Something funny has happened to football clubs. They’ve started being really profitable.
It isn’t just Spurs, Liverpool and Manchester United either. Lower down clubs are lately valuable businesses, driven by TV rights and the global belief that our football is that much more exciting than anyone else’s.
The old joke – how do you make a million dollars? Start with a billion and buy a football team – no longer applies.
Sadly, in most cases football club PR remains a distinctly lower league affair. In my experience, the football flak is a person intentionally left out of the loop.
He can’t brief sensibly because he doesn’t know. Hacks writing negatively – or even daring to ask vaguely provocative questions in press conferences – risk being denied what little access they get to players and managers.
It comes across as paranoid and not a little childish.
Time for serious PR firms to persuade football clubs that they really are big business these days. And that, as such, they need to have corporate communications that extend beyond a match-day programme.