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[Archived] Articles Related To Venky's And Rovers

DE.

By DE.
in Football Messageboard Archive

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tomphil World Cup

tomphil

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Posted
1 hour ago, Mattyblue said:

"They were badly advised"

I'd be a rich man if I had a £ for everytime I'd heard that this past 5 years...

Badly advised by people who for some hidden reasons had the power to keep acting on their own bad advice more like. Complicit with bad advisers would be a better description i think.

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blueboy3333 World Cup

blueboy3333

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Interesting interview @den.

Pasha sounds like a slime-ball. He must be one of those responsible for Myers not being welcome at the club.

Myers seems to have a genuine affection for the club (although this may be the administrative equivalent of a player kissing the badge) and speaks well of Mowbray, as most seem to do.

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sympatheticclaret Premier League

sympatheticclaret

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As requested....Daily Telegraph 10/8/17

It is going to be rocking at the Sir Charles Napier pub in Blackburn on the evening of September 2nd. Local band Static will be playing live, so will Honour Roots from nearby Preston. The turnout is expected to be substantial. Not just because admission is free. But because this is a Rock Against the Venkys night, a musical protest against the continued ownership of Blackburn Rovers by the VH Group, the Indian food processing conglomerate that has been in control at Ewood Park since November 2010.

“Protesting at matches can have a demoralising effect on the players,” the concert organiser Peter Ridelagh explains. “We are hoping that Rock Against Venkys could provide an outlet that all fans can get behind.”

For a generation, Rovers were a solid fixture in the Premier League. Now, as they adapt to life in League One, the diminishing band of match-going supporters remain convinced as to where the blame for the club’s precipitous demise lies: it is all the Venkys’ fault. But it is not just the hapless failure on the pitch that concerns the protestors. Everything appears to have shrunk in scale since the glory days of 1995, when, under the generous stewardship of local boy made good Jack Walker, Rovers won the title.

The results are just one aspect of the current situation,” suggests Ridehalgh. “Local businesses are suffering and even closing due to the fall in attendances. Families no longer meet up every two weeks as many people no longer see Rovers as the club they once loved. The status of the club, and with it the town itself, has been run into the ground.”

It will come as no consolation, but at Blackburn they are not alone. Last season saw protests at Orient, Charlton, Coventry, Nottingham Forest and Blackpool. Here too, the complaints were not simply about points lost and demotions suffered. This was not an airing of the traditional “sack the board” response to a bad run of form. For those marching, leafletting, boycotting and throwing plastic pigs on to the pitch, there was a wider concern, a growing sense that a once-vibrant community asset was being systematically shredded of focus and meaning.

Blackburn have fallen an awfully long way since winning the title in 1995 Credit: Getty images

And according to Kevin Rye, who was involved in the founding of the fan-owned AFC Wimbledon and now works as a consultant in supporter communications, the gap between fans and the object of their affection is not an issue confined to those labouring in crisis. This sense of being ignored, forgotten and left behind stretches throughout football. 

“Blackburn, Charlton, Coventry, Blackpool and the others are terrible situations that need to be resolved,” Rye says. “But it would be a huge mistake to suggest they are mad outliers. There is a general problem in the game. Everywhere you look there is a growing dislocation between the fans and their club.”

There was a hint of how widespread the feeling is in a survey conducted by the Football Supporters Federation this summer. Of the 8495 fans who were polled, only 32 per cent felt their club cared about them or their views. 90 per cent said they wanted greater fan representation at board level.

"Fans understand that many clubs are now global brands. However, these results show that the majority of supporters think this can be to the detriment of local support," explains Malcolm Clarke of the FSF. "Supporters want their clubs to listen on other issues too, be that ticket prices, financial matters and safe standing. Clubs must commit to genuine engagement both online and in the real world."

Blackburn supporters' protests against the Venkys have been going on for years - this picture is from 2011 Credit: Getty images

The Premier League’s response to the poll is to point to the fact that 96.5 per cent of its fixtures play out in front of full houses. There cannot be too much wrong with a product that consistently attracts huge numbers, they assert. But while observers like Kevin Rye would not wish to argue with English football’s robust international appeal (the Premier League is now available on television in every nation on earth, apart from North Korea) his fear is about the deteriorating relationship between the game and the match-going fan.

Through everything from changing of kick off times to suit television schedules to the price of season tickets, he says the hardcore supporter is being presented with continual evidence that, in the drive to seek out new markets, they have been forgotten.

“Football has always had concentric circles of interest,” Rye explains. “At its edges are people who are only interested when a team wins something, next come some who engage more regularly and so on until you arrive at the very centre where you find this fan who’ll keep going, in all weathers, whose life revolves round the club. It’s that fan who provides the matchday atmosphere that the television viewer in China admires. Without that central cog, the wheel won’t go round. But those in the middle are feeling increasingly ostracised. The problem is football is saying to them: the fan in Singapore is as valid as fan in Salford.”

Take a glance at any Premier League club’s marketing drive and it would suggest the focus is on the outer rings of Rye’s concentric circles of support. Manchester City’s website, for instance, available in five different languages, this week announced a series of “personalised fan engagement platforms.”

Charlton recently protested by throwing plastic pigs onto the pitch Credit: Rex Features

“With the help of user data City will run targeted activations with tailored experiences and rewards to users both at home and around the world,” runs the spiel. “This will include trips to Manchester for international fans.”

Meanwhile, perhaps unnoticed in the urge to address the overseas market, there has been a fundamental change in the way fans consume the game. Kevin Day, the comedian and a long-term season ticket holder at Crystal Palace, was astonished when he started work on a new television show about football to discover that of the dozen or so enthusiastic, knowledgeable, youthful members of the production team none were regular match attendees.

“They love the game, know way more about it that I do, but they have grown up consuming it in a very different way to me,” he says of his twenty-something co-workers. “They go to the pub to watch, or tune in to illegal streaming services on their tablet. These are people who have known nothing other than the Premier League in their life and their way of showing commitment is nothing like mine. It means when I go to Palace I see the same old faces I’ve seen for the past 20 years. I think we’re in real danger in two generations time of just having consumers, not fans. I’m not sure football has woken up to what this change in habits means, let alone how to address it.”

For Kevin Rye the answer lies in communication. Not just digital marketing, but face-to-face engagement, ideally with a fan represented on the board.

Vincent Tan changed Cardiff's kit from blue to red Credit: Getty images

“And clubs can’t just address the fans,” he says. “If they want to bridge this growing gap they have to listen to and act on concerns.”

At Cardiff City they would insist they have done just that. And the results might provide solace to those elsewhere who fear nothing can change. This is a club which five years ago would have been listed alongside Blackburn, Charlton and Coventry as a football basket case. In June 2012 the owner Vincent Tan, a lifelong Manchester United supporter from Malaysia, announced the team shirt would be changed from blue to red. Never mind that for those who actually went to the match the switch was close to blasphemy, this, he insisted, would make the club more marketable in the Far East.

Protests and boycotts followed. But Tan refused to back down: in the search for a global audience parochial concerns were of secondary concern. But by January 2015 the protests had reached such an intensity that a crowd of just 4194 was recorded for a home FA Cup tie. At which point the club realised something more than a return to blue was required.

“It was a difficult situation to get ourselves out of,” explains Amy McNiven, who was recruited to be the club’s first fan engagement officer. “We just had to concentrate on reconnecting with our core support.”

To do so a regular forum was established, always attended by the Chief Executive, in which the match-going supporters were invited to air their views. The manager Neil Warnock spent many an evening travelling the Valleys to meet fans who felt they had been particularly left behind by the unrelenting drive for Far Eastern eyeballs.

More significantly, the club acted on some of the fan recommendations, reducing the cost of season tickets, turning a blind eye to standing, allowing the Canton End of their stadium to become a de facto terrace. And they quickly saw the benefits: crowds returned, the matchday atmosphere improved, the protests dimmed.

“The club is the most united it has been in years, everyone – manager, team, owners and fans – are together,” says McNiven.

She then pauses and smiles.

“Though that said, if we had a good run on the pitch, perhaps were pushing for promotion, that would be the biggest boost to everyone. You know, there’s really nothing a fan wants more than success.”

 

 

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