Rob Gutmann is for the latest edition of ‘Unwrapped’ where he is joined by Ragnhild Lund Asnes, Adam Smith and Joel Richards for a chat about Liverpool’s CEO-elect Peter Moore.
What can we expect from the 62-year-old Liverpool-born former, Sega, Microsoft and EA executive who arrives in the Summer to take on his first CEO appointment?
Can Moore bridge the gap between Liverpool, London and Boston and also connect with a cynical fanbase, and area where his predecessors have failed?
All that and more in the latest ‘Unwrapped’.
Couple of things I want to add.
Firstly, a question to you. Are Man Utd successfully commercially?
I’ve said this a few times on here recently but it’s relevant to the discussion you’ve had and primarily Joel’s comments.
Man Utd do not appoint Utd fans to their board. It’s a deliberate policy of not allowing the heart to rule the head. Woodward and Arnold are Liverpool fans and their commercial director supports City. Another point, he doesn’t live in Manchester but in leafy Cheshire, not even the East Cheshire of Wilmslow, Hale or Alderley Edge but in West Cheshire, 45 miles away. He’s successful.
Regarding another of Joel’s points re: the £20m loss being used as an excuse not to buy decent players. Well, the loss is fairly irrelevant. Again, I’ve made this point recently but will again. For the 2 previous years LFC broke even (the Suarez money distorts that but was spent after the budgeting deadline). So, it’s safe to assume that in general without special circumstances LFC can spend £30m net on players and break even.
If we look at the circumstances they’re consulting fee’s for stadium, sacking managers etc. Those accounts have those issues with Rodgers sacking. There’s also the commercial side that suffered from the ground being out of bounds. Probably not a huge amount but nevertheless.
I think it’s reasonable to suggest that this season we don’t have a £20m loss. Plus we haven’t spent our £30m net. That can carry over to the summer. This season we’ll make £40m extra from the tv money. So, in the summer it’s a new season and new set of accounts. Again, we have the £40m extra tv money for next season too, in comparison to the last accounts. Plus, we have our annual £30m net for next season. Regardless of guessed figures, my point is if we don’t spend a significant amount in the summer (i.e. north of £80m net and ideally over £100m net) then the questions aimed at FSG are gonna become unrelenting. That said, I fully expect £120m gross to be spent on players. I fully expect some shows in the summer where Rob is delirious with delight.
Can he play Centre-Half tho’?
I think I want to marry Ragnild. I can just see it now, ‘Rags’ and I (I call her ‘Rags’ as I feel I ‘know’ her now, especially after listening to her for a whole 5 minutes), sitting in the kitchen eating tea, after a tough day at work, chatting about the history of the boot room and gearing up for a night in watching QI. Heaven. :)
Have you guys thought of doing 01/02 wwch?
Do the commercial directors / CEO’s of the tops clubs in Europe have a personal connection with the club they work for? Do they have to?
For me it’s the balance between hardcore commercialism and maintaining some kind of semblance that this is a football club not a commodity. All said and done if fans want cheap tickets / access to games a decent match day experience then in today’s market its fair to say you have to accept a level of commercialization that some may not be comfortable with.
You can look at FC united or lads who’ve left the game to follow local sides in the Liverpool area that the game has just left behind and that’s good and bad. Good they’ve found something else but unfortunate that they’ve felt the modern game has left them behind. I sort of fall into the 2nd category.
The appointment is interesting. It’s interesting in the sense of the way the game is being consumed away from being in the stadium. Everything is immediate and on multiple platforms. Phones, Tablets, laptops, Consoles. The game is being consumed in multiple ways at once. So if I’m watching the game on TV from an android box, I’m in a what’s app group with some mates discussing the game as it’s live, following comments on the game and other games on twitter. I might have a window open of another game on the laptop and I might watch facebook live of the lads in the stadium at pre / half full time.
Aside from the usual commercial deals the club is already doing I think it’s this market and the generations below consuming the game in this manner the club is looking to monetize. The fan base in the stadium is minuscule compared to the global fan base.
I was trained, commercially, by a Yank company after uni and the impression I always got of Aire was of someone who would not have got through the interview process with Yank Corps. His dumbfuck, retired bank manager, Harley was a statement about his image that no effective business negotiator would contemplate making in public. They may have had a Harley – but they would have deriven it round the private roads of their fuckin estate. Never would they have turned up at their place of work – looking the total arl-arse tosser he was, (I’m a retired arl-arse too – cards on the…)
Having listened to Moore’s cv, as read out by Gutman. I thought that he ticks a much bigger box than IA did as far as commercial experience goes. Big plus there then! In fact, (and Gutman as a man of business himself should have nailed this), he ticks a fuckin much bigger box too with some of those companies. The question about if he has kept aware of Liverpool the city as well as LFC during his time away is really for him to answer. But, speaking as an exile myself and I have met many others too, I can’t ever remember meeting a Scouse who has ever NOT kept their eyes and ears on the City and it’s affairs. We are all fuckin Scouse not English as far as us exiles go and that is doubly so for LFC’s Scouse exiles. So lets assume he is like the rest of us on that score.
I am currently fucked over by the deteriation of JK’s side after such fuckin pinacles of ecstacy earlier. This is pouring piss on me LFC chips at present, so I will cautiously welcome this move. Then hope to fuck he doesn’t start mincing round Liverpool 1 in in a tutu looking for Russian sailors after dropping something chemical while out clubbing to celebrate his return home. He sounds a far more effective businessman than previous occupiers of the post. He’d have sussed the two Texan ‘leverage whoers’ right away, for example. Give him some rope lads!