A few years ago, I read an article about how big companies in the soft drinks and junk food businesses were invading the American school system. Starved of cash, these schools were offering companies any incentives they could to get in the money.
Soon, the high school teams were playing in branded clothing.
The names of companies adorned every inch of wall-space.
It got so bad at one school that a pupil was suspended for drinking Coca Cola in the halls when his institute of learning had signed an exclusivity deal with Pepsi.
Another school had to paint the slogan of a fast food company on its roof so as to be visible to overflying planes from a nearby airfield.
I mention these things because of the latest ridiculously dumb article from the “football finance expert” Kieran Maguire, a guy who either doesn’t know anything about finance or doesn’t know anything about football.
Maybe he doesn’t really understand either.
Maguire has again highlighted the non-existent “finance gap” which the Ibrox club has opened up over Celtic. In trying to explain why they are presently more “marketable” he actually posted this wonderfully convoluted sentence, so bad that even Gordon Smith would have handed it into an editor for some extra work, to spare himself embarrassment.
“Celtic have an automatic market, they’ve got links with certain places in the US, places in Ireland. So they aren’t less marketable, they are just marketable in different markets and at present, those markets are disaffected with the club.”
Maguire may not read this blog, but he’s certainly been clued into certain realities surrounding Ibrox and its customer base which I explored the last time I wrote about him.
As I’ve pointed out previously, the myth of the Ibrox global following has been tested and probed several times down through the years, and it’s been found not to exist.
Not to exist. Really, why would that be a surprise to anyone?
This is the club which used to have an annual “Britishness Day”, and which eulogises war and the troops. Their fans actually wanted The Red Arrows to do a fly-by of the ground to commemorate their first title.
I mean it’s barking; they are so insular and restrictive in their target audience that the very idea they have a global fan-base is laughable.
Maguire has talked about the rash of commercial deals that they’ve signed lately; that brings me to my point about the schools.
Filling your stadium with ads for every company that comes along, and doing up your shirt like a Formula One car isn’t proof of sterling marketability; it’s proof that you are so in need of money you’ll take any deal that offers you some.
Most of these deals – if he cares to read the small-print – are for modest sums in the five and six figure range. We’re not talking about multi-million pound contracts here which blow other clubs out of the water.
If you’ve seen The Social Network, think of that scene where Andrew McCarthy’s character, the real-life Eduardo Saverin, has been breaking his back signing Facebook up to a bunch of tiny advertisers with low-impact markets. Timberlake’s hyper-arrogant Sean Parker openly sneers; the first meeting he sets us for Facebook is with Peter Thiel, who commits $500,000.
Let me put it this way, the Ibrox marketing department aren’t pitching at the Peter Thiel level, so whereas Maguire sees signs of a healthy organisation I see one that’s grasping for every dollar in the dirt. The finance gap exists only in his imagination.
His proposed solution to this imaginary gap, this imaginary marketing issue we have, is that we hire Frank Lampard as manager, some bling signing to compete with Gerrard’s name.
It doesn’t appear to matter to him if the person in question is actually a good manager or a naff appointment which only leaves us behind on the pitch. It also appears not to have dawned on him that such a signing – one focussed on marketing rather than on talent – would also go down like a lead weight with the very people who actually spend money.
This guy really needs to stop writing this kind of nonsense.
It only further increases my belief that he shouldn’t be giving financial advice to anyone. He certainly knows nothing about what it takes to build and market a football club.