Name change discussion

What Scudamore is interested in though is keeping the politicians out of football. As the article posted by DMD shows Assem Allam is rocking the boat (along with Vincent Tan) and may be the catalyst for parliament introducing legislation to protect names, colours, badges, grounds and a whole host of things that may cause problems for his employers.

I agree he only cares about Hull City to the extent that it makes his job more difficult. If the name change goes through expect parliament to start drafting new legislation to stop the same thing happening again. We live in interesting times.

In our promotion year our income, excluding parachute payments and TV money, went up by £35,000, less than a police sergeant's salary. Pretty impressive for our most successful season ever, don't you agree?

 

When did this thread become a focal point for discussion about supporter ownership?

Omega, you bring the conversations to supporter ownership every time; it's not relevant to the name-change campaign, which is all I am interested in - certainly not the pathetic politicization of a simple campaign to protect our club's identity and heritage.

I am neither protecting or supporting Peter Scudamore; to say I am is ridiculous. What I am doing is reading the element off his comments that relates to the Hull City AFC name-change;he makes it very clear he believes it wrong and he makes it very clear he has [strongly] advised AA to drop his application. He can only advise because he is powerless in the matter and it would be a damn fool who makes statements and threats he cannot back up. I recognize that Peter Scudamore is an employee of the Premier League organisation and is duty-bound to represent a position that protects that organization's best interests, an element of that is condemning the name-change; I am not so hypocritical that I will pretend I will not adopt that element of his position to enhance my own - why should I?

It would also be a damn fool who would consider any form of minority partnership with Assem Allam. Yes, I do dislike him, but that only serves to focus my gaze on the real him and the real issue we are supposed to be fighting - well, some of us anyway.

The Premier League is an imperfect monstrosity that I have criticised frequently, but in this they can only be a side-line influence and by their remarks they are definitely not a fence-sitter.

I have done no u-turn, as your lazy remark declares; I have stuck doggedly with my very simple argument against the name-change and the man who drives it. Perhaps you could make the membership of CTWD 1801 and help stop the name-change you are watching from that lofty fence of supporter ownership, an issue of no consequence if we do not win the fight in- hand. You don't have to win every battle to win the war, but some battles are critical and CTWD are fighting such a battle, while you are blathering about some future cooperation with a bonkers dictator.

Mods - perhaps a seperate sticky can be started for fan ownership, because it has no place on here.

 

Colin Murray in this week's Radio Times: "BT Sport is showing Brighton at home to Hull City, and while it's easy to say the home team are the underdogs, I'd love to see the Hull fans get their "No to the Tigers" banners all the way to Wembley"

 

Fez your u turn is in accepting everything that gets posted with a slant against Assem Allam is accurate, something that you would not have done in the past. If a post on any subject was wrong you would point it out, but when it is something against Assem Allam there is little challenged.

Although I would have liked to have become involved in a supporters trust at Hull City, that moment has past and will not come my way again. I do have an interest in the administration of insolvent clubs and the involvement of supporters, but that is for the future.

My reasons for not joining CTWD have always been that I do not agree with protest. As I said in the past I had an idea which you have always considered foolhardy, that idea is virtually the same model as what gets posted on here under the aims of CTWD. Recently I have changed my position, I have moved away from the proposal that a partnership with HCC, supporters and Assem Allam would work. I have moved away from the idea that the development of the KC would work. I do not believe that whilst the club is in the Premier League, that there will be any supporter share ownership and that belief comes down to two things. The relationship between the PL, government and supporters as well as the virtual collapse of the main funding bank. Combine the two with the strained relationship with the club and investment in Hull City is not attractive.

I will not join ANY protest group, not just CTWD, I will not ever join a protest group. I always have to sit on the fence.

 

how dare you sir?

sitting on the ****ing fence?
you must get passionate, emotive etc!
I wonder what it will take for you to get emotional about something blah blah blah...............................

 

What a strange aim that is.

 

So if BNP get elected and decide to drag off foreigners, communists and undesirables you would say nothing?

 

Both used in one posting! You excel yourself......

 

Sometimes joining a protest group is not an option available to everyone.

 

Hang on just one ****ing minute. I have served my ****ing country, stood up to be ****ing counted and suffered the consequences. Don't you ever try to elevate this beyond football and civil protest. Because I will tell you one thing, when someone rips you off, parks their caravan on your land, chains themselves to your plant equipment, doesn't pay your invoices who are you going to call. Me and my mates that's who. I evict protesters you dumb ****.

 

I think you need to give some sort of example of what you accuse me of in your first paragraph.
When I see something good about Assem Allam I give it the level of praise it deserves, but I have not seen such a thing for a long time. I did praise his donation to the medical facility; I could even find it within myself to praise his effortless manipulation, but then you would need to congratulate me on my profound cynicism.

The rest of your post only has meaning to you - can you not see that?

 

Fez recently it doesn't look that way and its not an accusation its my observation of the way I see your recent postings.

And yes the rest of my post is about how I see things personally and my own view, what do you want me to do next post a picture of some dart flights?

 

Apologies if you misinterpreted my question. I meant no offence. I was simply trying to establish whether there is anything you would protest about, by using an extreme example as you had said that you would not ever join a protest group.

 

I'm against the name-change initiative, as are you; I am against the sole cause and driver of that name-change initiative, Assem Allem, which I think is perfectly understandable. I am also against him because he has lied, deceived, manipulated and blackmailed the supporters of the club, his customers. What is there to like? Your view of my posts counts for nothing when I read the nonsense you write about not being able to protest. If your job is so restrictive as to what you can do and say about the name-change I would suggest you refrain from discussing it on here and stick to the a-political threads. It's not just me but others also,who normally hold your views in good regard, that find what you are saying confusing, contradictory and frankly, just bloody daft. You either need to explain yourself fully so that readers can understand your reasoning / difficulties, or simply say nowt, as a partial offering is doing you no good whatsoever.

 

I would suggest that not wanting to join a campaign group is perfectly acceptable and reasonable. It's the low level snarkiness against that campaign group that suggests some posters aren't quite as "on the fence" as they claim.

 

If that's aimed at me then you are wrong.

My very first post on any forum was asking someone to clarify a statement that they had made. He said something that simply was the truth slightly distorted to make it fit with what he wanted to prove. I still fall into the trap of reading what gets posted and if I believe it to be even slightly off, I will challenge it.
Take the Scudamore press statement, when and if you read everything he releases, there is no way that he is committed to keeping Hull City. He will support it in private maybe, but he will also have given assurances to the club that the PL will not interfere with a clubs ownership and how the club is run as long as it keeps to the PL rules.

No one has come back about the remarks made about club colours, why is that? No hidden agenda, just simply asking questions of what gets posted on here.

 

Just wondering if the happy,clappy(but decidedly bitter & twisted),we love Disneyworld names clique have any evidence of support other than the tepid and rambling Economist piece or the equally indecisive BBC article on sport marketing(considering half of the Beeb article was interviewing someone who makes his money in sports marketing it was fairly undecided by the end,just like Clappys' wonderful Economist revelation)
Both appear to be token attempts to give balance to the story but ultimately end up saying"Meh!Might work....that's if they have a proper marketing strategy in place,well in advance of the actual name change.But it will only matter if they become a consistently successful team anyway."

Just to point out,if you were unaware,why Economist journalists only use initials(if they're bloggers) or pseudonyms.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist#Editorial_anonymity

Let's take a look at your precious Economist article shall we?

IT SHOULD really be smiles all-around at Hull City FC, a mid-sized football team in an unloved corner of north-east England. Since the team was bought by a local businessman, Assem Allam, in 2010, his £60m(it's 80-90mill,but I suppose figures aren't the Economists strong point) ($100m) investment has propelled the club into the English Premier League (EPL), just at a time when playing in the top division became a lot more lucrative. The team is also highly likely(?) to remain among the elite for another season, after an excellent first 20 games.

However, Hull’s season has been overshadowed by an ugly row between Mr Allam and the club’s supporters over his attempt to change the name of the club to Hull Tigers. A pressure group, City Till We Die (CTWD), believes that “changing our name will break with 109 years of history and tradition”. These supporters have received vocal approval at the club’s matches in recent weeks. Mr Allam believes that a stronger brand identity is required. As he told The Guardian, “City, Town, County: these are meaningless. In marketing the shorter the name the more powerful—think of Coca Cola, Twitter, Apple.”(a belief he admits he got from reading a business paper on stock market trading and of which one of the co-authors of that very paper has said bears no relevance whatsoever to the kind of marketing that Assem Allam is attempting.Rather poorly at that.) He has lodged a request with the sport’s governing body in England, the Football Association (FA), for formal approval, having changed the name of the club’s holding company to Hull City Tigers in 2013. The supporters are anxiously waiting for the FA’s ruling. Mark Gretton of CTWD has said “It is hard to convey the misery and anger that [the name change] has stirred in so many.”(This is a shameful example of peoples passion and emotion for their football team that has no place in business decisions,unlike selling the the premier league abroad as a business steeped in the very same passions,emotions,history and traditions of the teams and supporters in it)

On one hand, Mr Allam would be well-advised to be sensitive to the fans’ outrage. Professional sports clubs’ brand is often their most valuable asset, and building loyalty and recognition to a new name takes decades and many millions in advertising. In the United States, sports teams have held onto their nicknames even after moving to a new city where the original one is irrelevant—see the Utah Jazz basketball team, formerly of New Orleans—and the Washington Redskins, Cleveland Indians and Atlanta Braves have resisted a switch even though their sobriquets and logos are widely seen as offensive to Native Americans.

But the brand equity locked up in the Hull City trademark pales in comparison with that of the clubs listed above: it is barely a household name across England, not to mention the rest of the world.(Whilst there is obviously more money in a US market,apart from the Redskins I'd never heard of any of those supposed household names before this article.It also misses out the fact that most team moves/changes in the states have supporter involvement in the process,unlike in Hull.) And even some of football’s most hallowed teams went through periods of reinvention before settling down. (As pointed out many times before,these examples occurred when football was in it's infancy and many clubs were growing into different entities from their humble beginnings.What they were not doing was marketing themselves for the far east.)Manchester United was once called Newton Heath, for example, and Liverpool’s ground, Anfield, was originally occupied by their arch-rivals.

The economics of the EPL demand that teams pay as much attention to modern marketing strategies as they do to putting together their roster.(Changing your name and hoping for the best is not a marketing strategy,that's just winging it.Both this article and the Beeb one stress the need for advance planning yet there seems to be nothing coming out of the club,official or rumour.Is there a dynamic "Hull Tigers F.C." marketing team?Or a team for the far east?And which ad agency do we have "on board" for our supposed global roll-out?Do we even have a strategy yet?'Cos if not it's too late to be starting a campaign now for next season.Maybe it'll all be done on the cheap because no one tells Assem how to do business,especially some artsy-fartsy ad man.) Since the league has precious few restrictions on well-heeled patrons’ ability to spend at will,(Apart from FFP regs,but fair enough,there will be ways around it) clubs that don’t have the good fortune to be owned by oligarchs must turn to corporate backers to finance their player acquisitions. Manchester United, the most successful English team of recent years, lists 35 sponsors on its website; Liverpool recently signed a seven-figure deal with Dunkin’ Donuts, which will become the club’s “official coffee, tea and bakery partner”.(Wow!Sounds great.How did they get that sponsorship?Did they change their names?...or have they won a ****load of trophies and titles?) That may provide amusement to opposition fans, but management hopes that the additional revenue will enable it to make a louder noise on the pitch. Hull’s only chance of keeping pace with these rivals financially(Really?Does any one,other than Papa Doc,believe this is actually possible in the foreseeable future?Keep up financially with Manchester United?To be honest I doubt even he thinks,or even cares,if it works,just as long as he loses the City.) is to expand its revenue base beyond its small cadre of die-hard supporters.

Whether a name change will be of any help in this pursuit remains to be seen(Sounds like this blogger is unsure there will be any benefit). Mr Allam’s choice of “Tigers” seems to be a rather transparent(and racist) bid for supporters in Asia, where the EPL is hoovering up millions in new television revenue:(which is payed to the PL,and,as far as I'm aware,not divvied out on the basis of cutest names get more dosh) species of tiger are national symbols in India, Bangladesh, Malaysia, China and South Korea. Cardiff City, another medium-sized club that changed hands in 2010 and later rose to the EPL, has adopted a similar strategy, changing its shirt colour from blue to red—which is thought to be more palatable to Asian fans(and is a strategy that has had no appreciable effect on Cardiff City income from the intended market so far)—despite fierce opposition from current supporters.

In and of itself, the new brand is unlikely to lure many fans. But it could come in handy if Mr Allam backs it up with an integrated marketing strategy: say, acquiring a handful of players from his targeted countries, having the club travel to the region as often as possible and arranging partnerships with local brands and media.So not changing the name and marketing the club professionally would work just as well?

In the end, however, the best advertisement is a quality product. Mr Allam is continuing to invest in his team on the pitch, committing £15m to new players in the January transfer window. And he has threatened to walk away from the club(if he's willing to blow tens of millions of his own money) if the FA rejects his proposed change, which could leave it in a perilous financial situation. CTWD’s members may need to ask themselves whether they would prefer to cheer for Hull Tigers in the EPL, or for a diminished Hull City in the Championship or worse.(The old loaded question again,why not ask"would you prefer your balls cut off,you might not bleed to death,or would you rather be pushed off a cliff and probably die,but might land safely on a ledge?"...Quite obvious which answer would be more attractive at first glance but the fact that nothing is guaranteed in either scenario,or for that matter gives a logical reason for the scenario's in the first place,makes the question quite pointless.)

 

See, that should be the end of it, but Happy will come back with something else in a day or two. It won't be the Economist article since that's been addressed most recently. But some other stance to justify the opinion he's determined to have, one that was proven to be nonsense long ago and which he can pretend to have forgotten about.

 

I know,I try to ignore it but sometimes you just have to get it out of your system

 

I've seen no post about club colours. So can't offer you an opinion.

The fact remains that you are piecing together your assumptions about what Richard Scudamore thinks based on press comments, and I'm basing my views on direct conversations I've had with his senior staff ( and my colleagues have had with the man himself). And I know which one is more reliable.

More low level snarkiness. You can't help yourself, can you?