The Naming Rights Thread

[sidford]

Telegraphs article on it. The second last paragraph goes along with what's been said on here

Tottenham commercial chief Todd Kline quits to join Chelsea​

Kline departs after failing to land a lucrative naming rights package for the club’s £1 billion stadium


Chelsea have moved to poach Todd Kline from London rivals Tottenham Hotspur after the American resigned from his post as Spurs’ chief commercial officer.
Kline has been placed on gardening leave by Spurs and will join Chelsea on completion of that in a senior business role, which could be president of business - the job vacated by Tom Glick.
Tottenham hired Kline three years ago with the brief of landing a lucrative naming rights package for the club’s £1 billion stadium, which he has left without delivering. He was listed on the club’s board.
It is expected that Kline will now play a big part in Chelsea’s stadium plans, with the club yet to announce whether they will rebuild Stamford Bridge or move to another site. Whichever option the club takes up, it is assumed they will seek stadium naming rights.
In 2016 Kline, who subsequently carried out the same role at the Washington Football Team, spearheaded an 18-year naming rights deal for the Dolphins stadium with entertainment venue Hard Rock worth a reported £180 million.
That figure represented the third largest in the sport at the time it was signed with the Dolphins around the 13th most valuable franchise in the NFL.
While Kline did not manage to land a similar stadium naming rights deal for Spurs, he was involved in two major sponsorships with Ineos and Cinch, who are the club’s shirt sleeve sponsor. He was also part of negotiations that saw the club land a deal with Formula One to build a karting track under Tottenham’s stadium, which is to open to the public this week.
Kline’s style was not universally popular within Tottenham, however, and there was a huge overhaul of staff in his department with those departing not always having other jobs to go into. Indeed, there had been speculation that he could leave the club at the end of the season, regardless of Chelsea’s move to poach him.
The arrival of Kline, following his gardening leave, will follow Chelsea’s appointment of Casper Stylsvig as chief revenue officer.

 

[bombarda]

All that is true - but misses the fundamental point of marketing - you have to turn it into revenue. That is the question sponsors will be asking - if I spend X on naming rights, what return will I get on that investment? Internally, Spurs have to ask the same question - if we forgo X in naming rights, will we make up that lost revenue somewhere else?

Brand recognition is only a means to an end - and if it is not generating new revenue - then it is a wasted opportunity.

Spurs are still looking to find a naming rights partner - that should tell you what you need to know - if it was better to be branded as Tottenham Hotspur Stadium - Levy would proudly announce that we won't seek a naming rights partner while ENIC own the club.

Now, I do think Levy was protecting the brand by not selling out cheap. But, don't confuse that with thinking it is better to have a non-branded stadium.

Branding is right at the top of the funnel, and not about turning into revenue at all. Even taking marketing at it's most basic three components, branding is the furthest away from generating revenue as possible. After branding and awareness, you'd go through consideration and this will be more about social media, Spurs' new podcast could come under this, general newsletters without call to actions. Then conversion will come from those within the stadium, call to action emails, and search etc. It is nigh on impossible to attribute revenue to branding.

 

[McFlash]

now that i know what he looks like im glad hes gone

Looks like he wouldn't stand out on Epstein Island.

 

[Bluto Blutarsky]

Branding is right at the top of the funnel, and not about turning into revenue at all.

This is just flat out wrong.

The entire purpose of branding is to derive revenue - that is the reason businesses, and products, exist.

Now, - it's not always about turning it directly into revenue. So, take Spurs for example, if they can use the brand exposure to generate millions of new fans, and those new fans start to spend money on the club - that is revenue that traces directly back to the branding efforts. Sometimes that will be direct - they buy something from the team store. Sometimes that can be indirect - Spurs use the new fan data to generate bigger sponsorship revenue streams - on account of having a larger, loyal, fan base.

But, if you spend £1M on branding, and it does not generate at least £3-4M in revenue - then you are doing it wrong.


And, if Spurs really thought they were getting a return on their investment by naming the stadium Tottenham Hotspur Stadium - they would not be looking for a sponsor. They can do better, and they know it, they just have not found the right partner yet.

 

[McFlash]

I don't overly care about the money, we're making enough right now and I kinda like having the stadium carry the club name.




Oh yeah, and fuck @Tucker !

 

[Rob]

If there was value in naming a stadium after the team - most teams would do that.

There is not enough value to make it a good decision.

Most football stadiums don't have Beyonce concerts and NFL games...

Except Wembley*


*Note, Funnily enough it's not The Google Dome @ Wembley...

 

[Fergus]

Fuck off Todd, and good riddance!

 

[ohtottenham!]

Chelsea taking all the Tottenham offcasts, how times have changed.

Maybe still time for a Poch Tanguy reunion...

 

[Fergus]

Fuck off Todd, and good riddance!

The reason I said that, apart from his abject failure on the naming rights issue and his well-documented unpleasant personality, is that as Chief Commercial Officer he would have had a veto on our turd-coloured away kit which he failed to invoke.

 

[bombarda]

This is just flat out wrong.

The entire purpose of branding is to derive revenue - that is the reason businesses, and products, exist.

Now, - it's not always about turning it directly into revenue. So, take Spurs for example, if they can use the brand exposure to generate millions of new fans, and those new fans start to spend money on the club - that is revenue that traces directly back to the branding efforts. Sometimes that will be direct - they buy something from the team store. Sometimes that can be indirect - Spurs use the new fan data to generate bigger sponsorship revenue streams - on account of having a larger, loyal, fan base.

But, if you spend £1M on branding, and it does not generate at least £3-4M in revenue - then you are doing it wrong.


And, if Spurs really thought they were getting a return on their investment by naming the stadium Tottenham Hotspur Stadium - they would not be looking for a sponsor. They can do better, and they know it, they just have not found the right partner yet.

This isn't a thread about marketing, so I'll leave it now,. But go on, tell me how to attribute revenue to the stadium naming? There is no tracking available. You could, I suppose, if you want to fudge some really unreliable numbers, compare year on year differences in spend, but you'd then need to ignore every other macro and micro factor. Spurs will have a figure in mind as to what the branding worth of the stadium name is, but that will purely be based around what other clubs have raised, and then comparing the size of our fanbase, the number of events, number of matches on TV etc. Branding is a hugely worthwhile endeavour, but not one that can ever be accurately measured in ROI.

Oh, and of course they're never going to publicly say that there won't be any naming, because if somebody came along with £100m/ year tomorrow, of course they'll sell it then. But in the meantime, Levy has stated that they haven't seen the value in it yet.

 

[IfiHadTheWings]

now that i know what he looks like im glad hes gone

This encapsulates my feelings to a tee.

He looks like the rich smarmy bloke in a film who gets with your ex wife and the kids all love as he can give them the luxuries you never could but in the end the Mrs comes back to you coz' ultimately you aren't a massive smug shlong.

 

[thekneaf]

All that is true - but misses the fundamental point of marketing - you have to turn it into revenue. That is the question sponsors will be asking - if I spend X on naming rights, what return will I get on that investment? Internally, Spurs have to ask the same question - if we forgo X in naming rights, will we make up that lost revenue somewhere else?

Brand recognition is only a means to an end - and if it is not generating new revenue - then it is a wasted opportunity.

Spurs are still looking to find a naming rights partner - that should tell you what you need to know - if it was better to be branded as Tottenham Hotspur Stadium - Levy would proudly announce that we won't seek a naming rights partner while ENIC own the club.

Now, I do think Levy was protecting the brand by not selling out cheap. But, don't confuse that with thinking it is better to have a non-branded stadium.

Why say you won't do it. Whether it's worthwhile does have a price. I'm pretty sure we've named that price to us. If someone wants it, it is for sale. Until that price is met, we keep the name as it is.

Rather than a fudge, this seems logical to me.

How do you monetise our name? The same way business always do. You sell the wider fan base shit, or you give access to those fans to your partners.

 

[JamieSpursCommunityUser]

All that is true - but misses the fundamental point of marketing - you have to turn it into revenue. That is the question sponsors will be asking - if I spend X on naming rights, what return will I get on that investment? Internally, Spurs have to ask the same question - if we forgo X in naming rights, will we make up that lost revenue somewhere else?

Brand recognition is only a means to an end - and if it is not generating new revenue - then it is a wasted opportunity.

Spurs are still looking to find a naming rights partner - that should tell you what you need to know - if it was better to be branded as Tottenham Hotspur Stadium - Levy would proudly announce that we won't seek a naming rights partner while ENIC own the club.

Now, I do think Levy was protecting the brand by not selling out cheap. But, don't confuse that with thinking it is better to have a non-branded stadium.

And surely prospective NON STADIUM sponsors will be asking the same question?

Higher name recognition and brand perceptions for Tottenham also increase our non stadium commercial value.

Our commercial revenue has gone through the roof in the past 5 years.

How much of that is down to the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium branding, how much is the rising tide of the PL lifting all boats? Who knows.

But what's useful to Spurs is they have 10s or 100s of clients / sponsors. Small enough to keep track with face to face interactions at games at board level.

They will have an anecdotal intuitive understanding of why our clients have been swayed to spend X on sponsoring Spurs.

That feel for the facts which drive commercial growth could help guide the benchmark of what it's worth to us.

Also worth considering that putting our name on the Stadium may be subject to laws of diminishing returns.

Perhaps the reach to Beyonce fans etc isn't as valuable in year 10 as year 1 - you may have had must of the brand growth / appreciation & commercial value uplift.

Which makes the cash more appealing.

I wouldn't exclude the possibility that we've held for too much, but I think the judgement call is probably on the margins.

More so given that £10-15m a year is a much smaller % of our revenue these days.

 

[Hercules]

Posted to Rob & A&C yesterday that Kline was leaving, didn't know how long it would take to come out but it's been coming for some time now.

To back up what Trix said, he has done absolutely nothing and isn't well liked. I have very strong links to this

Correct!

 

[Hercules]

MLS/Concerts, nothing to do with Kline’s input

 

[dovahkiin]

more importanty, who are we replacing him with, and is he/she any good?

 

[Dunc2610]

more importanty, who are we replacing him with, and is he/she any good?

I'm not bad!

 

[Trix]

more importanty, who are we replacing him with, and is he/she any good?

Not sure we need to replace someone who has had very little meaningful input. I think we have too many chiefs at board level as is tbh.

 

[mark87]

 

[newbie]

more importanty, who are we replacing him with, and is he/she any good?

this hard, how do we replace a guy on loads of money, not to do a job his paid for,

hmm, do we have a candidate in-house who will be returning soon from Turkey?