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ps improve communication in each of the 53 uefa member associations this year more than 600 clubs applied for a uefa licence with many more applying for domestic licences based on the same or similar principles hence the broad scope and significance of the slo project like the licensing system itself the implementation and development of supporter liaison officers will be a tool to raise minimum standards a dynamic system changing over time and focussing on developing and improving the dialogue between the fans and the clubs an excellent development here s hoping it would be accepted throughout the english football pyramid rather than just by clubs hoping to play in europe on the other hand there is the news 3 that the vast majority it appears to be all except arsenal and liverpool of the premier league clubs are simply ignoring the 2000 premier league charter which pledged that replica strips would be released every two seasons at a minimum worst offenders are tottenham who have launched three new kits every year for six seasons in a row this coming season they will have different sponsors and hence it is reported shirts for their cup games resulting in no fewer than six shirts being offered although at the time of writing only three shirts are being offered on the club website 4 it s not exactly difficult to see which is more pro fan uefa or the premier league share this share on facebook opens in new window facebook share on x opens in new window x share on reddit opens in new window reddit like loading posted in merchandising organisational culture premier league public relations tagged merchandising ownership premier league public relations leave a comment the trouble with new stadiums 2 posted by john beech on july 8 2010 see also the trouble with new stadiums 1 which looked at the argument that we re a club with ambition and we need more seats to reflect that ambition the second case put for building a new stadium is we ve got the wrong sort of stadium we need one better suited to maximising our revenue streams the first part of this argument i have no real problem with virtually all english football stadiums are either new less than twenty years old or old from the victorian era and if your club s stadium is in the latter category then it is almost certainly suboptimal for players fans and revenue generation remember i m a pompey fan and fratton park was a disgrace for a premier league stadium we need a better one in these circumstances can then seem perfectly reasonable however there are two key questions a club needs to ask itself a can we afford it and b is this the most effective way of maximising revenue streams i suspect that in 99 cases out 100 the answer to the first question is a resounding no show me the clubs which already have the financial reserves to consider spending on a new stadium the new stadium will have to be financed and if the club is worried about failing to maximise its revenue streams it needs to have a cast iron case that new revenue streams will be sufficient to even cover the cost of the loans needed to finance the new stadium of course there will be exceptions but it is worth bearing mind that even arsenal with a clear need for a bigger stadium and a sound business plan to finance it have struggled because of the drop in house prices and the subsequent difficulty in selling the houses on the stadium site if you want to maximise your revenue streams the basic strategy model which is used for deciding the best way to grow your business is one called ansoff s matrix this model considers whether to look at existing or new customers and existing or new markets there is a useful visual representation here which makes it much easier to follow the 2 2 nature of the matrix results in four possible strategies each with differing levels of risk the safest is market penetration developing the sales of existing products to existing customers in other words the simplest and most effective growth strategy for the vast majority of clubs which have empty seats on a match day is to try and get more bums on seats clubs like fc united of manchester have tried interesting tactics with pricing to achieve this such as varying the price that fans pay to get a season ticket see 1 for a discussion of imaginative ticket pricing and 2 for fcum s approach experimenting with different pricing strategies such as bogof buy one get one free is quick easy low risk and provides a useful indication of whether growth is possible if you can t get more bums on seats with this kind of approach where s the rationale for a new bigger stadium next two to consider of medium risk are product development developing new products for existing customers in other words you find new goods or services to sell to your existing fans i ve blogged before see on clubs and club shops on what i see as an unimaginitive range of merchandising that club shops offer and clubs could do a lot more with this medium risk strategy that does not require vast capital investment market development developing finding new markets for the existing products in other words you recruit new fans clubs do make efforts here trying to encourage whole families to attend games for example more could be done and again without vast capital investment the final strategy is the one with the highest risk diversification in other words moving into to some other area to find new customers to buy new products it s here that the new stadium certainly raises it s ugly head without a new stadium we don t have the right facilities to be able to do this the proponents moan of course they are right but they fail to recognise the attendant problems the problems with this case are twofold the first is the obvious argument that it is the highest risk strategy and comes at the highest cost it simply does not make sense to attempt it until all the lower risk lower cost strategies have been tried the second problem arises with what exactly the new products to be sold to new customers are a good rule of thumb is that the nearer the fit with the existing product in our case football matches and the nearer the fit withthe market in our case football fans the better the lower the new risk why oh why then do clubs who pursue this strategy look to build a new stadium complex with a hotel restaurants or shops could it just be that they think they are already in these businesses through their experience in hospitality i would suggest that there is a gulf of blue water between pies bovril and even prawn sandwiches and i know i m not alone in this view similarly they see themselves as involved in events management and see a connection between operating on match days and running conferences as someone who attends both i would again argue that there is deep blue water between attending a football match and attending a four day conference they are world apart in terms of customers and the service these customers are looking for i would argue that the poorness of fit is every bit as big as it is with running a supermarket in a nutshell building the new stadium with a conference centre attached is as sensible as an existing conference centre which is in poor financial shape deciding to build a new conference centre with a football stadium attached to maximise revenue streams even if you sub contract the running of the new business ventures you ve set up two poorly fitting businesses on the same site not a recipe for success i m sure you realise and i readily that i am generalising and i ll be looking at some exceptions in a later posting there is one way of lowering the risk in a diversification strategy and that is to diversify into something which for example the owner is experienced an area in which he made his fortune which is he is in danger of turning into a small fortune that is with one major exception which i will be looking at in my next posting in this series to give a wee hint as to what i see as the one exception that does not reduce the club s risk i ll just remind you of the third case that is put when a new stadium is proposed there s this amazing property deal we can do we ll sell the old stadium for redevelopment and there ll be loads of money to build the new one share this share on facebook opens in new window facebook share on x opens in new window x share on reddit opens in new window reddit like loading posted in assets marketing merchandising revenues stadium tagged assets marketing merchandising revenues stadium 2 comments a win win at livi well perhaps posted by john beech on september 11 2009 as my e forays north of the border are rare i hadn t expected to be blogging on livingston for the second time in three days but a development between the club and the supporters trust warrants comment livingston are facing an uphill battle 1 and one in which they are currently fighting from a position of weakness so it is good to see that not only have they manged to acquire a new sponsor 2 but they have announced a new deal between club and supporters trust 3 which chief executive of the club ged nixon describes as win win for club and trust in a nutshell the trust will fund the purchase of merchandising for sale to fans in return for shares while the club will have the opportunity to turn a profit on the retail sale to supporters hence win win the trust gains a larger shareholding and the club doesn t have to find the capital to buy new stock for the club shop but can turn a profit on its sale to fans so is this a model which should be adopted by other supporters trusts in many cases yes but the real answer to the question is it all depends what is being confused here and in this posting so far i am guilty of increasing that confusion is club the nebulous sociocultural construct and company which owns the club see my earlier posting subbing the company or the owner an arrangement such as this one at livingston is only win win for a trust if they are happy to see the current board of the club reinforced in their ownership and there is no implication with respect to livingston carried in that sentence but if the trust wants to see the present board of the company out as is the case at halesowen town or was recently the case at merthyr tydfil it is definitely not a win win scenario in short trusts need to look at the broader strategic issues before rushing into what at first glance seems a no brainer a few months ago at livingston itself with company still being run by the previous owners under angelo massone rushing into such an agreement would have been more a case of no brains rather than no brainer share this share on facebook opens in new window facebook share on x opens in new window x share on reddit opens in new window reddit like loading posted in merchandising ownership trusts tagged merchandising ownership supporters trust leave a comment on clubs and club shops posted by john beech on june 30 2009 an unexpected rescheduling of my diary found me in bournemouth yesterday with several hours free before i was due in portsmouth which gave me an opportunity to visit three grounds in quick succession bournemouth southampton and portsmouth perhaps not a random sample but interestingly three clubs with serious ownership issues currently or in the immediate past not surprisingly there was a distinct sameness in all three club shops in particular in respect with what was on sale to supporters it was what constituted the sameness that struck me i could have been in any high street leisureware shop if i had been logo blind yes to be fair it wasn t all replica kits there was the usual selection of mugs glasses key chains and so on but i wonder if supporters wouldn t actually appreciate more diversity in the offer and be willing to spend even more in supporting their impoverished club if there was a more imaginative range of products on sale to me at least noticeably missing were any books about the clubs their halcyon days their heroes their histories the offer in this respect was entirely in the dvd format which may well be better in many respects but not for the detail fans appreciate in studying their club history all three shops were not especially busy with customers but after all it was a very hot day in the closed season all three were busy with stock again an indicator of the time of year but staff had time to engage in conversation with me there were some differences between the three however bournemouth had the only shop with any sense of serving fans rather customers but this derived only from a large selection of club programmes on sale some up to twenty years old it was the only one of the three where a queue formed albeit briefly for tickets there was an air of activity to the stadium perhaps reflecting the arrival of incoming chairman eddie mitchell and it was the only one of the three where there was a strong sense of involvement with the local community happenchance had brought me to southampton on a day which the southern daily echo was billing as a possible d day given the ongoing problems with administration the pinnacle group proposed takeover and the appearance of foreign consortia 1 i had half expected to find matt le tissier addressing a rabble of reporters the following sequence contains flash photography and an angry but caring mob of protesting supporters the stadium was all but deserted which was rather eerie in such a modern and spacious stadium easily the most desirable of the three were it not for the industrial landscape in which it sits staff here were particularly helpful prompting me to visit waterstones where specific books on the club were known to be available a missed opportunity though to sell me something i would have readily purchased finally on to dear old fratton park with its boyhood memories of gentleman jim no longer quite in his pomp the approach up frogmore road with its presentation of the club as something mock tudor was both reassuring but also faintly ludicrous for a premier league club with a perversity that will be familiar to pompey fans the club shop was not actually in the stadium it was several hundred yards away in a mix of retail and light industrial operations as befitted a premier league club it had the largest range of branded miscellaneous items but none that had me leaping for my wallet in spite of the fact that i was easy meat staff tried to be helpful but left me utterly confused as to the apparently significant differences between what was on sale on the website and what was on sale in the shop all in all it was an odd afternoon it left me feeling that clubs are driven by what manufacturers offer them in branded form rather than finding out what fans actually want and would be prepared to buy i was left with impression that market research had not really been attempted share this share on facebook opens in new window facebook share on x opens in new window x share on reddit 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