HITACHI, Crown Paints, Candy, Carlsberg, Standard Chartered.
Japanese electricals, paint, washing machines, beer, financial services.
Which company’s product are you most likely to buy? Which is most likely to be found in a house in L4?
Let’s try another.
Sharp, Vodafone, AIG, Aon.
Japanese electricals, mobile phones, commercial insurance, risk management and insurance brokerage.
In Longsight, Moss Side, Rusholme, whose products would you expect to see?
When sponsorship first came in to football there were dire predictions of the game’s impending demise as a working-class sport, of a steady abandonment of tradition in pursuit of mammon.
While much of that prophecy has been fulfilled, it’s difficult to view that as being due primarily to the influence of sponsors.
In reality ticket prices soaring way above inflation, clubs charging what the market will bear rather than considering the game’s long-term sustainability, has had far more impact on the make-up of the terraces and the place the game holds in our national discourse.
That is beginning to change.
We’re entering a new era, a second wave of sponsorship if you will, where ‘commercial partners’ consider themselves to have a stake in clubs above and beyond a logo on the shirt and a few corporate hospitality boxes.
There’s clear evidence of that in the apparent involvement of Standard Chartered in the Suarez affair.
Whether they ordered Sunday’s series of apologies or not, the club stressed that Ian Ayre had kept them fully informed throughout the weekend.
Clearly the bank’s Ayre-brokered £20m a year buys them influence the like of which Crown Paints could never have countenanced.
Presumably that’s the point, from SC’s point of view.
In the absence of beer or paint or mobile phones, what they’re selling is confidence – in their image, in their brand.
The brand is everything when you’re selling nothing more tangible than magic beans.
So when some other brand you’ve bought in to, one you might as well have picked from a hat for all your connection to its history, gets some negative press you need to step in.
That’s what Standard Chartered or Aon want from their deals.
They don’t want you as a customer. You’re entirely inconsequential. If the average Liverpool fan went to their head office they’d be lucky to get through the door.
It’s about our brand and their brand, nothing more.
Our brand may have been built on the back of tens of millions of ticket sales and hopes and dreams and songs, but we’ve long since built it. It’s theirs now, for the price of a Stewart Downing a year.
We don’t matter to them in any real sense, other than as an indistinct mass contributing a bit of colour to proceedings.
The same applies to Etihad and Emirates, airlines whose connections to royalty in the UAE and Dubai belie their motivation for involvement in football – they’re not doing it to sell you a flight.
Interestingly, the three major domestic competitions are backed by recognisable names – two brands of lowest-common-denominator beer and a retail bank (let’s not mention Bob Diamond).
But our biggest clubs are now sponsored by companies used to exchanging cash for influence, to managing their public profile to secure a bigger slice of a financial services industry we’re told creates wealth but whose riches are rarely shared beyond a tiny percentage of the population.
In some cases that’s all they do.
It’s antithetical to everything football can and does still stand for, another step on the road to a reckoning that’s been coming for a long time.
If and when the edifice collapses, clubs go to the wall and the blood-letting begins, I’m not sure the financial services industry will be there in our hour of need.
Are you?
All true but they and all our other sponsors are part of what will hopefully end up with us winning number 19. Fact is we need their money. They need our association. With Ian Ayre we are moving into a stronger commercial position. This is to be welcomed. The next time Kenny pushes the transfer button I want to know it will light up!
If You sell your soul to the devil you dance to his tune. I hate to say it but in the modern game we probably need them more than they need us. Their money buys them an association with our club that raises their profile worldwide.
Our side of the deal is to maintain a successful product that continues to grow and expand.
This is mutually beneficial and fine until one of the “partners” jeopardises the perceived image or standing of the other.
SC obviously have concerns that their image may be tainted with recent events. Sad to say their investment gives them a very strong influence in the club with regard to “image & Brand”
There’s a clue in their logo, serpents have long been associated with the devil.
That could be the best article I’ve read on the Corporate greed engulfing the World – I kid you not – TAW has The Peoples’ Choice Award, & the sheer class of this only enhances its reputation… Superb, many thanks.
Some excellent points there, sadly the game sold it’s soul to commercialism when the clubs accepted the Sky tv money in rebranding Division One the premier league. Liverpoolfc to it’s credit did it’s best to hold onto it’s traditional values and apart from a deal with a brewing company and a few other minor deals left the high finance stuff to other clubs.
Therein lies the dilemma due to lack of funds Liverpoolfc was punching above it’s weight at times but in reality it was steadily losing ground to the better financed clubs. Ian Ayre knew this and did something about it. Old traditionalists might not like this ‘sell out’ of the old way of doing things at our club but what was the alternative?
We can still try to hold on to elements of The Liverpool way but the harsh reality of the modern game is sustainable success needs big financial investment.
As for Steves question if our our club was in danger of going to the wall, the service industry most certainly would not be there for us in our time of need.
Football has changed drastically this last 20 years and if I’m honest I don’t like the changes one little bit, but it looks like we are stuck with them.
Some valid points in your article.
What sponsors want from a football club is positive exposure and this comes about through
success on the field and a good public image of that club.
Obviously the more successful a club the more a sponsor pays.
I think what is concerning Standard Charted more is the lack of progress on the field and the possibility of another year out of the Champions
League.
The way the club handled the Suarez affair has only heightened their concerns.
Some fans will say tough shit but if we want compete with the mega bucks clubs we need all the revenue we can get.
Conversely Freddie Boswell ran Liverpool like a village cricket club. Liverpool’s status as one of the movers and shakers of world football was never realised or translated in to cash As Brian Read observes… when we were the hottest ticket in Europe following the miracle of Istanbul they couldnt even be bothered to open the club shop
Good points Steve but sadly that’s where we all are in the modern game.The days of hand-knitted scarves and wooden rattles are long gone.
Our big mistake was to continue as though we were still living in those days when the big opportunities came along and then sold out for a tin of beans.
I very much doubt that Standard Chartered call many shots regarding the running of the Club.They bought image rights and we undoubtedly have to acknowledge that and keep them informed when our image is taking a battering.Nothing more,nothing less.
So far as the owners are concerned,well I haven’t heard them make that much noise lately.The media would have us believe that they pressed guns against heads to force those statements from Ayre,Dalglish and Suarez.I can’t believe that.The statements were simply apologising to us for not handling things very well.Again nothing more,nothing less.And by the way it was nice of ManU to thank them but what the hell did it have to do with them anyway?I’m not aware of any reference to them whatsoever!
I’m sure that the owners are fully aware of the circumstances surrounding the Suarez affair and equally sure that they know that the motives were not to promote racial harmony.
So far as I can see they are keeping their powder dry for the moment.But be prepared for the backlash.We’ve learned a massive lesson here and we live to fight another day!
No apologies would be necessary if Ayre, Dalglish, and Comolli knew what they were doing. We seem to have good owners now, but the management team leave a lot to be desired.
Explain how Ayre and Kenny don’t know what they are doing? Comolli – you may be right, but I’ll wait and see on that one.