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Nicer Indo Article

  • 25-09-2002 2:31pm
    #1
    Bateman
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,818 ✭✭✭


    MARKETING gurus claim they could sell sand to the Arabs if required and having already successfully proved that they can persuade Irish people to buy water in ever increasing amounts it's hard not to believe them.


    But what would those learned people make of the Eircom League? As a case study it defies logic. Operating in a market that includes the ultra glamorous Premiership, and the equally sexy GAA championships, the Eircom League has gone to war with a marketing officer that doesn't have a budget. It's a bit like George Bush taking on Saddam Hussein without bullets or trying to play Tiger Woods without a golf ball.


    Last July, a week after the World Cup ended, the Eircom League kicked off without any fanfare. There was no glitzy media launch, no billboard posters, no radio or television adverts, not even a small ad in a local newspaper. There was no media handbook or even an Eircom League annual and there certainly wasn't a television deal. The 2002-03 Eircom League season was going to be a closely guarded secret.


    Yet, with one-third of the season now completed, it has turned out to be the best show in town. There's suddenly a good vibe about the Eircom League and the crowds are flocking to see games that are producing an average of three goals per game. And that's because the most powerful marketing tool of all is word of mouth.


    On the football grapevine the word is out that the football has improved, the players are better and the surfaces are pristine.


    Every team seems to have at least one player who possesses more tricks than Paul Daniels Wesley Hoolihan at Shelbourne, Bobby Ryan at Bohemians and Charles Mbabazi Livingstone at St Patrick's Athletic are three worth the admission price alone.


    There's goals also. Loads of them. The first 45 games in the Premier Division have produced more goals per game than the Premiership (3.09 against 2.44). There's only been two scoreless draws and one of them was a thrill-a-minute encounter between Shels and Shamrock Rovers.


    Cork's teenage striker John O'Flynn has emerged from nowhere to become a serious challenge to Glen Crowe for the Golden Boot while the likes of Jason Byrne continues to display a nose for goal not unlike his cousin Robbie Keane.


    There have been some spectacular goals but the absence of TV cameras for the opening six weeks of the season has meant most of them will never be seen again. So alarmed were some Bohs supporters that these priceless moments would be lost forever, they got together to hire their own cameraman to film each match.


    The crowds are up. It's part of the in-grained ethos of the League to count money rather than attendances so there are no figures to throw out and compare. But seasoned eyes, well used to counting men and dogs on sparsely populated terraces, can verify the claim.


    But while the product has passed its market test the administrators of the Eircom League are still ill-equipped to sell it properly. The marketing officer, Darren Bernstein, is still without a budget and a boss, following the departure of Commissioner Roy Dooney at the end of August. (Does it ever occur to anybody in the FAI that the amount of money being spent every year on Golden Handshakes would make an ideal marketing budget for the Eircom League?)


    Trying to get information out of a body that doesn't have a commissioner, a press officer or even a chairman with a mobile phone is proving impossible and its system of communicating with the media, and ultimately the public, has virtually collapsed at this stage. There's not a sports desk in the country that isn't hunting for League fixtures every Sunday night and I've yet to meet a colleague who has seen a suspension list in recent weeks.


    In spite of Merrion Square the Eircom League has been a success this season but if it is to build on that over the rest of this season and into the next it's got to get its act together .


    It would be shame if the efforts to improve the product are ultimately stymied by a lack of leadership and resources at the top.



    Gerry McDermott, Bootroom

    Tends to balance things out. The marketing situation is a shame, and if the Cup semis are not televised, it will be a disgrace. Act now.


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