Advertising game finds a higher gear
IT’S a 10-minute spin from the Volkswagen Group Ireland nerve centre in Liffey Valley to the FAI headquarters in Abottstown — yet the distance can feel greater from Simon Elliott’s office. As chief executive of the VW Group, Elliott is a core sponsor of a number of League of Ireland clubs and would like to do more. In the summer of 2012, Elliott made an audacious pitch to FAI chief John Delaney to sponsor the League of Ireland. His intention was to rebrand it as the Volkswagen Premiership, double the amount of prize money the clubs play for and ‘give more money for the teams that finish lower than fourth’. However, with Airtricity under contract, the route was closed off which prompted Elliott to switch gear. If that meant a more modest outlay, Elliott remains open to greater financing and is keen on further FAI engagement. ‘We aren’t trying to take over Irish football but domestically and internationally Volkswagen is seeking a greater foothold in terms of sponsorship,’ he says. ‘We sponsor clubs in the Airtricity League for the right reasons, it’s good value. We want to be seen to be doing more.’ Elliott says his company would, for example, jump at sponsoring the Irish international team. That may be in the future though with Three having agreed a new four-year deal in 2010. ‘If they [FAI] came to us and asked would we like to sponsor them we’d say yes. That would be big bucks but it’s something we would do. Would it be awkward having a German brand on Irish shirt? No, Opel was there for years.’ A sports nut, the business of football is a specialist subject for Elliott. At Scunthorpe he was a hands-on director as the club climbed from League Two to the Championship in five years, debtfree as it did so. In that time, the club gained a reputation for getting young players in and selling on a profit. Billy Sharp arrived for £120,000 from Sheffield United and was sold back to the same club for £2m; Gary Hooper was sold to Celtic for £2.4m. Elliott understands how football works as a business and is wary for the well-being of Airtricity League clubs. ‘There has got be some form of think tank, whereby all the clubs get together, with the FAI, with potential sponsors and say “Can we thrash out a deal that gives us an opportunity to re-float the league? What do we need to do to get more people coming to games on a Friday night?” ‘You go to games and sometimes there are 300 to 400 people there, it’s not sustainable. ‘If the League of Ireland is not sorted out, the Irish national side has got to suffer because people won’t want to play football; they’ll go and play rugby and earn huge amounts of money going to Toulouse or other Heineken Cup nations.’ The notion of an Irish business chief, responsible for 27 per cent of the Irish car market share, pouring gallons of money into the game seems benevolent in austere times. Then again, Elliott’s mug on his desk isn’t daubed with the words ‘football crazy’ for nothing.