The Claret & Blue Club (
www.CandB.ie) was set up in Drogheda by some supporters three months ago to try to create a sustainable income stream for the Drogs. It has worked quite well so far, with over 200 subscriptions, worth over €50,000 a year to the club.
The model is quite simple. We're asking people to donate €5 a week to the club. Every member receives a membership pack containing some Drogs merchandise and a membership card. 35 local businesses have signed up to offer discounts of up to 10% to members on production of a Claret & Blue Club membership card. These businesses include Panorama & Sunworld Holidays, Four Star Pizza, Recharge Cartridges, and others including shoe shops, bike shops, clothes shops and a host of popular local restaurants.
Every member is entered in a monthly prize draw. So far, we've awarded 46 prizes, including 4 sun holidays, tickets to Ireland v Italy & Montenegro, vouchers for the 4 star Harbour and Crowne Plaza Hotels, a €200 Boylesports voucher etc.
Every member that signs up before the end of October will also receive a €100 voucher for Panorama Holidays.
We use our website (
www.CandB.ie) to help to spread the word and provide an advertising platform for the businesses supporting us. To publicise the Claret & Blue Club, we hold our monthly draws live on local radio station LMFM; we've had full-page ads in the local newspapers (Drogheda Independent and Drogheda People); we've delivered 5000 flyers to homes around Drogheda, and last week unveiled the first of our billboards in the centre of Drogheda
http://www.claretandblueclub.com/gallery.html .
We've made decent progress so far - it's a very difficult time to ask people for money, but we think the incentives we've put in place are very attractive. It may be a model that other League of Ireland clubs could adopt - moving away from a reliance on fluctuating gate receipts and sponsorship.
If any club is interested in setting up a similar scheme, we'd be happy to give some advice about how to get it up and running.
info@claretandblueclub.com is our email address.
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