How the rest of the world see us....

[DannyInvincible]

Most people who don't bother with it don't take an interest because they assume it's crap and pointless without ever having tried it. If they could be convinced that the standard is actually better than they think it to be and that it might well be worthwhile supporting it in the interests of the national team (think of former LOI players who've gone on to represent us internationally), they may take it more seriously. It's a matter of raising the league's profile, giving it a better image and promoting it however clubs can. I just think it's worth trying. The FAI could and should help out. Would you rather clubs/the FAI didn't bother?

[AlaskaFox]

With all the Polish people over here, would it be a wise idea to establish a Polish club, like the way there are many Croatian teams in Australia - Sydney United was initially Sydney Croatia and Melbourne Knights were SC Croatia as well as dozens more teams:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...s_in_Australia

Would a Dublin Polish team be capable of bringing in a crowd and maybe igniting some interest into the league? If it was to be set up by actual Polish people - who number 122,585 according to the 2011 census - then they might have an actual affiliation with the club. There's a Polish section in the Herald, Polish shops in most towns, Polish aisles in supermarkets, so why not a Polish club in the League of Ireland?

[Stuttgart88]

I think I suggested the same earlier. It definitely has some merit to it.

[paul_oshea]

Ya but it all depends where they are scattered, and where the club would be setup. I doubt a lad from Galway would travel up to dublin on a friday for a LOI game. Maybe a group of lads, but i think logistically and demographically you would have to get this right. The other thing is a lot of polish would be working in the Services or other, non standard working hours, monday to friday 9-5, so it would involve taking time off work for a lot of them i reckon. Its a far more complicated issue than a simple idea.

I think a better idea would be for the short term is try and create an affiliate of lech poznan with some club over here. Simple enough to do, a bit like St pauli and Celtic. Far easier achieve, and in the short term would probably bring more through the gates. A yearly friendly etc. Why no other club hasnt thought of this i dont know.

[mypost]

Most people who don't bother with it don't take an interest because they assume it's crap and pointless without ever having tried it. If they could be convinced that the standard is actually better than they think it to be and that it might well be worthwhile supporting it in the interests of the national team (think of former LOI players who've gone on to represent us internationally), they may take it more seriously. It's a matter of raising the league's profile, giving it a better image and promoting it however clubs can. I just think it's worth trying. The FAI could and should help out. Would you rather clubs/the FAI didn't bother?

To make people aware of your product, you have to market the thing, and cater for your customers. Most clubs struggle to pay wages, so what budget have they got for marketing?

Marketing has to be more than getting a poster up, or an ad in the paper, or the fixture list on MNS, it has to go down the Sky route. Get it on tv, get it on local and national radio, make it look and sound attractive. You really have to get on tv for people to take notice of you in this country. Bugger paper surveys and questionnaires that will end up in a skip in 6 months time.

Make €10 or €15 in look good value for money. Incorporate it into the promo ad, by indicating what else costs that much on a matchnight. The FAI run an excellent promo ad for the league during international nights. But it's shown at half time and full time, and most people are either at a kiosk, or on the way home, and can't see it. So get it onto the television, where people will see it. That's marketing the league, and it can be done.

When you get new customers down to your ground, if you can't cut your prices in the economic climate, make your prices competitive with special offers, prizes that amount to more than a voucher for Supermacs, etc, play your games at times that suit your fans, not because the players/students/families/long lost grandfathers want to go home for the weekend. That means ditching Monday-Friday night games. It means getting stadiums spruced up to something that's not a danger to public health and/or safety. No flooded toilets, no portakabins, no half-roofed stands, no dark dangerous alleyways directly outside the stadium. Then people might say, "look, that's good value for money, I'll go down to Rovers/Cork/Sligo/Waterford/Dundalk etc, where I will be treated as a welcomed guest, not an inconvenience".

It means demanding live and pre-promoted coverage on tv, and a proper, marketed, extended highlights of every game show in the top two divisions, that does justice to the league. We deserve more than lip service coverage, and we should demand it. If the budget isn't there for it, go and raise it. If all that effort gets even one more new customer through the gate, it works.

The country is stuffed with thousands of ambitious entrepreneurs with a can-do mentality, ready to invest in projects, willing to take measured risks and gambles in people and industry. The above can be done, but that's too ambitious for most in this league, so the league will continue limping along from week-to-week in relative anonymity, as it always was. If it was like that during the boom, it will stay that way in a recession.

[ArdeeBhoy]

Yeap, it took a while but MP is on the money here.

Incidentally, do you still go, or perhaps more pertinently did you go when Shams were cr*p?
Bizarrely saw them most often with Bohs fans, strangely enough. Though I'm sure they were willing them to lose.

[geysir]

Sham Rovers are the team that you would go out of your way to will them to lose.

[DannyInvincible]

To make people aware of your product, you have to market the thing, and cater for your customers. Most clubs struggle to pay wages, so what budget have they got for marketing?

Good post and fair point, although this is where we should rightly expect the FAI to come in.

[Yard of Pace]

With all the Polish people over here, would it be a wise idea to establish a Polish club, like the way there are many Croatian teams in Australia - Sydney United was initially Sydney Croatia and Melbourne Knights were SC Croatia as well as dozens more teams:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...s_in_Australia

Would a Dublin Polish team be capable of bringing in a crowd and maybe igniting some interest into the league? If it was to be set up by actual Polish people - who number 122,585 according to the 2011 census - then they might have an actual affiliation with the club. There's a Polish section in the Herald, Polish shops in most towns, Polish aisles in supermarkets, so why not a Polish club in the League of Ireland?

Very interesting idea. I don't see why it couldn't be a goer. Take a people out of their country and they're generally even more patriotic than if they were at home, so you'd definitely have a good crowd of lads going.

[Stuttgart88]

The country is stuffed with thousands of ambitious entrepreneurs with a can-do mentality, ready to invest in projects, willing to take measured risks and gambles in people and industry.

The problem there is that any entrepreneur knows you can't make money out of football unless you're an asset stripper. Alan Sugar says owning a football club is like drinking prune juice - whatever you put in just gets p1ssed straight out and as POS says, all you get is guff from fans who don't care about financial sustainability until it's too late.

I agree that marketing has something to offer hence my idea to survey all the attendees at the Germany game - paid for by the FAI.

Just going back to textbook marketing here, it's all about the "4 Ps": product, place, price & promotion. You touched on the promotion bit and I largely agree though the Irish League is on SKY and it hasn't exactly made it more glamourous. Product and place are related in football - the matchday experience takes place at the venue after all. But is the product what people want and what they're prepared to pay the price for and to possibly give up another activity in place of it? When I was in my 20s Friday evening was for getting drunk after work and forlornly trying to get laid.

In 2009 I met the marketing manager of Coventry City FC. They have a fantastic modern stadium but rarely get even 50% attendance. The team was OK but not great. Coleman was manager and they hovered above relegation but occasionally put a run of results together that'd get them within a few points of the play off places. At one stage (09/10?) they had 5 home games left and were just outside the playoffs so they offered a "final countdown" package of 5 tickets for an attractive discount. They put ads on radio, gave free or very cheap tickets to students and the army (both big segments of the community), put banners up on all the flyovers, did mailshots, email blasts, everything. There's a hotel, good restaurant and casino onsite which they offered discounted pacakges to fans to spend the night or w/e there at a great price. Feck all people took up the offer.* I asked him if rugby, speedway or ice hockey (they have a good team) were competing. He said no. The only competing activity was idleness.

But when they drew Chelsea in the FA Cup, they sold 32,000 tickets!

The message: you can get 3 of the 4 Ps right but if the product - the quality of football that people want - isn't there, there's only so much you can do.

They did everything right during the regular season. They offered well priced season tickets and well priced bundles of 3 games at a time, making sure to avoid including "dog" games that would devalue the offer. They surveyed the fans and rezoned the stadium and offered better seats to those who said they'd pay up for quality seats, and offerered cheaper seats to those who wanted to be in a signing section or for whom price was a major issue. This worked - attendances didn't rise but the average spend per customer did.


Bennocelt would have a rather more simplistic view Live football is live football, end of.

* in the end the fans were right - they lost most of the games and nearly got relegated!

[bennocelt]

Bennocelt would have a rather more simplistic view Live football is live football, end of.
!

As opposed to franchise football - dublin city/sporting fingal/sd Galway - (is there anything said for another mass!!!)

[paul_oshea]

Gdansk get in on the act.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4nFyPYhvd4

[paul_oshea]

As opposed to franchise football - dublin city/sporting fingal/sd Galway - (is there anything said for another mass!!!)

The higgs boson(God particle) walked into church, and the priest said to him, the higgs boson is not allowed in here.

Higgs boson replied: But without me, there'd be no mass.

I love that joke on 3 different levels.

Benno, I mentioned fools and their money before, did I not. The guys behind all them, couldn't be called anything else really, given whats gone on over the last few years.

Did Warren Buffet lose all his money before, during or after the recession? NO he didn't he capitalized(geddit?) on it....

[mypost]

Shams

Sorry, don't recognise "Shams".

The problem there is that any entrepreneur knows you can't make money out of football unless you're an asset stripper. Alan Sugar says owning a football club is like drinking prune juice - whatever you put in just gets p1ssed straight out and as POS says, all you get is guff from fans who don't care about financial sustainability until it's too late.

In fairness, Alan Sugar wasn't up to take on that job, and got out when he could, while getting guff from your fans, is an occupational hazard when you're running the show. No matter what you do, everybody can't be happy all the time. If you can't take it, you're in the wrong job.

[Stuttgart88]

Well he wasn't the only one not up to the job. 50 UK footy clubs have gone into administration since the EPL was formed!

[bennocelt]

Are the current Arsenal board not doing a good job of asset-stripping at the moment?

[paul_oshea]

Its more ass-stripping, than asset stripping.

[ArdeeBhoy]

Sorry, don't recognise "Shams".

So what do you recognise?

Notice you didn't answer the question either...

[John83]

Are the current Arsenal board not doing a good job of asset-stripping at the moment?

No, they're ****ing away money on a huge wage bill.

[Stuttgart88]

I think there's an almost unique situation at Arsenal. They directors have taken the decision to run the club sensibly and sustainably, albeit at the cost of success because their peers have billionaire benefactors. [As an aside I believe that even within this business model Wenger's blindspots have minimised chances of success.] The turf war betweek Kroenke and Usmanov has allowed long-standing directors to profit handsomely from their shareholdings. That's not the same as asset stripping though.

The classic case of asset stripping is the Kilcoynes and Milltown, and several opportunistic asset strippers have bought lower division clubs in the UK - selling the clubs' real estate and land and benefiting personally from the sale. The sale proceeds of Arsenal's real estate activities have generally gone back into the club. Those real estate sales are nearly at an end though so costs may have to be cut further.

Man United is a better, albeit weak, example of asset stripping where the Glazers pay themselves huge consultancy fees for managing the club, directing money away from football investment.

Mypost, I appreciate the sentiment behind your idea but it's almost universally accepted that without league-wide regulation football clubs will not be profitable. This is for the simple reason that profit seeking, unlike most other businesses, is not an objective of their owners. Football club owners have traditionally been local businessmen with other business interests either looking for a publicity boost or looking to give something back to the community. The landscape has changed since the profile of owner has shifted from local millionaire to foreign billionaire, but the case still stands - Abramovic and co. are not pursuing a profit motive. They buy football clubs mainly as vanity projects.

Money buys success, big clubs spend money given to them by their benefactors, samll clubs overspend to keep up and bang, the whole system is insolvent because reckless spending is allowed and lax ownership restrictions apply. In England clubs aren't even afraid of administration because the Football Creditors Rule allows football clubs to walk away from liabilities to the taxman, banks, suppliers, local authorities and ambulancemen etc. except footballers and other football clubs.

Most clubs tolerate failure in the belief that there's a rich buyer out there anyway.The cost of business failure is low, meaning clubs have no incentive to stay solvent.Crafty Toe Poke and I were talking about this offline last week. Football clubs are almost like those communist era businesses that made losses but were propped up by the state. The EPL doesn't give a **** because the more money the clubs spend the better the entertainment product for their paymasters at the TV networks, who also pay the pundits who don't offer any criticism.

In Germany the situation is markedly better but not perfect. Clubs must be at least 51% owned by their fans. There is no Premier League / Football League / FA split, only one single league body controlled by the national association (I think). The league body liaises closely with every club and will only allow a club to enter the league in any given season if its business plan has been approved. The clubs comply with a national coaching ethos and provide ready-made players for the national team. The classic joined-up football pyramid structure prevails, by and large. Big clubs always want more power, but this is generally well contained. In England, big clubs hold all the power - power given to them by SKY.

Since the EPL was initiated in 1992 the clubs have not collectively made a profit in any single season, despite revenues now running to billions annually.

That's not to say business experience and a get-go attitude can't be used to improve things in Ireland - they sure can - but making money won't be the incentive.