Great article in the Daily Mailby Martin Samuel. It's not online as far as I can see. What he is saying is that as Hull Tigers we cannot gain global recognition as in the USA Detroit are "The Tigers" in the UK Leicester are ""The Tigers. Hull City are just that Hull City and everyone knows it.
Or indeed Castleford. I pointed out the day this all first broke that he said "City is common, teams like Leicester use it. We want to be Tigers" is the most hilarious / tragic faux pas I'd heard in yonks.
Same here, until I heard that he'd raised Coventry as a good role model for the way they use their stadium
That means we cannot gain global recognition using our nickname 'The Tigers' like the marketing gurus on here think is better. There is Leicester Tigers, there is Detroit tigers, there's no Hull Tigers.
LSU tiger stadium in my home city of Baton Rouge will have 92,000 people in it on Saturday night this week for an American college football game. Lots of teams called tigers out there probably more than teams called City! http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl...=c-aJUovcH5KSkQep4IDgCg&sqi=2&ved=0CDQQ9QEwBA
According to Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tigers_(sports_teams) Another view: http://tigerchat.org/common-as-muck/
I always thought the attendance for college games was mental in the US. I played varsity for DMU at the Walkers Stadium, there were about 5000 people there. Why do Americans take semi pro football (American obviously) so seriously?!
Because they usually only have one pro team for the entire state and given the size of some of the states it would be like us travelling to continental Europe for a home game. The semi-pro college sports teams are more localised and allows them to support a team that represents their area as well as have games that they can actually attend. That's my understanding as explained by an American friend anyway!
That does make sense, but even so, that means that there are more people attending the equivalent of university sports games in America than the majority of attendances in the PL! Imagine watching Newcastle Uni vs Bristol Uni in an 85,000 capacity stadium! Mental!
Well yeah, but their average or even small sized cities are ****ing massive sot hat means more sport going population. Other than greater London theyre really very small in the UK. For example, Hull and its 243,000 is seen as reasonably big over here but in the US it'd be like a tiny town.
I know its crazy, I went to a Penn State football game once with over 100,000 people there, quite incredible really. Although their college sports are of a much higher standard than ours, they hand pick the best athletes, give them scholarships and put them on some token course so they can spend most of their time training, its a different world!
It is indeed an excellent piece by Martin Samuel of the Mail... Allam Tigers will end up stuffed America is gradually taking interest in the Premier League. During the row over Hugo Lloris’s head injury, a friend noticed that a related news item led the ticker on CNN Sports. Tottenham had defended their actions, the bulletin said. Not EPL club Tottenham, you will notice, not English soccer team Tottenham. Just Tottenham, as if everyone would know who they are. Spurs would seem a more natural fit for the American market, except American sport already has a Spurs. San Antonio Spurs, from Texas. They’re good at basketball. Contested the 2013 NBA finals, lost to Miami Heat. So the idea that Hull City will achieve global renown simply by switching the name to Hull Tigers is preposterous. There will only ever be one team of Tigers in America, for instance, and that is Detroit Tigers, in existence since 1894, four times World Series winners and American League champions as recently as 2012. How could Hull Tigers hope to compete with baseball history? Basically: they won’t. We were watching the rugby from Twickenham on Saturday when my son remarked how many Tigers players had been used as replacements by England. He didn’t say Leicester, because rugby is his sport and, to him, the Tigers are a rugby club. Always will be. So Assem Allam, chairman of Hull City, has it wrong. The name City may be as common as muck, as he fears, but that does not matter. Hull is what matters. Hull is what will travel around the world as the Premier League grows ever bigger. Hull is what sets his club apart. Hull, named after a river in the East Riding region of Yorkshire, is his humble, yet unique, selling point. We have aped American sport in this country before, but all those Sharks and Bears end up as bull, because they can never compete with the iconic names from baseball, basketball, NHL and NFL. As exotic as the Boston Red Sox or San Francisco 49ers sound to us, so Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester United sound to them. Tottenham means something. The Hull Tigers? What pennant are they playing for? ‘Nobody in the world will decide how I run my companies,’ said Allam last week. He still doesn’t get it. Hull City is not his company. It belongs to generations of fans and he is custodian. Hull Tigers? Now that would be his company. Although take away the supporters of plain old Hull City, and Allam would soon find it really is a jungle out there. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/fo...opean-sides--Martin-Samuel.html#ixzz2kzzrS9Qe
I'm not sure if this has been discussed before, but what would happen if our name did change to Hull Tigers and our income didn't increase?
Nothing whatsoever, he has clearly stated he does what he wants and doesnt answer to anyone. I dont even think that he thinks revenue will increase because of the name change, I honestly think it's a pure ego thing for him. He wants to be remembered as the man who gave birth to Hull Tigers.
It IS a great article but I think it's now all about much more than the potential name change. For me it now comes down to the fact that if he thinks he can change the name of the club in such a dictatorial manner then he obviously thinks, or at least once thought, that he could do anything at all on a whim without a second thought of a backlash from the clubs supporters, probably in much the same way as he would never expect to get a backlash from those employees that produce his generators. I am absolutely astounded that he doesn't seem to have considered the difference between his employees, those that he remunerates on a regular basis, and the supporters of Hull City AFC, many of whom, over many generations, have conversely 'paid in' to support an institution. The problem now, I feel, is that the man is so stubborn that he will not make a U turn, and will plough on relentlessly with his own agenda, regardless of the consequences, and the sporting world is watching.
The only people that can stop him are the Premier League and FA. They have the final say over whether the team name can be changed and despite their failings in other areas I can't see them, or the other clubs in the league, wanting the traditions of English football to be so easily discarded. They must recognise that the history and heritage of English football is a valuable asset in foreign tv sales, once one club has changed names what's to stop others messing around should their owners see fit? Should it come to it, I would hope that the CTWD group would actively lobby other clubs at boardroom level to put pressure on the relevant authorities to oppose any change.
It's also more like watching the U21s than a university team. With the way you get scholarships over there it seems more like the academy system here, rather than big clubs poaching the best young players its the best colleges.
