL, as this report does seem to state the obvious - but if its not already being addressed, and if this group can in some way prod and push the SPFL down a road to give all of our clubs a lot more money, then I dont see it as being a bad thing.
As I mention above, Hibs previous regime fell asleep at the wheel, relied massively on the fan income and largely ignored commercial deals - and its taken about 3 years to turn that round.
Seems similar here but on a wider scale impacting all clubs.
 

The SPFL is made up of the clubs though, you can’t really consider them to be two separate groups. The current structure is there because that’s what the clubs want and it is the responsibility of the clubs and/or the board (largely made up of club owners) to make any changes to that.

[Dons_1988]

10 minutes ago, lubo_blaha said:

The SPFL is made up of the clubs though, you can’t really consider them to be two separate groups. The current structure is there because that’s what the clubs want and it is the responsibility of the clubs and/or the board (largely made up of club owners) to make any changes to that.

I think they mean the SPFL executive specifically. 

It’s actually quite the embarrassing admission that it’s currently effectively just an admin function. Not that it’s a surprise but the fact we’ve paid Deloitte to effectively tell us that the leadership of the league could use some commercial focus is quite something. 

[Leith Green]

18 minutes ago, lubo_blaha said:

The SPFL is made up of the clubs though, you can’t really consider them to be two separate groups. The current structure is there because that’s what the clubs want and it is the responsibility of the clubs and/or the board (largely made up of club owners) to make any changes to that.

Sorry, was typing that out fast before I hit the shower !

6 minutes ago, Dons_1988 said:

I think they mean the SPFL executive specifically. 

It’s actually quite the embarrassing admission that it’s currently effectively just an admin function. Not that it’s a surprise but the fact we’ve paid Deloitte to effectively tell us that the leadership of the league could use some commercial focus is quite something. 

Yep, this is what it looks like to me.

I suspect there was a fair bit of frustration among the 5 clubs concerned (and others, I am sure) that the SPFL exec seemed "content" that current deals were fine - not grasping that the status quo was only really working for 2 clubs.

[coprolite]

42 minutes ago, Dons_1988 said:

I think they mean the SPFL executive specifically. 

It’s actually quite the embarrassing admission that it’s currently effectively just an admin function. Not that it’s a surprise but the fact we’ve paid Deloitte to effectively tell us that the leadership of the league could use some commercial focus is quite something. 

The SPFL itself takes a share of the overall income and distributes the surplus.  

There's a short term incentive for the clubs to minimise the share that the SPFL takes to increase their own shares. 

There's not been a lot of long termism gone into running the clubs historically (although good numbers have been sustainable) so it would be surprising if they were willing to fork out extra invesrment for the benefit of 41 others. 

It's a classic collective action problem as well as being a failure of Doncaster's leadership to successfully make the case that Delloite (presumably)  have. 

 

 

[VincentGuerin]

File it under 'Heard it all before', unfortunately.

[lubo_blaha]

I think they mean the SPFL executive specifically. 
It’s actually quite the embarrassing admission that it’s currently effectively just an admin function. Not that it’s a surprise but the fact we’ve paid Deloitte to effectively tell us that the leadership of the league could use some commercial focus is quite something. 

It’s not though, the SPFL has the bare minimum in terms of staff because it’s job, as determined by the clubs, is to administer the game and distribute the vast majority of whatever income it gains to the clubs.

They don’t have any sort of marketing department (afaik) beyond a couple of guys who do the social media. If there is to be money diverted from the clubs towards more staffing of the organisation with the aim of increasing revenue then that would ultimately be for the clubs to decide, not the executive.

[G51]

Surely it can’t come as any surprise that the SPFL is incompetent/understaffed when it comes to commercial/marketing/sponsorship?

They have one title sponsorship to negotiate, which they fucked up, outsourced and then fucked it up again.

They have one domestic TV deal to negotiate, plus a handful of small overseas ones which likely amount to next to f**k all in value. They make a c**t of that too.

The horse has probably bolted on centralised commercial partnerships too, because of the extent to which member clubs have concluded their own deals with other parties.

[VincentGuerin]

Part of the problem is the nature of the clubs themselves. Scottish football clubs are essentially pretty small businesses and, beyond people who are just attracted to working in football, they're not likely to attract the best and brightest.

The brother of a guy I used to go and watch Hearts with years ago interviewed for a finance position at Hearts but knocked it back because, even though he was a Hearts fan himself, the company was essentially a small one offering little real career progression. He knocked the job back and now has some kind of big-shot job in America with a big bank.

I'd imagine when it comes to things like marketing etc it is more or less the same. Scottish football clubs are simply going to struggle to attract the best people. Football has an out-sized place in society, but it's not really a big industry at all.

So, the decisions being made by clubs (and we all see our clubs make mad decisions all the time) are being made by people who are not top-tier people in most roles. Add together the clubs' rabid self-interest and the competitive nature of the industry, and it's basically no surprise we get nothing done.

Whatever team you support, the abysmal nature of the discourse around the 2020 vote exposed how thick a lot of people making these decisions (at my club as well as others) really are.

Basically, we've got shite people running things, so things will mainly be shite.