In communications consistency is key - Regardless of where you sit in the name change debate the communications strategy (or lack of one) and subsequent tactics have been diabolical lately. Mr Allam calls us Hull Tigers, The Official website use Hull City Tigers however regularly refer to us Hull City in their articles The Clubs Twitter page is "Hull City Official" but also refers to us as Hull City Tigers The Clubs Facebook page is "Hull City A.F.C and almost exclusively refers to us as Hull City The Stadium announcement have abandoned all concept of Hull or City and just calls us the Tigers The Scoreboard still calls us Hull City And the written and broadcast media still call us Hull with the occasional stretch to Hull City What are we suppose to make of all of this? Are the communications team ignoring Allam or are they just incompetent? So lets list a few other examples of total incompetency lately to stress the point. What is the point I am making? It doesn't matter if changing the name is a good idea or not it won't work anyway because the execution is a shambles. Rebrand by Stealth - If you want to change your name to increase revenue you probably want to let people know when you start doing it Saying you are going to do something and then doing the exact opposite - Sending your MD out to the fans and saying you won't change the name a few weeks before you change the name is borderline insanity. -Saying you are going to consult with the fans and then sending off the application to change the name will make you look silly Change the name twice -If you are going to change the name it's much better to do it in one go rather than a few letters at a time. Crap public relations -Don't get quoted in the global press saying anyone referring to the old name can hurry up and die Damage your own brand -Firstly as we are currently called Hull City it is probably not a good idea to say it's a crap name it hardly boosts the brand image and what if the name change doesn't get approved? Here is a nice little picture about strategy from a chap called Malcolm McDonald (don't take this too seriously it's theory at the end of the day.) The upside is we are only dying slowly thanks to the tactical incompetence! please log in to view this image Who do you go after? So the next basics is segmentation and targeting. you look at people who could potentially attend a match or buy your shirts or watch you on television abroad or consume any other of Hull City's products or services thus generating revenue for the club. Naturally you adapt your offering (they call this the marketing mix) and tailor each of them to the target audience! What does this mean practically? Well if you take your average away fan for example, you don't want to spend too much effort getting them to buy a Hull City shirt because they probably don't want one. So you adapt your offering to different customers right? Correct, with one caveat, not at the demise of your other target segments, especially if they are your primary target and or core customer. You have to be smarter than that! If We can work out a way of calling us Hull Tigers in Asia and not renaming the club here then wonderful but that will be difficult to execute and raises issues with the mixed communications mentioned above! In Mr Allam I see a man who has done well by us to date, He has invested heavily the motivation of which is as of today still unclear he has done some nice improvements around the stadium and offered free travel to some games. Some of the things the club have done have been great, he has appointed a good manager and the football side of things have taken care of themselves (with his financial support) However the business in general is not doing well operationally. The Club shop is poor, the Website is poor, the Communications are poor, We rolled out a new ticketing system which was designed to reduce money, execution was poor choice of technology was equally poor (Should have categorically been NFC) and as a result they now have to employ people to run it anyway. Then we get to the whole name change saga and how we have managed that and again as this post stresses it's poor. I do worry about how this all ends the man is not getting any younger he is 74! and I don't believe his children share the same level of desire to invest in a football club unless we begin to pay him back now whilst we have some money from the premier league and then look to get the club sold on and get back on a level playing field we are going to well and truly end right up **** creek without a paddle to hand. Because I see no viable exit strategy for the family that doesn't involve draining the club of all resources. I am massively against the name change but if the FA approve it City Till We Die need to stand down I believe because otherwise we are going to end up without a football club to go and support on boxing day 2020.
Interesting post. But why do people keep saying we have to pay him back?? When has a club ever paid the owner back. If we were bottom of league 2 etc maybe. BUt where we are now?? Not a chance. This is where CTWD's next stage is going to seriously de-stabilise the club. Is that their aim I wonder?
New coat from club shop arrived today in parcel.... Was hoping it would say Hull Tigers on the badge but no.... Bloody Hull City AFC.. I hope they don't change the name now or it will be out of date in April.
I admit that this isn't currently clear, however let's say he decides to pass ownership to his son down the line due to Ill health, Ehab will see a fanbase that resents his father and a football club he isn't interested in, he would be perfectly within his rights to sell all our best players and salvage some money back. This raises the next question? Does Assam Allam intend to pay himself back? Is this formally agreed on paper? If he sold the club tomorrow what structure would the repayments take? Until this is addressed we are still £70m in debt aren't we not?
Doesn't Allam own the club? I thought he bought it, then lent it the money. So even if the club pays back the loan, he still owns it. By using the Premier League money to pay himself back he is doing just that, paying himself. Conversely, if the debt to him grows, it is still owed by one of his assets to another of his assets.
There are enough quotes by Ehab on his interest in us. He's a step behind his dad constantly. Where have you got this from that he isnt interested?? There is only one person who said this about Ehab and coincidentally he is on the CTWD committee! Weird that int'it.
A bit pedantic I know, but strictly speaking, isn't it a company he owns that owns Hull City, and a company he owns that lent Hull City the money?
Ok I am perhaps making an assumption, but there are no guarantees that Ehab would want to continue investing money into the club, then what? He would want to sell it? Can't do that, no one wants a football club with 70 Million of debt right? so what other options does that leave him with?
Yes, I think you are right. Not really my field of expertise, but as long as he owns both, I think he can effectively maximise benefit to City, and also maximise tax efficiency to the other "entity" (Allamhouse?). So long as the same "person" owns both I think we are relatively safe as he is unlikely to call in the loans as this would just mean moving the money from his left pocket to his right pocket. The problem arises if he decides to walk away from either. This doesn't mean he can't, as he could walk away leaving the debt and simply institute a repayment schedule that would leave City almost permanently skint.
And is that business listed as a creditor on the balance sheet? Not that it matters, this is the reason you shouldn't be owned exclusively by one person who can do as they please, There is nothing wrong with having a business leader and majority owner but the club has no protection, what if he bangs his head tomorrow and decides he wants to sell all our players, we have no protection within the business to prevent him doing anything, what a vulnerable situation to be in. Please someone tell me I am wrong?
His daughter will presumably be given something, although it could be done where Ehab takes more of the businesses and she takes more of the other assets. I really don't know how much involvement each of the kids has in the businesses (other than Ehab being heavily involved) so guessing who gets given what would be daft.. If she is given some of the businesses then as her and her husband own Ferriby what happens next will come down to who has their name on the deeds at NFU. If it's her husband then there's no issue. If it's her then one of the two shareholdings will need to be reduced to less than 9.99% to prevent there being a breach of the rules about conflict of interest (they both compete in the FA Cup so it is an immediate issue).
Nonsense. There is absolutely nothing to suggest CTWD are doing, have done or will do anything that will harm the club other than your desire to dislike them.
It's just a small point, but the new ticketing system was never intended to reduce staffing, it is to reduce things like fake tickets, the impact of lost tickets and make it easier to find out whose coming in at what time.
