I got them. Wouldn't mid Co-Op. The academy shirts looked good with them on.

I've always thought though that the sponsors logo, for example, The Co-Operative, would look much better in club colours to match the jersey.

Do you think it is unrealistic to expect a sponsor to allow that?

Now this is just purely speculation but I would guess that there's around £25-£30 profit in a full price shirt.

In the past, under Whelan, Wigan sold just short of 20,000 shirts a year with JJB shifting around 16,000 of those.

Bear in mind that at some point during the season, shirts will be reduced to half price or less. I can't be ar5ed doing the maths on this so I'll let you do it.

And then you need to consider how much of that profit goes to the retailer and Kooga.

In Whelan's case it all went in 1 pot. I would think that the Kooga could sell those shirts to Wigan for £10-£15 and still make money if they're shifting 20,000 a year. A club like Wakey who may only sell 5,000 shirts may pay a lot more for their shirts.

It is also worth bearing in mind that Kooga will pay Wigan for the right to make the Wigan shirts and Wigan would command a larger fee than Wakefield/ Bradford etc...

In short none of us know how much a sponsor will pay, how much Kooga pay, how much we pay Kooga and how much profit there is in the shirts regardless of sponsorship or no sponsorship. But it is fun to come up with hypothetical figures

Exactly. Not only that but sponsorship is tried and tested, and hoping to sell more shirts because of a lack of sponsor is subject to a lot more variables than just that.

i'll leave it the club accountant



having said that......if they couldnt work out that we were over the salaey cap..........................................................


anyone know if we changed accountants after that fiasco??

Depends on the quantity they order in, but I'd be surprised if Wigan paid less than £20.00 a shirt to Kooga.

Is the figure for shirt sponsorship around 80K per year?

What does it include apart from having the name on the shirt?

If it is around this much, I am sure the company I work for, may be interested... All my company would have to do is sell 2-3 extra instruments on the back of the sponsorship to make the whole thing worthwhile...

I do like the idea ROBINSON mentioned. Traditional sponsorship agreements are going to be hard to negotiate, I certainly hope the club is well into negotiations at this time.

Seeing however we are hypothesising about possible sponsorship strategies, how about this one:

We give smaller companies the chance to sponsor the shirt, these SMEs could really benefit from the added exposure and could really help increase revenue and job potential for a local company.

Each entry to be considered for sponsorship is a set small fee, say £1000 - £2000. This figure needs to large enough to be significant but small enough to increase participation.

A company can purchase as many entries as they like but the overall number of entries is limited (this constraint could be changed dependent on interest). There would also need to be a stipulation in place that this agreement will only be honoured if participation is high enough (i.e.: the revenue generated through participation is greater than the offer they are seeking for sponsorship).

The club then hold a big media event with representatives from each company in attendance. We invite all and sundry from the press down to publicise the event, as it's a new idea some of the nationals may even pick it up.

The sponsors are then decided in a lottery draw style:

1st Prize: main shirt sponsor
2nd Prize: top of back shirt sponsor
3rd Prize: bottom of back shirt sponsor
4th Prize: right sleeve sponsor
5th Prize: left sleeve sponsor
6th Prize: tunnel sponsor for home games
7th Prize: Mighty Max sponsor (his shirt has different sponsorship)

So I think given the odds of winning something potentially worth 80k are quite respectable. Sponsorship of a shirt is far more valuable to a local business than a national. Giving them more return on investment even at the alleged full price than a national could seriously expect.

Even baring this in mind the club has to make entry as lucrative a proposition as possible.

[list
[*1 free 'Corporate' season ticket (not sure if this exists, my idea is that it ties the ST to the company and not an individual and can be given to clients, staff or anyone for any match).[/*:m
[*1 free advert in 1 programme at a random game in the year.[/*:m
[*1 20px square advert on the official website linking to the companies website (this size increases with each entry)[/*:m
[*1 position in a banner rotation in a prominent part of the official website.[/*:m[/list:u

I think those benefits are fair and would 'cost' the club very little to offer and would ensure that companies wouldn't feel they had been hard done too. The only cost would be the banner rotation script if they don't have one in place, I'd write this for them for free if they needed though

.

A local company such as (random google): [url=http://www.oltecgroup.com/Oltec Group[/url could probably justify spending say £8k on this opportunity. For this they would have a 1 in 20 chance of the main sponsorship (if the entries were capped at 160k). The odds of getting some sort of sponsorship would be around 1 in 4!!!

Obviously they are not guaranteed to win anything, so for their £8k they would also receive:

[list
[*8 'Corporate' season tickets.[/*:m
[*1 advert in the programme for 8 random games in the year.[/*:m
[*1 160px square advert on the official website linking to the companies website (this size increases with each entry)[/*:m
[*8 positions in a banner rotation in a prominent part of the official website.[/*:m[/list:u

I think that could actually work, promotion could be done in partnership through the enterprise park, business link and such. Sorry it turned out so long, better get on with some real work now...

That is an awesome idea.....!!!!

I would go as far as to say that a company having been unsuccessful in the prize draw, would receive the above benefits plus a guaranteed advertising board somewhere within the DW stadium on matchdays, the higher they paid, the better the location.

I'd do that.

Bob on....whoever sponsered Pat Richards is a complete and utter tool and the club are better off without sponsers like this!!

Im surprised the moron didnt think he owned richards or something or that he couldnt take richards to his fishing day....some people are never happy

uncle joes should be the shirt sponser

When I was theorising before I was trying to think of additional sponsorship opportunities rather than cannibalise their current offerings. If you think about it the club may well either rely on board sponsorship for extra money and they can't afford to lost the income for these. I wouldn't be surprised however if the club received no money from the boardings and the revenue went into the Stadium company pot, not got a clue what happens to be honest!

TBH for a club of Wigan's size £80k is disastrously low if that's true. Leeds haven't announced how much the LBS deal is worth but it's going to be £300k+ a season. The old Tetley's deal, although something of a one off, was £230k a year over 10 years from 1994. The only other club off the top of my head which actually put a value to their deal was Wakefield although I'm stunned to notice it's 10 years ago now - their [url=http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/rugby-league-wigan-call-up-rookie-hooker-1077905.htmlagreement with Sainsburys was worth £300k a year[/urlwhich was certainly almost suspiciously big money for them at the time, but should be what Wigan are looking at now.

And as someone who knows a bit about how the shirts and other merchandise gets distributed after requests to the club by "Thousands" of individuals and organisations throughout the year I can only add they will be the 1st ones to admit that NOT ALL requests can be accepted however they do as much, if not more, than many other SL clubs in this area.

The guy in question has been picking for an argument at EVERY Fans forum I've been to (All of them) with IL or MH and even though I don't agree with every decision they make I understand that they have done, despite what people who will always find felt in EVERYTHING think, a fantastic job over the last couple of years getting Wigan on a more stable financial platform as a club.
This will allow us to build over the years and allow the club to run as a solid business model in the future rather than be a "Rich Man's play thing" and have everything underwritten only for said Rich man to bail out and leave us up the proverbial creek without a paddle.

And from a position of strength i.e Being involved in WCC matches, SL Grand Finals and CC Finals (Whoops sorry you havent been to many of them recently

) it would be the kind of deal that Wigan would be looking for as well.

Difference is Wigan haven't had that to use as a bargaining tool and also bear in mind when sponsoring Leeds/Wakefield they are promoting themselves to BIG CITY areas.

When with Whelan we were receiving no income through sponsorship and or Merchandise however Whelan was underwriting our losses in a way Year on Year.

We have had to come to terms with this in a short timescale at what is the most financially challenging time for attaining New sponsors etc in the last probably 50/60 years!

I'd rather us do moderatley low Year by Year sponsorships for the next couple of years and despite this still be breaking even (ish) on the accounts rather than tie ourselves in for the next 5 years and panic just to get some money in now.

In a back to front way of looking at this in some ways it's a promising sign that the club don't seem to feel the need to almost give their image rights away as the rest of the club seems to be on a solid footing?

from a couple of personal experiences, i would like to say that on the business of the club being inundated with requests for merchandise etc, for individual events, they would be runing at a loss if they accepted every request.

they do however have a once a month signing night, where if you buy a piece of merchandise ( a shirt for example) , you can hand it in a the club , or lottery office, and they will send it to the signing night.

we made £75 profit on a signed shirt a few months ago for my daughters fund raising for a different sport.
for this i am grateful to the club.

and folk who moan about not getting backing from the club for their own ends should just shut up.

what would you say to a sports shop sponsoring us? Like JD for example. They have shops nationwide and for the privilege of being on our shirts they could agree to stock our merchandise nationwide this would probably bring more fans and awareness about our club and make us some money to boot. It would also make it look like we're highly professional the countrys rugby team if you will.

Just an idea.

warburtons will be our sponsor aha

Quote ="sbohan"I do like the idea ROBINSON mentioned. Traditional sponsorship agreements are going to be hard to negotiate, I certainly hope the club is well into negotiations at this time. Seeing however we are hypothesising about possible sponsorship strategies, how about this one: We give smaller companies the chance to sponsor the shirt, these SMEs could really benefit from the added exposure and could really help increase revenue and job potential for a local company. Each entry to be considered for sponsorship is a set small fee, say £1000 - £2000. This figure needs to large enough to be significant but small enough to increase participation....................... '" Down here, each year, there is a balloon festival held in Bristol. This year, they couldn't find a single sponsor, so did pretty much what you are suggesting, setting up a 100 club, with tickests proced at £2000 each, in a lottery to become the main sponsor. This was eventaully won by Harvey Nicks, who I'm sure could have affordeded to sponsor it without the lottery, but never mind... Interestingly, the value of the sponsor package for this festival is placed at £120k, for a single weekend event. Has anyone from Wigan actually heard of the event? Seems like £80k for a years sponsorship of a "top" Super League team, with lots of coverage is woefully short of the mark. However, 100 tickets sold for £2k each would bring in £200k, and this would seem to be a more realistic figure. There could be something to learn from the festivals promotion.... www.bristolfiesta.co.uk/content.php?pid=45

Quote ="sbohan"I do like the idea ROBINSON mentioned. Traditional sponsorship agreements are going to be hard to negotiate, I certainly hope the club is well into negotiations at this time. Seeing however we are hypothesising about possible sponsorship strategies, how about this one: We give smaller companies the chance to sponsor the shirt, these SMEs could really benefit from the added exposure and could really help increase revenue and job potential for a local company. Each entry to be considered for sponsorship is a set small fee, say £1000 - £2000. This figure needs to large enough to be significant but small enough to increase participation....................... '" Down here, each year, there is a balloon festival held in Bristol. This year, they couldn't find a single sponsor, so did pretty much what you are suggesting, setting up a 100 club, with tickests proced at £2000 each, in a lottery to become the main sponsor. This was eventaully won by Harvey Nicks, who I'm sure could have affordeded to sponsor it without the lottery, but never mind... Interestingly, the value of the sponsor package for this festival is placed at £120k, for a single weekend event. Has anyone from Wigan actually heard of the event? Seems like £80k for a years sponsorship of a "top" Super League team, with lots of coverage is woefully short of the mark. However, 100 tickets sold for £2k each would bring in £200k, and this would seem to be a more realistic figure. There could be something to learn from the festivals promotion.... www.bristolfiesta.co.uk/content.php?pid=45

My first post!

Not sure where you got the 80k figure from but having done some work with a competitor of Mecca's, I think the figure was around £230k for 12 months.

Saints New Home shirt unveiled.

Obviously they have cursed some sponsors in the past, and lost Pilkington's in the off season.

Netherless, the kit carries five sponsors + Puma. I am also when negotiating the main sponsor they prioritised the best deal over biggest name.

If I had any decent amount of money i'd pay for the sponsorship on the understanding there is not to be a sponsor on the front of the shirt.