Tim Fisher interview in The Athletic (1 Viewer)

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Skybluebeliever

Well-Known Member
shepardo01 said:
Brooke House have had a college football programme for some time.
Theirs differs from the standard football education academy (EG Strachan/Rugby Town/Future Pro/Leamington Carl Baker) in that they are privately funded - attracting/trying to recruit players/scholars that will pay silly money to attend - (pretty sure last time I heard a few years ago, 25 grand per year to board and attend programme)
The problem with this is that it did not necessarily attract the best players- just those with money.
This venture type (sport education academy) is now saturated (See how many local ones I named above)
This partnership is very late to the party and I (although could be wrong!) can't see how the club can make much money from this.
Regarding Loughborough Uni - guessing they will just supply the degree aspect of the programme- so purely the education. (The local FEd academies are all offering similar types of pathway beyond L3 (Alevel/college type quals now too!) qualifications.

It is interesting- but just can't see how it will/can be successful for the football club.
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I think Tim Fisher business is dealing in education and setting up mainly abroad schools/colleges that are fee paying
 
shepardo01

shepardo01

Well-Known Member
Skybluebeliever said:
I think Tim Fisher business is dealing in education and setting up mainly abroad schools/colleges that are fee paying
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Interesting.
Having experience of what I talked about in my post, sadly, I think that this partnership may be a little late to the party- particularly with recruitment for next season- a lot of these academies have recruitment well underway by October, for the following September.
All the local talent not already at academies, and those dropping out of academies are usually hoovered up then.
From a club/player perspective, I doubt that we will benefit- see my post regarding Brooke House recruitment.
Can't see how having a name linked to an already running programme can generate much cash - can only guess that they think it may attract players as part of their overseas recruitment.
Although not seen what fees are being asked for from British players.

It is interesting though!!
 
AOM

AOM

Well-Known Member
KenilworthSkyBlue said:
“I was at the EFL awards recently and I spoke to a number of older club owners and they asked, ‘Tim, what are we going to do?’” Fisher tells The Athletic. “I told them to get moving, because the situation is all catching up with us. If you don’t learn from COVID and the current situation then you are never going to learn. Football clubs are waking up and we want to get ahead of the curve.”


Prime Brent.
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I can wake up one morning and go, ‘I don’t feel like playing in Coventry today. Can I stay in bed?’ ‘You’d better ask the boss.’ ‘Tim, can I stay in bed?’ ‘Yes, Tim.’ Both me. Not me in bed with another bloke called Tim.
 
LastGarrison

LastGarrison

Well-Known Member
Travs said:
Certainly no harm in building any kind of links with Loughborough... that is one of the elite sporting universities. Its one of the very top athletics/running unis and has an olympic academy there.

Would do no harm in building some links with B'ham Uni either if it is possible, as they are currently of similar calibre in sporting terms.
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I was shown around the campus a few weeks back and the facilities are world class!!!

They already have a partnership with Chelsea.
 
S

skyblu3sk

Well-Known Member
Sky Blue Pete said:
Critics on this thread trying to see something bad in the work he’s involved in cause they hate him. Mmmmm interesting
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Was thinking exactly the same. Just because he has led us through some really shit times doesn't mean every idea he works on is instantly shit...
 
mmttww

mmttww

Well-Known Member
Not sure how any of what he said is going to bring in any serious revenue. Odd. Just focus on more getting fans in and spending money. NFTs? Jesus wept.
 
Danceswithhorses

Danceswithhorses

Well-Known Member
mmttww said:
Not sure how any of what he said is going to bring in any serious revenue.Odd.
Just focus on more getting fans in and spending money.
NFTs? Jesus wept.
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Tim is attempting to show us that he's up to date with all the latest tech ideas, even though it's just trendy bullshit (NFTs)
As for Tim telling us that other club owners were asking him what they should do....i mean...how arrogant is he ?
Does he believe he's some kind of business guru lol
 
S

skyblu3sk

Well-Known Member
Problem with the just get the fans through the gate argument is that doesn't drive enough revenue. Also fans are fickle so you can't build a business plan on high number of fans outside of season tickets cause if they stop turning up you are fucked. I think the extra fans through the gates from last year will probably be used on one off expenditure like ryton and maybe transfer fees rather than ongoing like big contracts etc.
 
L

Loughborough Sky Blue

Well-Known Member
LastGarrison said:
I was shown around the campus a few weeks back and the facilities are world class!!!

They already have a partnership with Chelsea.
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I may have been around there a few times (The clue is in the name) Sport is vitally important to the university, and if there is a top level athlete competing for Great Britain you can pretty much guarantee they have spent some time at Loughborough. The ECB also have a permanent presence at Loughbrough Uni. It's certainly not a bad place to have a working relationship with and is within a reasonable distance to commute to Coventry (In fact I know of at least 3 players to have lived here whilst playing for us)
 
mark82

mark82

Moderator
Danceswithhorses said:
Tim is attempting to show us that he's up to date with all the latest tech ideas, even though it's just trendy bullshit (NFTs)
As for Tim telling us that other club owners were asking him what they should do....i mean...how arrogant is he ?
Does he believe he's some kind of business guru lol
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He has some pretty successful businesses to be fair. Also, NFTs might be trendy but there's a lot of money in them (personally I think they're BS). To me it feels like the right kind of thinking, we certainly need to look to innovate and do something a little different.

None of this excuses what's happened in the past but the 2 things are separate.
 
mmttww

mmttww

Well-Known Member
mark82 said:
He has some pretty successful businesses to be fair.
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Not this one, though. Fifteen years seems long enough to say he maybe doesn't have the acumen to make us somehow different and much more innovative than other clubs.

Using business principles, fine. Forgetting it's a football club and not a 'business' like others is dumb. Just make the product as good as it can be, stop overcomplicating it.
 
tisza

tisza

Well-Known Member
Makes sense to me.
It's a different variation of what a large part of the stadium argument has been about - importance of non-matchday revenue streams. Even more important now we're in the "Championship salary competition/bloodbath".
 
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Philosorapter

Philosorapter

Well-Known Member
It goes much deeper than that.







Voronoi diagrams all the way.
 
shmmeee

shmmeee

Well-Known Member
Danceswithhorses said:
Tim is attempting to show us that he's up to date with all the latest tech ideas, even though it's just trendy bullshit (NFTs)
As for Tim telling us that other club owners were asking him what they should do....i mean...how arrogant is he ?
Does he believe he's some kind of business guru lol
Click to expand...

If he was up to date he’d know the bottom has fallen out the NFT market.
 
Samo

Samo

Well-Known Member
I think he's right that clubs need to find new income streams, not sure education is a big earner though.
Does it have to be footy related?
What about buying and letting property for example?
 
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Flying Fokker

Flying Fokker

Well-Known Member
SlowerThanPlatt said:
The pandemic is estimated to have cost Premier League clubs a combined total of £1.37 billion. Games played behind closed doors and so bringing in no match-day revenues, lost sponsorships and rebates paid to TV broadcast partners all accounted for a big financial hit in the top flight of English football.

Further down the domestic game’s pyramid, though, the impact of COVID-19 was felt even more deeply — and it continues to hit hard.

It is estimated that lost match-day revenue in the Premier League accounted for 14 per cent of each club’s income. One division lower in the Championship, that reliance on fans coming through the turnstiles, buying a pie and a pint — as well as on corporate match-day revenue — accounted for double that figure.

No wonder so many clubs have found themselves in dire straits.

It has forced clubs to have a rethink about how they operate, and Coventry City are aiming to get ahead of the game by diversifying their economic model to add more revenue strings to their bow. Chairman Tim Fisher believes COVID-19 was a watershed moment for the EFL and that lessons must be learned.

“I was at the EFL awards recently and I spoke to a number of older club owners and they asked, ‘Tim, what are we going to do?’” Fisher tells The Athletic. “I told them to get moving, because the situation is all catching up with us. If you don’t learn from COVID and the current situation then you are never going to learn. Football clubs are waking up and we want to get ahead of the curve.”

Fisher believes clubs should no longer rely on simply being football operations — existing just from one fixture to the next and relying on the sport’s traditional revenue streams to support them.

Instead, Coventry have branched into education, the West Midlands club linking up with Loughborough University and Brooke House College in neighbouring Leicestershire to launch a full-time elite football programme, called Vector, based at their Under-23 International Academy.

From September, the inaugural group of students will train under head coach Micky Adams, a former Coventry first-team manager, and his coaching staff while also studying for a BSc Sport and Exercise Science with Management, with the degree accredited by Loughborough University.

It is the first programme in the UK to twin a club at Championship level with a world-class education — Loughborough has been named the best university in the world for sports-related subjects for the sixth year running by the global QS higher education league table.

Trials have already taken place in Nigeria and Bulgaria with more planned, while some of the first crop have graduated from Brooke House, which caters for 300 pupils from 68 nationalities up to their A-Level exams. All applicants must meet certain criteria, both in their football and academic ability, and have the appropriate funding.

While Coventry would have first option on any emerging talent deemed to have the potential to make it as a professional player, the organisers of the Vector programme believe many more will make careers for themselves within football but in other fields.

However, there is another reason why the programme, which is similar to the college system in US sport, is important to Coventry.

“I believe football clubs must have something strategic beyond football now,” Fisher says. “If you look at (fellow Championship sides) Bristol City and Middlesbrough, they lost between £30 million and £40 million last year. We lost £4 million.

“I wander around moaning and saying you can only spend a pound once and question the thinking on expenditure, but it has dawned on us that you need another string to the bow, you need another strategy. That might be around technology, data or education, but you need something else.”

Clubs are not sustainable as they are, Fisher believes.

He adds: “We don’t have a benefactor like Leicester City do, so we need to attract other investors over time and do something different. That is where the education comes in.

“I am always nervous about the benefactor model, because you never know if one of them will get up in the morning and go, ‘What was I thinking? Right, That’s your lot’. Everyone looks at Derby County and thinks, ‘There but for the grace of God go I’.

“No club wants to go down the road of Derby.”
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Fisher pioneered emptying stadiums.
 
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