FIELDWORK ADVISORY
Senior commercial leadership, without the full-time hire.
We run commercial operations for professional and semi-professional clubs and governing bodies; sponsorship, hospitality, kit, partnerships and marketing. You buy the outcome you need, for as long as you need them.
Below the broadcast line, commercial income is not a bonus on top of the budget.
It is the budget.
Most clubs at this level carry more commercial potential than they realise. Not through any lack of effort, but because the commercial function usually sits wit one person, alongside several other jobs, with no inventory, no rate card and time protected for prospecting.
The alternative is a permanent hire. At £35,000 to £45,000 in salary alone, before National Insurance, pension and recruitment fees, and before the six to twelve months it typically takes someone new to become fully productive.
There is a third option, and it is the one we exist to provide.
What we do
-
The solution of hiring the commercial manager full-time is frequently the incorrect response given the stage your club is currently in. Simply put, too much money is paid for someone who will do far less than a fractional hire can, in the context of where the club currently sits in terms of financial capability. At Sports Consultancy Group, we offer fractional commercial management, which means that we immerse ourselves into your club’s operations, sales pipeline and retention process, while still reporting directly to the board of directors.
-
Commercial and marketing efforts are not distinct tasks, they are one and the same discussion, just at different points in time. We link these elements together so that the manner in which the club positions itself in the marketplace enables it to perform commercially. This results in commercial narrative that draws in sponsors, marketing content that creates the target audience for our partners, and branding that commands the value of the property. The better the club markets itself, the more money it makes.
-
Most sports clubs have a commercial strategy. Very few have a commercial model. We partner with sports clubs in constructing the foundations of a commercial engine, from the inventory of assets through the logic of pricing, all the way down to the rigour of pipeline management and the rhythm of renewal – in order to create an income process that works as a function rather than just random income. Yield management is what the hospitality industry has been using for decades; we apply that discipline to your club.
-
There are very few instances where growth in sports is constrained by ambition. Growth in sports is constrained by structure, by information, by the lack of the appropriate function at the appropriate time. This involves helping clients who are going through a process of transition, for example, into a new league, new ownership, or new commercial starting point, in establishing the appropriate structures which enable growth to be sustainable as opposed to haphazard. The process involves investment readiness, board reporting, and financial management structures to allow leadership to understand the true capability of the business.