League of Ireland brand review.

[nigel-harps1954]

Well, in a nutshell, was a complete joke.

Let's see....

1. A new logo.

2. Paint bus stops next to grounds in club colours (conveniently forgetting some grounds have no nearby bus stops)

3. Fans are to blame for a lot of the leagues problems.

4. League 'is cool'.

5. Every club should install big screens.

6. Bank holiday matches vs MLS/NASL teams.

Did I miss anything? Groundbreaking stuff.

[Jofspring]

Only heard Newstalk lads talking about it there and they basically said it was a joke. Felt the lad brought in by the FAI didn't really know what he was talking about and that he seemed to be disconnected from football fans and what they would want. Not very good by the sounds of things.

[Longfordian]

'The league is good craic' is a better and more accurate slogan for many reasons.

[outspoken]

Well, in a nutshell, was a complete joke.

Let's see....

1. A new logo.

2. Paint bus stops next to grounds in club colours (conveniently forgetting some grounds have no nearby bus stops)

3. Fans are to blame for a lot of the leagues problems.

4. League 'is cool'.

5. Every club should install big screens.

6. Bank holiday matches vs MLS/NASL teams.

Did I miss anything? Groundbreaking stuff.

7. Better TV angles.

[Sean South]

3. Fans are to blame for a lot of the leagues problems.

How so? Unless he means the bandwagon fans who are quick to jump on board when clubs are successful, but even quicker to disappear when a few poor results goes your way.

[nigel-harps1954]

How so? Unless he means the bandwagon fans who are quick to jump on board when clubs are successful, but even quicker to disappear when a few poor results goes your way.

Well, apparently, a lot of what was said was taken totally out of context by the journos posting updates on twitter. But, essentially, their account of things is that it was said that fans behaviour is a big problem in the league and flares, etc, are a big problem for the overall brand and view of the league.

[patrickccfc]

7. Better TV angles.

8. Ger Canning to enroll in speech therapy to learn how to say Dundalk properly

[pineapple stu]

Any links? Missed this.

[John83]

Well, apparently, a lot of what was said was taken totally out of context by the journos posting updates on twitter. But, essentially, their account of things is that it was said that fans behaviour is a big problem in the league and flares, etc, are a big problem for the overall brand and view of the league.
Right. When I'm asked who I support and mention UCD, it's the rampant hooliganism in Belfield and not the fact that the league is perceived as a glorified pub league that people mention. :rolleyes:

[nigel-harps1954]

Followed it all on Twitter. Most of the main Irish journos were there. David Sneyd seemed to have the most fun with it.

https://twitter.com/DavidSneydIDM

Neil O'Riordan also gave pretty regular updates on the whole thing

https://twitter.com/noriordan

[brendy_�ire]

"He's using an analogy of how to treat a prisoner and maybe allow him to rearrange furniture in his cell in relation to how to treat fans."

And my favourite:
"There should be confidential transparency" in relation to sponsorship deals.

It was outstanding to follow on twitter, and would have been hilarious if it weren't for the fact he was being serious and, I assume, is getting paid a shedload of cash for it.

[Sean South]

Well, apparently, a lot of what was said was taken totally out of context by the journos posting updates on twitter. But, essentially, their account of things is that it was said that fans behaviour is a big problem in the league and flares, etc, are a big problem for the overall brand and view of the league.

Of course there has to be a bogeyman. It's easier that way... :brolly::knife::black_eyed:

[Jofspring]

It got ripped to shreads on off the ball about an hour ago. The lads were getting a good laugh out of it and couldn't believe the stuff that came out of the guys mouth.

[gufcfan]

The lads were getting a good laugh out of it and couldn't believe the stuff that came out of the guys mouth.

And then Fran gave up the floor to Jonathan Gabay.

[Nah Nah Nah Nah]

https://www.balls.ie/football/irish-journalists-react-disbelief-extraordinary-loi-branding-report/354551

Even by his usual comical standards this has got to be one of the highlights of the Delaney Dictatorship

[joey B]

From that Balls.ie article it sounded like they employed a leaving cert student to write a review praising curry chips and all! If it wasn't so worrying I might laugh at it !!

[Eminence Grise]

Seems the FAI signed up the marketing equivalent of Ali Dia (http://foot.ie/threads/217958-Ali-Dia-Remember-him)!:rolleyes:

[wonder88]

With all the mockery that is being made of this by our soccer media, I am now interested in what it contains. No harm at all sometimes to bring a complete outsider "who does not understand" our league,come in and make some suggestions. The brand is hardly that strong, so a few new ideas will hardly cause that much damage.
Any link.
ps Good interview with the guy on RT youtube channel.

[Jofspring]

With all the mockery that is being made of this by our soccer media, I am now interested in what it contains. No harm at all sometimes to bring a complete outsider "who does not understand" our league,come in and make some suggestions. The brand is hardly that strong, so a few new ideas will hardly cause that much damage.
Any link.
ps Good interview with the guy on RT youtube channel.

From what I have heard and read so far not only is the guy an outsider but completely clueless about football and it's fans.

[Dodge]

With all the mockery that is being made of this by our soccer media, I am now interested in what it contains. No harm at all sometimes to bring a complete outsider "who does not understand" our league,come in and make some suggestions. The brand is hardly that strong, so a few new ideas will hardly cause that much damage.
Any link.
ps Good interview with the guy on RT youtube channel.
Outsiders are good, but chancers are chancers and should have no say in the future of Irish football

The report is ridiculous

[Longfordian]

If nothing else JD will certainly not be enjoying the open ridicule from those journalists present. We know how *****ly he gets when he's personally linked with anything approaching a failure. I wonder if your man got paid up front?

[ger121]

That report from what I've read so far is a complete shambles. If I produced that for a client, I'd expect not to get paid. The Report basically insults the consumers of the product, while absolving a key stakeholder of any wrong doing in the management of the product. Where else would you see such madness?!

[wonder88]

Again have not read the report, but people should give the guy a hearing. Maybe the soccer national/Dublin media feel a certain custodian/gatekeeper role towards the LoI, and that is fair enough, but some of them have come up with what some would consider ridiculous ideas in the past.
I was at the latest Dublin derby at Dalymount 2 months back, and as a neutral you could say there was something "cool" about being there that night. Good number of foreign soccer fans there that night for example, who unlike most Irish fans apparently didn't see anything strange in doing so. We got to expand the supporter/spectator base, everything else in secondary.

[Charlie Darwin]

If I produced that for a client, I'd expect not to get paid. The Report basically insults the consumers of the product, while absolving a key stakeholder of any wrong doing in the management of the product. Where else would you see such madness?!
You're assuming the entire point of the report wasn't to absolve the key stakeholder of any wrongdoing. If the FAI were to write their own report it would be identical to that one.

[JC_GUFC]

Again have not read the report, but people should give the guy a hearing. Maybe the soccer national/Dublin media feel a certain custodian/gatekeeper role towards the LoI, and that is fair enough, but some of them have come up with what some would consider ridiculous ideas in the past.
I was at the latest Dublin derby at Dalymount 2 months back, and as a neutral you could say there was something "cool" about being there that night. Good number of foreign soccer fans there that night for example, who unlike most Irish fans apparently didn't see anything strange in doing so. We got to expand the supporter/spectator base, everything else in secondary.

Ah come off it. In one slide he referred to "Saint Pats", "St. Pat's" and "St Pats".
This shows he hasn't even revised the work himself.
The similarities between the FAI's thinking regarding John Delaney and fans suggest he can't have independently arrived at those thoughts.
Apparently he suggests clubs have a big screen to show instant replays of goals! I'd love to see that alright but the cost seems to have been completely ignored.

To be fair I haven't read it but even the above suggests it was a complete waste. When I heard a few months ago that this guy had never been to a game and knew nothing about the league I thought that was a good thing. Not if he was just going to spoof his way through the whole thing though.
I really hope there is more content in there in terms of branding.

[Jofspring]

Again have not read the report, but people should give the guy a hearing. Maybe the soccer national/Dublin media feel a certain custodian/gatekeeper role towards the LoI, and that is fair enough, but some of them have come up with what some would consider ridiculous ideas in the past.
I was at the latest Dublin derby at Dalymount 2 months back, and as a neutral you could say there was something "cool" about being there that night. Good number of foreign soccer fans there that night for example, who unlike most Irish fans apparently didn't see anything strange in doing so. We got to expand the supporter/spectator base, everything else in secondary.

You should really give it a read/watch first before you say give him a chance. I think you will quickly change your mind.

In short it's the fans fault that the league is struggling. John Delaney and the FAI have done a fantastic job (no joke he said that).

He said they should get EA to show EA competitions (whatever they are) at half time on the big screens at matches. As in he seems to think there are big screens at LOI grounds.

[Longfordian]

Change the name to "The League of Ireland sponsored by the SSE". Ok then that's fine I'm sure SSE Airtricity will be grand with that.

[sbgawa]

I read the report , it's embarrassing full of unprofessional coloquilisims and lacking any substantive ideas. The fai should refuse to pay.

[Nah Nah Nah Nah]

Again have not read the report, but people should give the guy a hearing. Maybe the soccer national/Dublin media feel a certain custodian/gatekeeper role towards the LoI, and that is fair enough, but some of them have come up with what some would consider ridiculous ideas in the past.
I was at the latest Dublin derby at Dalymount 2 months back, and as a neutral you could say there was something "cool" about being there that night. Good number of foreign soccer fans there that night for example, who unlike most Irish fans apparently didn't see anything strange in doing so. We got to expand the supporter/spectator base, everything else in secondary.

I’d sit down a read a report Tom The Gom had put together quicker then wasting my time reading what that fool tried to present yesterday

[ger121]

You're assuming the entire point of the report wasn't to absolve the key stakeholder of any wrongdoing. If the FAI were to write their own report it would be identical to that one.

I'm not assuming that at all. I know it was. What I'm saying, is what other Organisation would produce a report that more or less shifts the blame onto the Customer and away from themselves. It would be marketing suicide but to the FAI, it's par for the course.

[Duffman]

I don't know, ye are being awfully harsh. I've no time for your negativity this morning, too busy researching how to get Youths away to Chicago Fire and Harps away to Fort Lauderdale on July 4th next

[disgruntled]

Hogwash anyone ?
Large supplies of the above are freely available at the FAI offices out in Muppetstown.

[Philosophizer]

While the vast majority of this report seems to be a complete and utter shambles, (it honestly reminds me of a Powerpoint presentation put together at the back of a classroom 10 mins before it was presented), he actually touched upon 1 point that i agree with... Camera angles and the position of the TV gantry.

This might sound like a trivial thing, but when I see LOI on TV I’m frequently frustrated by how poor the product looks, mainly due to the poor positioning of the gantry.

Most casual soccer fans in Ireland are used to watching CL and PL soccer from the perfect viewing angle on TV. If LOI grounds look better on TV, it might convince viewers to actually attend the games in person and it could even encourage TV networks to show more matches.

LOI games get little TV coverage as it is, so the clubs should really make sure that the product looks as good as possible on camera. Derry are probably the worst culprits. They’ve a brilliant curved stand, but the gantry sits inside it, facing the other side, which is extremely unsightly. Whenever Setanta/Eir are there for a live game they must erect a scaffold or something because they always have the camera pointed at the curved stand and it looks great. Luckily this should be fixed with the creation of the new stand but they should have erected a permanent gantry on that side years ago.

Sligo’s gantry is too close to the side-line and too low, as is the case with many grounds, like Longford, Bray, Drogheda, Wexford and Dundalk.

Richmond park look’s half decent on TV, but the floodlight poles are frequently in the way of the play. This looks awful when matches are broadcast live, as was the case with the cup semi-final vs Cork this yr.

Athlone have some scrub land behind one of the goals and it looks dreadful.

Luckily it’s not all bad. Cork, Sham rovers, Bohs, Galway, Shels and Limerick all have their gantry placement at a decent height and distance from the pitch, and the cameras point towards their best stands.

Perimeter walls around the pitch and stadium are another thing. Leaving walls unpainted looks really bad on TV. It only takes 1 guy and a bucket of paint. Galway thankfully have painted the big wall behind one of their goals and it looks way better with the football murals on it.

But just to reiterate, this report is still a complete joke!

[Kingdom]

OTB - mostly Richie McCormack to be fair - gave a pretty hilarious breakdown of it last night. They slaughtered the analyst that produced the report. They mentioned this guy gets paid €7k an hour at speaking events, so it is worrying how much money the FAI spent on the Report.
It got me thinking, surely the league clubs could commission their own report to balance things out slightly?

These reports in my mind are useless. We've seen it long enough, the vast majority of Irish sports "fans" are event junkies. Consistent effort is not part of the equation. Getting the kids in the door and trying to hold on to them as long as possible. I'd love to think that the FAI could invest time and money on behalf of the clubs with Dublin Bus, Bus Eireann, Luas and Irish Rail, to make it easier for fans to get to home and away games, and commit to it for 3/5 years and then if it's not producing an increase in attendances, dropping that form of investment.
Similar for the grounds. I couldn't understand why the FAI bought United Park for Drogheda? I could understand if they worked alongside the Dept of Local Govt, Dept of Sport, and the individual county councils to try and work out practical solutions that would benefit all sides, similar to what will happen with Dalymount.

[Kingdom]

Camera angles and the position of the TV gantry.

This might sound like a trivial thing, but when I see LOI on TV I’m frequently frustrated by how poor the product looks, mainly due to the poor positioning of the gantry.

Most casual soccer fans in Ireland are used to watching CL and PL soccer from the perfect viewing angle on TV. If LOI grounds look better on TV, it might convince viewers to actually attend the games in person and it could even encourage TV networks to show more matches.

LOI games get little TV coverage as it is, so the clubs should really make sure that the product looks as good as possible on camera. Derry are probably the worst culprits. They’ve a brilliant curved stand, but the gantry sits inside it, facing the other side, which is extremely unsightly. Whenever Setanta/Eir are there for a live game they must erect a scaffold or something because they always have the camera pointed at the curved stand and it looks great. Luckily this should be fixed with the creation of the new stand but they should have erected a permanent gantry on that side years ago.

Sligo’s gantry is too close to the side-line and too low, as is the case with many grounds, like Longford, Bray, Drogheda, Wexford and Dundalk.

Richmond park look’s half decent on TV, but the floodlight poles are frequently in the way of the play. This looks awful when matches are broadcast live, as was the case with the cup semi-final vs Cork this yr.

Athlone have some scrub land behind one of the goals and it looks dreadful.

Luckily it’s not all bad. Cork, Sham rovers, Bohs, Galway, Shels and Limerick all have their gantry placement at a decent height and distance from the pitch, and the cameras point towards their best stands.

Perimeter walls around the pitch and stadium are another thing. Leaving walls unpainted looks really bad on TV. It only takes 1 guy and a bucket of paint. Galway thankfully have painted the big wall behind one of their goals and it looks way better with the football murals on it.

But just to reiterate, this report is still a complete joke!

As someone not really associated with the league, I'd agree with everything you've said. I can understand why it might not really matter to anyone who's been involved with a team or a club for a considerable time though.

[gormacha]

The bigger issue though is how this report ever saw the light of day. Someone or some committee in the FAI commissioned this. They must have seen the author's previous work, or interviewed him, and still went ahead. Let's assume he has done good work in the past, and was convincing in his pitch, so you can see how it *might* get to the point of the report being produced. But then the report was presented to the Board and the CEO, and they still decided to publish it. This is what astonishes me.

[pineapple stu]

He's ex Saatchi apparently (says Google), so he has some decent background in the area. (Or else he has the same name as someone with a good background in the area...)

I've only seen what's here, but there's nothing here that would lead you to think the report is in any way useful.

[pineapple stu]

Neil O'Riordan reckons the FAI are already distancing themselves from the report -

https://www.thesun.ie/sport/football/311006/the-league-of-ireland-brand-report-was-sloppy-riddled-with-errors-and-offers-little/

[Comic Book Guy]

The link with Saatchi jogged my memory , does anyone here old enough to remember the time when the league spent a considerable sum at the time on marketing the league? Late 80's? The company? Saatchi and Saatchi.

[Kingdom]

The bigger issue though is how this report ever saw the light of day. Someone or some committee in the FAI commissioned this. They must have seen the author's previous work, or interviewed him, and still went ahead. Let's assume he has done good work in the past, and was convincing in his pitch, so you can see how it *might* get to the point of the report being produced. But then the report was presented to the Board and the CEO, and they still decided to publish it. This is what astonishes me.

That's the first thing I took from the article by Dan McDonnell this morning. He says specifically that Delaney himself said that the report seen by the FAI was very good.
Dan McDonnell's article, if you can get it for free, is very good and worth a read.

[Nah Nah Nah Nah]

http://www.independent.ie/sport/soccer/league-of-ireland/league-of-irelands-brand-aid-struggles-to-hit-the-right-notes-35298462.html

[Nah Nah Nah Nah]

John O'Sullivan (https://twitter.com/johngosullivan)
�€�@johngosullivan (https://twitter.com/johngosullivan)

You can download Jonathan Gabay's LoI branding report from the following link.

http://www.filehosting.org/file/details/626268/LOI%20Brand%20Report%202016.pdf
You're welcome...https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/72x72/1f633.png http://www.filehosting.org/file/details/626268/LOI%20Brand%20Report%202016.pdf

http://www.filehosting.org/file/details/626268/LOI%20Brand%20Report%202016.pdf

[Stuttgart88]

What a pile of utter claptrap, amazing even by FAI standards.

[pineapple stu]

amazing even by FAI standards.
The more you read about the presentation, the more this seems to be the key conclusion alright

[NeverFeltBetter]

That Balls.ie article makes for equally hilarious and grim reading. What a clownshow. I mean, that last report was shockingly biased towards praising the FAI, but this?

[joey B]

'Under John Delaney it's been amazing'
To start a report like that is genuinely unbelievable ,even if they were giving the league a decent shift why would you start a review of the problems the leagues brand faces with that line,complete bull****!

[NeverFeltBetter]

The creation of a specially designed League of Ireland bus that would travel up and down the country brandishing a new logo: I mean, OK, whatever. Seems like the kind of short-term idea that you wouldn't expect the FAI to waste money on.

Bank Holiday games with sides from America's MLS and NASL: Total nonsense.


A Hollywood walk of fame leading up to grounds commemorating star players: There's something to be said for clubs promoting their legacy I suppose. This seems a bit much. Presumably they'd have to get local government permission.


Uplifting pre- and post-match music: I am always very uplifted by "Right Here, Right Now", let me tell you.


Local bus stops painted in club colours: Window dressing is a very important part of the FAI's strategy.


Local bus stops offering live scores: Knowing RTI, they'd probably be the wrong scores.

Half-time EA Sports gaming tournaments on giant screens in the stadium: If the FAI are willing to buy a giant screen for every ground in the LOI, I think they can put whatever they like on them at half-time.


Managers encouraged to speak controversially in the media: Oh God, spare me with this manufactured horse****, it's a disease in modern sport.


Name change from SSE Airtricity League to the 'League of Ireland sponsored by the SSE': Longer names are always better!


Crackdown on use of flares and discouragement of anti-FAI chants at matches: Know your place everybody, lest you wind being "discouraged" by the FAI.


What a diabolical load of claptrap.

[pineapple stu]

Manager controversy underway

https://mobile.twitter.com/collieoneill/status/809750175564566528

[Pablo Escobar]

I knew it was a p1sstake when he said our chips were nice!

[NeverFeltBetter]

Manager controversy underway

https://mobile.twitter.com/collieoneill/status/809750175564566528

I love this league. Managers should send the most over the top insults to each other all season long.