On the topic of idea sharing, I'm meeting Paul King and Jack Cairns tomorrow to chat about the website. I've also put some other ideas together to give to the club (below) - they may not be good ideas and some I've posted before but I've collected them together here. Everything has to have a starting point and maybe people here can improve or expand my ideas, or maybe they prompt another idea in you. Either way, I'd encourage people to also send their ideas to the club and let's start getting some points of emphasis ready for the sub-committees and how we can grow our club and hit the £1 million target. As Paul King said last night, when you begin to grow in one areas other areas tend to follow.
Lottery
The club mentioned the need to increase revenue by £1 million per year; it’s conceivable that we could raise 15% of this through our own lottery.
We could run a Small Society Lottery (eventually a Large Society Lottery) and sell tickets via subscriptions on the website—this means virtually no administration or commitment of time from a club employee.
To run a Small Society Lottery, we do not need a license with the Gambling commission (you do for a Large Society Lottery), instead the requirement is to register with our council—a fee of £40.
Small Society lotteries do have the following restriction on tickets, ‘you cannot sell more than £20,000 of tickets in a single lottery, or £250,000 in any one year,’ but there is no restriction on selling tickets online—'you can sell tickets door to door, online, by telephone or face to face, but you cannot sell tickets in a street (including passages through shopping malls).’
The lottery could be run monthly or weekly, in this example I have chosen monthly.
ExampleTickets:- Ticket cost: £5
- Maximum tickets per month: 4,000
- Monthly value if all tickets are sold: £20,000 (maximum permitted)
- Yearly value if all tickets are sold each month: £240,000 (within limit
Processing fees:Assumption 1: Using Stripe as the payment provider, which incurs a fee of 1.5% + 20p per transaction.
Assumption 2: All players are paying monthly—if they paid yearly the 20p would only be paid once instead of 12 times.
Assumption 3: All players have only one ticket—if they have multiple tickets the 20p would be paid once per transaction and not per ticket.
- £5 per ticket – processing fee = £4.73
- 4,000 tickets * £4.72 = £18,880 (it’s actual £4.725 but would be rounded down)
Sales Breakdown:
- The club keeps 62.5%, which is £12,500 per month and £150,000 per year (plus any savings from processing fees)
- Processing fees total 5.6% (this would be different vary based on whether players pay yearly or have multiple tickets)
- Prizes will be made up of the remaining 29.9%. For simplicity, and because we know there will be some savings on processing fees, we’ll make this 32% of ticket sales which is a monthly prize pot of £6,400.
Prize breakdown:
Main prize pool of £5,000 per month (25% and 18 winners):
- Two times £1,000 (5% - total of 10%)
- Two times £500 (2.5% - total of 5%)
- Four times £250 (1.25% - total of 5%)
- Ten times £100 (0.5% - total of 5%)
- Keep £1,400 (7%) per month to one side for mega draws—quarterly would add £4,200 to that month’s prize pool – this £4,200 could be a separate jackpot that month.
The DrawWe could live stream the draw each month. It’s also possible we could attract a sponsor for the lottery—branding on the webpage, the live draw, and lottery-specific emails and social media.
Viability
The technical side of this is very easy to implement. Regarding ticket sales, we would need to sell 4,000 tickets to max out the lottery. I’d hazard a guess that plenty of fans would purchase two tickets, and some even more, meaning we’d likely only need to attract 2,500 – 3,000 players, and I’d venture a guess that there would be family members of fans who would be interested. Also, knowing that 62.5% is going to the and that by maxing out the lottery we would be 15% towards our goal would be a selling point… we have 700 (and hopefully more) salespeople after all.
I’ve broken down the above example into percentages because that’s how the lottery would be run. If we sold 1,000 tickets, then the breakdown would be the same, but the actual monetary value would be different.
Community Share SchemeI presume the club will continue to sell shares after the Crowdfunder has finished. This is again very easy to implement via the website with a transaction fee of 1.5% + 20p.
Full Value Purchase - £100 investment after processing fees is £98.30.
- £250 investment after processing fees is £246.05.
- £1,000 investment after processing fees is £984.80.
- £10,000 investment after processing fees is £9849.80.
SubscriptionIt’s also very simple to implement a subscription option. For example, we could offer people the opportunity to make ten monthly payments of £10 to become an owner, and they do not become an owner until the £100 is fully paid.
We could offer similar packages for other tiers, such as ten payments of £25—they become an owner after four and an Owner+ on competition—, or twenty payments of £12.50—they become an owner after eight and an Owner+ on competition.
Forty monthly payments of £25 to become a Founder—they would become an owner after four payments, an Owner+ after ten payments, and a Founder on completion of the payments.
Events
We could use events to increase awareness of the club, build our social standing, promote what we do, and gain free and positive marketing.
Sportsperson's DinnerA simple one for fans and business engagement would be to run a quarterly (or 2/3 per year) sportsperson dinner. By having these in the calendar early people have plenty of time to plan and ticket sales are very easy to implement via the website.
FestivalsFestivals could be huge for us regarding increasing our social standing within the community, community awareness, positive and free column inches, and bringing in new sponsors for each festival.
Two to four weeks prior to the season let’s have a yearly launch with the ‘Salford Music Festival’ and to close out and celebrate the season we could run a yearly ‘Salford Beer and Food Festival’.
The Salford Music FestivalThis would obviously be ticketed and inside the stadium, though we could also consider events outside the ground too. The focus should be local bands, within the North-West, but ideally Salford and Greater Manchester.
The Salford Beer and Food FestivalI’d imagine this would most likely be run outside the ground and there are plenty of local brewers to engage with. We could also have a stage for this event, one that allows people to put their name down for 10-20 minutes stints. It doesn’t have to be music, maybe they are a dance act, a magician, a comedian, or any number of other things. Let people have fun with karaoke too.
Each of these events could also be run alongside corporate hospitality in 1873.
By delivering yearly community events that are not rugby related we can tap into additional markets, expand our commercial arm, and attract new fans, and owners who by in not as a rugby fan but as someone who believes in us as a community asset. These events also allow us to promote the club and have players interact with people in the community who often wouldn’t know who they are. We could also the 3G pitch on the days for kids to play earlier in the day and have other things going on to make it a great family experience.
ParticipationI’m a firm believer that Rugby League as a sport should follow the example that the NFL has set in growing their sport, which is using Flag Football to grow its footprint. They have used it to not only engage people internationally but also in the US where there has been a huge increase in participation. Our equivalent would obviously be tag-rugby.
The sports itself needs to do far more and this is a model to follow. We also need to increase competition and access to the sport on terrestrial TV. For example, let’s have a nines tournament over one or two weekends at mid-season on C4 or the BBC. How about a tag tournament in pre-season also only on terrestrial TV – very low chance of injury and it gives players a fun run out. Or it could be done at the end of the season. Maybe a 7’s tournament with the trophy being named after Rob Burrow, who wore and raise money for charity.
I mention these wider ideas about RL because as a club we can take those elements on board and apply them at our level, even if the RL isn’t doing a lot to grow the sport nationally. NFL clubs have had great success growing flag football in their areas.
Tag-rugby is extremely accessible. The risk of injury is far lower (much lower insurance risk in schools). You don’t get smashed in a tackle. The pitch is smaller, and the game is shorter. Teams require fewer participants. The rules are simpler. We could look to promote tag-rugby and in doing so Salford in a variety of different ways:
School leagues and regular tournaments (monthly aimed at different groups)
- Attract sponsors
- Run some in conjunction with charities – MND to raise for Burrow would be a brilliant start.
- If we had a beer tent set up outside the ground and ran tournaments on the 3G pitch, we could generate income from food and drink too.
Participant Types:
- Primary schools – various ages groups (mixed)
- Secondary schools – various age groups (mixed and boy/girl only)
- Colleges & Universities (mixed and boy/girl only)
- Girls/Women only – from kids to open-age
- Open-age – invite local RL and RU teams to participate.
- Businesses entering teams to compete with each other—good team-building opportunities.
- Take tournaments on the road to cities throughout the UK—we could plan the tournaments with local RL and RU clubs, or groups of schools and would only need to send a few people there to run the tournament.
Matchday ExperienceAdultsLots of fans go to pubs directly after the game (those that don’t have access to 1873) and many drink elsewhere pre-game, meaning we are losing potential revenue streams. If we could get an outdoor area set up with Heathcote & Co, fans would have the opportunity to have a drink, in reasonable comfort, before and after the game.
KidsHow about skill challenges each week that people can take part in (all ages)? Kick the ball (grubber/chip) to land in a certain spot on the ground or in a bucket. Throw the ball through different holes - from standing and from a dummy half position. Little kick and catch competition. Conversations over small posts for kids. That kind of thing. I’d happily build some of these things, like a board with holes to pass the ball through.
Can anyone volunteer to do face painting for an hour or so pre-game? Just charge £1 to cover the paint costs so it's very affordable for parents and fun for kids.
GenericWe need a way to generate additional excitement and build an identity. A way to get the crowd going where there is a lull. I don’t have the solution at hand, but I remember back in the 90s when I was still in high school, we had the Viking music when the players came out onto the pitch, when we scored, and at various times in the game. It prompted a response from fans.
