State of Scottish Football: Part III

As part of Herald Sport's series on the state of Scottish football, he has provided an insider's view on trading in the present environment and detailed his belief that summer football can prove our salvation by earning a better TV deal and making the product more attractive to supporters.

He also suggests that the game must be open to participating in revolutionary new ways of broadcasting football and forget about even attempting to rival bigger and more heavily-financed leagues.

Motherwell's place on the influential European Club Association does not offer him any evidence that an escape route to England is going to open up for our leading clubs any time soon. The regeneration of the Scottish game, in his eyes, must come from within.

IS SCOTTISH FOOTBALL DOING ENOUGH TO OPEN ITSELF UP TO NEW IDEAS AND ATTRACT FRESH INVESTMENT AND INTEREST?

As a result of what happened with Rangers and the downturn it brought, clubs got themselves into the trenches in terms of their mentality. They were just thinking about how to stay afloat rather than attract new people.

I admit that it had started to exist at Motherwell before our new owner, Les Hutchinson, came in to lift the burden. As a whole, though, we do not promote and market the game enough.

Sometimes, it even comes down to the Scottish psyche. We don't beat the drum about ourselves as much as we maybe should.

MOTHERWELL HAVE PUSHED HARD TO BRING IN NEW FANS, THOUGH. IT SIMPLY HASN'T WORKED. IS THERE ANY WAY TO MAKE SCOTTISH FOOTBALL A MORE MARKETABLE PROPOSITION?

Last term, we finished second with a record points total and record victories and found ourselves over 1000 spectators down from the season when Maurice Malpas was the manager and we stayed up on the last day.

Motherwell is a great case study, actually. Since 2006-07, we have been in the Top Six every season bar one and have been in Europe for six of those seasons as well as reaching cup finals. This will go down as a golden era, but attendances have dropped.

I think it less to do with our individual club and more to do with the general malaise around the game.

Peter Lawwell of Celtic said at a recent meeting of the European Club Association that we are managing decline here. It is effectively what we have been doing for six or seven years, but I still believe Scottish football can be saved.

It just needs a gamechanger. It needs something really big to happen to alter attitudes and show it is not the same thing it was before. You can repackage things all you like and put new logos on them, but the public will not be fooled.

For me, summer football would be the biggest gamechanger of all. If we want to move it in a different direction, we should go to a summer calendar. It allows you to market the game as a totally different proposition.

For three or four months of the year, you are not competing with the Barclays Premier League. Television companies would have competitive football to fill their schedules from May to August.

We cannot maintain the stubborn, traditional approach that we must play through the winter. We need to adapt and change.

We know what the weather is like here. If it is blowing a gale and the temperature is minus two, people might not fancy paying £20 to sit outside for a couple of hours. There are so many other things they could now be doing.

Put it this way. If you were starting football as a new sport now, when would you play it? Naturally, it would be through the summer.

TELEVISION COMPANIES ARE UNDERSTOOD TO BE OPEN TO THE IDEA OF A SUMMER LEAGUE AND MIGHT ACTUALLY PAY MORE FOR IT. WOULD SUMMER FOOTBALL REALLY IMPROVE ATTENDANCES, THOUGH?

I think you could sell it to supporters as something new. You would certainly be able to enjoy the game in a different environment.

People can come in their short sleeves, we can make a day of it. When I started as chief executive, I spoke about building up the Fan Experience and giving people extra value for money.

We spoke about doing what St Mirren have started to do in terms of having a fan tent, games on, comedy, things for kids, beer. That is all great, but it is pointless when it is minus four outside and the wind is blowing the tent all over the place.

No-one can give me a valid reason why we can't have summer football.. The holidays people take throughout the year have changed. The Glasgow Fair, for example, has gone.

People bring up the international calendar for World Cups. Sadly, we are at a stage where we don't qualify for those while countries who do play through the summer do still get there.

Scottish teams should focus on making it to the Champions League and Europa League group stages. Doesn't it improve your chances if you are in mid-season when the qualifiers come up rather than working your way through pre-season?

CHARLES BARNETT OF BDO, A LEADING ACCOUNTANCY FIRM, STATED THAT SCOTTISH FOOTBALL'S £15M-A-YEAR TV DEAL IS MUCH LESS THAN IT SHOULD BE. DO WE HAVE TO STRIKE A HARDER BARGAIN WITH TV COMPANIES NO MATTER THE DATES DURING WHICH THE SEASON IS PLAYED?

Yes. We are not in a position to demand big bucks from broadcast partners, but I think there has to be more leverage from the centre and a real attempt to increase the value of the broadcast deal.

I think we have to look at how we entice these companies through the way we use our product. Our broadcast partners are already flush with high-quality football. They have Champions League, Barclays Premier League, Bundesliga, Primera Liga in Spain.

Sadly, we are never going to be able to compete in terms of quality of football, so how can we think outside the box and sell it on something else? Can it be sold on the increased access the companies get to the players?

Should it be based on working out ways to increase crowds so that the grounds look full and there is an atmosphere? Germany have tried to do that.

I think that is a better way to do it than going to broadcasters almost like some kind of charity case and saying: 'Come on, guys, we are worth more. Give us more.'

If I was an executive with Sky or BT, I would ask why. We should seek to avoid being offered 'take it or leave it' ultimatums. We should be doing everything we can to work with broadcast partners and make them feel that they really do get a different level of access and feel they are important when they come to cover a Scottish game.

We need to bring fans on board and do things differently in that regard as well. We should make the likes of Sky and BT feel they are stakeholders in the game rather than just a broadcast partner.

Look at the things that have worked well on Sky. Darts was on its backside as a sport, but the PDC competitions are now selling out crowds everywhere and getting good viewing figures. You have the Pro12 League in rugby. There are sports that have gone to broadcasts partners with an open book and said: 'What do you want? How do you want to do this?'

That is maybe something we should look at. Can we give them things that English Premier League clubs won't give them. I am just throwing ideas around, but that might be access to managers during games, increased tunnel cams, miking up people, maybe putting cameras on the referee.

You watch NFL and guys are miked-up, there are interviews being done in the locker-room. It is Access All Areas. You don't see that kind of thing from our sport often and maybe the broadcasters don't want it from football, but Scottish games are up against maybe Chelsea v Manchester United, Barcelona v Valencia and Bayern v Dortmund on any given day.

Our games are effectively the garnish on the main course. We must accept and acknowledge that, but we must maximise it and it involves being more organised in the access levels we give to all media. Perhaps being an 'Access All Areas' footballing product would make us unique if that is what the companies want.

Motherwell have played in UEFA competition in six of the last seven years. We are given a very chunky media document which tells us what we will do and when we will do it. UEFA have seen the benefit of creating the best platform for viewers and broadcasters and forcing up standards.

I believe, in Scotland, we need to have these issues of media access level put into statute. We need new rules.

CAN YOU SELL THE SCOTTISH GAME BASED ON THE PLAYERS AND PERSONALITIES INVOLVED?

Absolutely. The players are such a marketable asset. Kids love to see heroes such as Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo on TV, but I think we forget that children here are like that with our own players. I felt that way about Motherwell players when I was young. I didn't need Messi or Ronaldo.

SHOULD TV COMPANIES BE ALLOWED TO NAME THEIR KICK-OFF TIMES IF THEY PAY THE MONEY?

In the race for broadcast television money, it is easy to forget that fans are an intrinsic part of the game. They make it a great, live entertainment sport, but let us not overlook the fact they are an income stream. Our supporters bring in a huge amount of Motherwell's overall turnover, almost as high as broadcast, so it doesn't need to be one without the other.

Germany has games kicking off at different times, but they still pack out the grounds. It can be done.

It is all about compromise. Everyone has to feel like a stakeholder in the game. Everybody won't get what they want. Maybe we still will have to go to Aberdeen on a Friday night, but would supporters be more open to that if they knew we were getting more money pumped in that would allow us to buy better players and raise the standard of the league again?

We should not chase England and Germany, though. We are never going to be that. We won't get close to the money they bring in and part of that is because we are a small country. We need to find our own way.

MOTHERWELL ARE MEMBERS OF THE EUROPEAN CLUB ASSOCIATION ALONG WITH CELTIC AND ABERDEEN. IS TALK OF UEFA ALLOWING CROSS-BORDER LEAGUES A PIPE DREAM?

We discussed it at our last meeting in Glasgow. The mood I detected is that there is little interest.

Clubs from smaller leagues want to get into bigger leagues.

The question is: What is in that for the clubs in those bigger leagues? They have a great product anyway.

I cannot see UEFA sanctioning inter-divisional leagues in the foreseeable future. There may be a future for some inter-divisional cup competitions.

I would rather focus on what we can do, here and now, to improve our own game in Scotland, though. We need to make sure what we are doing at a national, domestic level is the best it can be.

HOW DO WE CLOSE THE GAP THAT EXISTS BETWEEN OURSELVES AND ENGLISH FOOTBALL?

There are three of four leagues around the world that are growing at a far more rapid rate than any other. It is a by-product of football becoming truly globalised and it means that leagues in Scotland, Scandinavia, Ireland and other countries are never going to be able to compete with that. It is an impossibility.

We just need to take ourselves away from that direct competition and ask how we can reposition ourselves within that global framework in the best possible way.

IS FAN OWNERSHIP PART OF MAKING THE GAME MORE VIBRANT AND MARKETABLE IN THE SHORT-TERM?

You don't need to be fan-owned to have all the right things in place.

Where we are, having set up the Well Society, we feel it is the best way forward for us, but it might not suit everyone. Fan participation and fan engagement, though, is something that all clubs would be advised to look at.

The premise of the German model is based on making the supporters feel they are a part of it and giving them a product they want to watch. We are never going to be Germany. We don't have the population, for a start, but we could look to adopt parts of what they do on a smaller scale.

The majority of their clubs are fan-owned and I am not saying we should go that far, but we need fans to feel part of their club whether that is through fans on the board or fan liaison groups. Clubs cannot continue to think that fans will dance to any tune they play. Supporters must be listened to.