Stobart sponsorship deal & truck spotting

[Grinner]

No it wasn't but in a game were everyone is just about broke then £800k is around £60k per club and I am sure that every club would welcome the money.

£60k is one more random Australian per squad. Are we really that skint?

[EastLondonMike]

The idea behind this sponsorship was to increase the public awareness of RL, so the best way to gage any kind of success is by finding out how many non-RL fans have seen the trucks and identified them as being associated with RL.. which is probably a very very very difficult thing to do.

interestingly the RFL have appointed a new Marketing man (with an impressive list of previous employers).. here's hoping he'll be able to maximise any exposure we get from this deal, and others.

[Futtocks]

£60k is one more random Australian per squad. Are we really that skint?

And that's assuming every penny goes to the clubs and the RFL don't require any of it.

[anteater]

Effectivley giving it away for free though wont help when it comes to negotiating with other companies - If you give something away for free it becomes worthless.

Are you 100% positive on that?

[a.n Other]

Are you 100% positive on that?

So when the deal is up, what figure do you start re-negotiating at or what is the stating figure for a new company? If the RFL approached my company to be the next sponsors of the SL i would offer them nothing initally but put some advertising together. Afterall, this was accetable to them in the past.

[Shadow]

Effectivley giving it away for free though wont help when it comes to negotiating with other companies - If you give something away for free it becomes worthless.

Or you believe the product you have is worth considerably more than anyone is prepared to pay for it so you give it away for a lower cost and monitor and quantify the results so when it comes to re-negotiate you are in a position to go in with hard facts not unproven opinions.

[a.n Other]

Or you believe the product you have is worth considerably more than anyone is prepared to pay for it so you give it away for a lower cost and monitor and quantify the results so when it comes to re-negotiate you are in a position to go in with hard facts not unproven opinions.

They arent giving away at a lower cost? They are giving it away for free in monetary terms. It would be good to know what they are going to use to quantify the results. Do you know?

[Gav Wilson]

No it wasn't but in a game were everyone is just about broke then £800k is around £60k per club and I am sure that every club would welcome the money.

The clubs did get the money. The RFL divvied out the money that was set aside for the marketing budget.

[bobbruce]

No it wasn't but in a game were everyone is just about broke then £800k is around £60k per club and I am sure that every club would welcome the money.

Isn't that over three years though so effectively £20k a year per club so it wasn't really that much of a gamble. We now have sponsoships at grounds we can still sell and also as far as I can tell we not only put our clubs on the side of the wagons it looks like we are able to sell that space to other sponsors. I have not doubt by the time the three years are up we will of had the truck advertising and also replaced the money lost on the betfair deal.

[my missus]

did you know you can buy stobart scale models on ebay and interestingly the ones with the most bids are super league trucks,collectors pieces?

[Dave T]

Stobart didn't get this for free.

Why do people think this is a free sponsorship?

[Brigg Rover]

£60k is one more random Australian per squad. Are we really that skint?

When 80% of clubs are losing money then the answer to your question is rather obvious don't you think?

[Brigg Rover]

Are you 100% positive on that?

I would refer you to MR Martyn Sadler, who goes on about the fact that we should not give away cheap or free tickets because it is then harder to get people to buy things. Although saying this he did think it was a good idea to give the sponsorship of SL away for free! So I guess we can't really trust him either then.

[GeordieSaint]

Stobart didn't get this for free.

Why do people think this is a free sponsorship?

Lack of understanding perhaps?

[Brigg Rover]

Stobart didn't get this for free.

Why do people think this is a free sponsorship?

They have repainted some of their own wagons and trucks which is no doubt a tax deductable expense. So basically they put a bit of paint on wagons save on tax on their profits and get their name plastered all over the top league of one of the top 5 most watched team sports in the country!

I would pretty much call that free, open your eyes don't be brainwashed by the PC brigade.

[my missus]

They have repainted some of their own wagons and trucks which is no doubt a tax deductable expense. So basically they put a bit of paint on wagons save on tax on their profits and get their name plastered all over the top league of one of the top 5 most watched team sports in the country!

I would pretty much call that free, open your eyes don't be brainwashed by the PC brigade.

do you know how much it costs to decorate those trucks? i'll bet it cost a couple of hundred thousand to do a hundred.

[Shadow]

They have repainted some of their own wagons and trucks which is no doubt a tax deductable expense. So basically they put a bit of paint on wagons save on tax on their profits and get their name plastered all over the top league of one of the top 5 most watched team sports in the country!

I would pretty much call that free, open your eyes don't be brainwashed by the PC brigade.

What do the PC brigade have to do with this?

[Dave T]

They have repainted some of their own wagons and trucks which is no doubt a tax deductable expense. So basically they put a bit of paint on wagons save on tax on their profits and get their name plastered all over the top league of one of the top 5 most watched team sports in the country!

I would pretty much call that free, open your eyes don't be brainwashed by the PC brigade.

Just because you call it free doesn't make it so.

[Shadow]

They arent giving away at a lower cost? They are giving it away for free in monetary terms. It would be good to know what they are going to use to quantify the results. Do you know?

1 No, they aren't giving it away for free.

2 I don't know for sure what they're quantifying it on but I can take a guess it would include the levels of exposure, awareness across the country, numbers "reached", sales of replica clothing, knock on marketing opportunities, associated successes, growth of the game, potential future exposure in Europe and quantity and quality of pies consumed in Wigan over the season.

Or you could scrawl on the back of a pack of woodbines "give us some brass" and never hope to get out of the Manchester postcodes.

[a.n Other]

1 No, they aren't giving it away for free.

Well thats good to know then. How much money have the received for it?

[hindle xiii]

Nevermind all that, Bradford spotted again, M62 J18 5.25pm, it was heading west.

[Jeffles]

This free talk is garbage. As mentioned above, it costs thousands to create the coverings for the trucks. Further, these advertisements have value. I thkink it was 1-2.5m pounds mentioned in the press release.

Taking the cheapest figure, that's 10k per truck per year, Or 200 pounds per truck per week - and that's the conservative figure. Some say the value is 2.5 times that! Has anybody called an advertising company to find out the market rate for truck advertising?

One thing the RFL get criticised for on these board is a lack of advertising. Now they get 100 moving billboard ads free for a year and people whinge about that. Moreover, they didn't give away the whole shop to get it. Other sponsorship avenues that Engage had tied up are free for the RFL to sell with the Stobart deal, so they get advertising and money out of this.

It's like an episode of Yes, Minister in here.

Sir Humphrey: If you want to be really sure that the Minister doesn't accept it, you must say the decision is "courageous".

Bernard: And that's worse than "controversial"?

Sir Humphrey: Oh, yes! "Controversial" only means "this will lose you votes". "Courageous" means "this will lose you the election"!

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[shrek]

Nevermind all that, Bradford spotted again, M62 J18 5.25pm, it was heading west.

Indeed doubled my tally of spotted trucks this morning, Warrington one spotted this morning heading north on the M61 J3 about 6.30am.

[shrek]

Isn't that over three years though so effectively £20k a year per club so it wasn't really that much of a gamble. We now have sponsoships at grounds we can still sell and also as far as I can tell we not only put our clubs on the side of the wagons it looks like we are able to sell that space to other sponsors. I have not doubt by the time the three years are up we will of had the truck advertising and also replaced the money lost on the betfair deal.

Agreed, whilst having reservations on the value of the Stobart deal, I don't think the alternative was great, as posted earlier Wigan (and I'm sure other clubs have) have just brought on board a new betting partner and I'd imagine the cash involved in that deal helps cancel out a good chunk of that 20k a year quoted above.

[Grinner]

When 80% of clubs are losing money then the answer to your question is rather obvious don't you think?

My point was that £60k is hardly a massive amount, it's not as if we've turned down mega-bucks to go with some daft lorry-painting idea. The Stobart deal isn't perfect, but with work to sell the other sponsorship oppurtunities that would have been excluded by taking the Betfair deal should bring in more in terms of total cash and other benfits. There's a new amrketing guy just in place at the RFL, it's up to him to deliver now.