'I'm not convinced': David Hopkinson confirms what many Newcastle United fans have been saying about club sponsorship
Newcastle United CEO David Hopkinson has been speaking at the Business of Football Summit where he's given a very frank assessment of the club's revenue streams.
When you read what Hopkinson says about the money coming into Newcastle United, it shines a huge spotlight on the recent exit of Chief Commercial Officer Peter Silverstone.
Newcastle fans have been asking for a while now, where is the stadium sponsor, the training kit sponsor or the training ground sponsor?
When Peter Silverstone was hired by the club we expected those deals to follow him through the door. All he seemed to manage to do was seal the deal with Adidas and a few other minor partners, but then tried to dine out on the Adidas deal for the rest of his time here.
David Hopkinson doesn't seem to be impressed with what Peter Silverstone did at Newcastle
Silverstone's exit followed not long after David Hopkinson's arrival at the club, and this is what the new CEO had to say at the Business of Football Summit (h/t The Chronicle), which suggests Silverstone jumped before he was pushed.
"So, you know, every system has its own idiosyncrasies, constraints, and accelerators, things that, as Francesco said, in our system are sort of designed to keep the status quo.
"In some ways, it's exacerbated, like I said, because of that correlation between wages, which is performance, which is points. And how I think about it is, you know, what can we do to help ourselves?
"You know, the elite clubs, the ones that we admire, the ones like Liverpool, Man U, Man City, and others, they are Arsenal, you know, really elite performers, not by accident but because they have worked to become an extraordinarily well-run business with great leadership who have maximised the commercial opportunity before them.
"So, I'm relatively new in post, I haven't been here six months yet, but the thesis that I'm operating under is, OK, well, let's look to see to what extent Newcastle United has maximised the opportunity before it.
"And I'm not convinced that we have done that. I see major opportunities everywhere I look. Our sponsorship business could be better, could be stronger, our digital ecosystem needs to be much larger.
"It’s well-reported that we’re considering what we do with our stadium. Should we be having more fans come in every single match? And what’s the long-term return on that?
"And what does that do for our immediate ability to compete in a PSR moving to SCR world? So, I think a lot about to what extent we too, if we want to become an elite club, we need to behave like an elite club and maximise our local market opportunity."
Some money is better than no money, right?
The stadium comments are an echo of what he said in his interview with Prime Video on Tuesday ahead of Newcastle's Champions League win over Qarabag, but it's the sponsorship admission that really stands out for us.
The idea that the club didn't want to enter into a deal that sets a low bar is absolute nonsense to us. While we understand they don't want to undervalue themselves, even a low-paying deal is better than no deal at all, and it gets eyes on what we can do.
If we brought in a sponsor or a deal that was less than favourable for us, but really brought attention to the company paying us, other companies will take note of what we can do and will want to sign up next, and that's how we increase the revenue. And I say that having absolutely no experience or knowledge of how it works, obviously, but I do have common sense, and that tells me that some money is better than no money.
