Ross County chairman Roy MacGregor insists fans' needs should be put first

[ian1964 10,409]

I posted this in the footie section, but thought it would be better in here?,admin can delete if they think different.

 

COUNTY chairman MacGregor is leading the way in re-engaging with Scottish football fans by making his club's relationship with their supporters a priority.

 

HE owns and runs a business worth half a billion pounds a year and a community football club worth its weight in gold.

 

In the fragmented new landscape of Scottish football, strewn with the detritus of mismanagement, Roy MacGregor should be a guiding light.

 

A man who believes in customer and fan first, everything else a distant second.

 

Who invests in the people of Dingwall and Inverness and reaps the rewards. Who lives within his means despite their limitations.

 

Two hundred miles away from the game’s traditional epicentre, though, his voice remains relatively unheard. A whisper of common sense drowned out by the eternal bickering of the incompetent.

 

As the chairman of both Ross County and the Global Energy Group he doesn’t take it personally. He has enough on his plate.

 

That doesn’t mean what he has to say isn’t worth hearing, though.

 

So when a man of his substance tells you a Scottish game which sees three of its biggest clubs languishing outside the top tier is ripe for reinvention, for re-engagement, someone in the hierarchy should be asking him not why but how.

 

“Scottish football is still getting an awakening,” said MacGregor. “It’s not so much the sport – I see fledgling shoots all over the place, with young players getting an opportunity but the game is still unable to enthuse the broadcasters and the public.

 

“I see it in all areas of our game that we have forgotten either our brand or our customer.

 

“Clubs have to examine their customer, their fan. If you take your eye off that you have questions to answer. It comes back to boards of directors understanding fans.

 

“Clubs have forgotten their fans and in any business you do that at your peril.

 

“It’s not finance. Nothing to do with it. Hibs’ budget was five times mine – it’s about your relationship with your customer.

 

“Football clubs used to have really good relationships but they took it for granted. Now we need to reinvent it – and everything negative that’s happening can have a positive outcome but only if boards and fans groups get their eye back on the right values.

 

“Hearts have done it, Hibs are doing it as we speak. Rangers still have to find whatever it is they’re looking for. Their directors don’t have their eye on their fans.”

 

As we talk in his Inverness HQ MacGregor has spent the morning at his club’s ground, throwing ideas at his admin staff on how to improve the matchday experience for their fans, and, uniquely, the away support as well.

 

He talks free pies, free transport, entertainment, value for kids – anything that is the opposite of standing still. He knows half the ideas might not fly but it won’t stop him stretching his people to try.

 

He sighed: “We don’t market the game in this country. The league body should be 90 per cent PR and marketing and 10 per cent rules and administration – we’re the other way round.

 

“Yet I look at what Man City are doing around their stadium and I want to do it. You’re not just going to a game. You’re going to the Man City Experience. You’re there from lunchtime, eating, drinking, being entertained, engaging with the community around the club.

 

“Today’s pay-as-you-go generation have choices to make. The people are still there, just in a different culture. When we first came in the league we went down to Morton – I’d never been there before and the ground had held 35,000 people at one point.

 

“And you look out and see the shipyards and decay and you imagine the people who worked there and went for a pie and a pint and then went to the football.

 

“Yet there were only 1200 people there that day.

 

“If you fight your fanbase like, say, Rangers are doing, your club will never be right. It’s a dysfunctional relationship. The hierarchy in football is changing for the better but it’s the clubs who need to change. Get real with where they are with their fans, with their stakeholders, with the Press.

 

“I see it happening because of finance but it needs to be in your soul.

 

“I’m here with Ross County because I believe in an area which didn’t get an opportunity in a football sense, a talent sense or a business sense to express themselves as part of the UK or Scotland.

 

“My role is to give people opportunity. I do it with my business and with my football club. And we don’t live beyond our means.”

 

MacGregor is rightly proud of his club finishing fifth then seventh in their first two seasons of top-flight football, less than 20 years on from becoming a senior club and on one of the smallest budgets and fanbases in the country.

 

But you’ll never catch him thinking they’ve become something they’re not.

 

He said: “What’s success for us? To stay in the top division and do well in a Cup. Anything beyond that is aspirational.

 

“Plug your club into that aspiration. Don’t think you can be a top-six club. It’s not possible. It’s a bonus and you have to be exceptional to do it.

 

“So just be real and don’t let your supporters get expectations beyond reality. The biggest thing is for the fans to believe you can be better than what you are. You always try to outperform what you are and the fans will come with you.”

 

MacGregor also refuses to fall into the trap many wealthy football benefactors have. He’s watched Stewart Milne and David Murray make decisions in the game they’d never in a million years have made in business but he said: “I find the discipline of it easy because I worry, if I get expectation beyond reality, I’ll let my community down.

 

“I go through the wringer the same as every other fan. I’ve been watching my team since 1966 but I’m not on an ego trip.

 

“I’m in it for an area which has two Premiership teams and is being recognised at last that it’s part of the framework of Scotland.”

 

Yet not so much part of the framework that he’s ever held office in a game you’d think would be crying out for its best business minds to participate.

 

“I’ve never been asked,” he deadpans. “But then this part of the world is still trying to come to terms with being part of football and being accepted.

 

“We’ve never been accepted as part of the football hierarchy and it’s 20 years on. I’m not complaining. We’re 200 miles away from the mass of football supposedly but this season we’re playing five teams who are nearly home games for us, all north of the Tay.

 

“So it HAS changed. Where the heartland of football was has been rocked.

 

“It’s getting better though. We’ve had some revolution in the SFA, we have the leagues together again and I believe the structure is better.

 

“But selling the game is still a difficult job, especially with three of our biggest clubs out of the top division.

 

“So you need to sell the brand on 42 clubs, not 12, and you need to sell it on the whole nation. You need someone who buys into that.

 

“It’s difficult because we have a devolution debate – are UK wide companies wanting to get into that debate by getting into football?

 

“You have issues with tarnished goods – clubs who can’t manage themselves. That effect is still there. The product is not good. But there’s a lot more sense being talked and it’s out of necessity. Setbacks are opportunities.

 

“The SPFL will have to adjust their TV policy, for example, and if that’s what the fan wants? You’ll have to give them Hearts v Rangers not St Johnstone v Ross County.

 

“Do what the customer wants.”

 

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/sport/f...gregor-3632540

[der Berliner 3,234]

Some comments will go down well in certain quarters. I'd say that doing his stuff for a club like Inverness CT is a touch different from doing it for Rangers. Even though some of the basics should hold true for all.

[Scott7 5,139]

He's doing it for Ross County not ICT. Two ugly sisters from my point of view.

 

Raw prejudice aside, the bloke is right.

[Tannochsidebear 2,306]

A fantastically frank and spot on interview there.

 

What would we be like with stability and common sense like that in our boardroom for the last 20 years instead of moonbeams, Whyte, green, and easdales.

[Chibmark 15]

He makes some pertinent points.

 

Scottish footballs fall from grace has been steady and tragic for those who care for the game.

 

I was watching a Dunfermline vs Rangers Scottish cup tie at East End Park from 1987 on YouTube and the ground was heaving full with 20,000 fans and a Rangers side containing Scottish and English Internationals were beaten 2-0.

 

Nowadays, even when that club entered admin and were obviously struggling for survival, a derby game vs Raith Rovers attracted 6,000 spectators!!

 

How do you reenergise enthusiasm with your fans who are so obviously disenfranchised with the going ones at their clubs? Lower prices? I honestly don't think that would work - long term.

 

Scottish football is a victim numerous factors, including but not limited to; its past successes, the biggest league in the world on our doorstep, a pro English football media, an aging populous and a culture of immediate gratification leading to short-term thinking and actions.

 

I honestly think that in 50 years, European football will be like the NFL in the USA with franchises in the big leagues and smaller leagues becoming 'colleges' or feeders for the big leagues.

 

It's all about money now and as an ardent defender of Capitalism, I do think that sport should be more 'socialist' in its workings for the good of the game.

[Zappa 0]

I posted this in the footie section, but thought it would be better in here?

 

He talks about Rangers during the interview, so no reason why it can't be in here Ian.

[Chibmark 15]

I've replied to the article in the footy section.

[RANGERRAB 3,254]

He talks about Rangers during the interview, so no reason why it can't be in here Ian.

 

But avoids the fact that clubs like his rely on the Rangers subsidy. Essentially his club is being subsidised by us via commercial deals such as the SKY deal and he should recognise that.Without us the SPFL would be mostly a part time league as it would have very little commercial appeal

[Zappa 0]

I've replied to the article in the footy section.

 

I've moved your post in here and deleted the other thread mate.

[Zappa 0]

But avoids the fact that clubs like his rely on the Rangers subsidy. Essentially his club is being subsidised by us via commercial deals such as the SKY deal and he should recognise that.Without us the SPFL would be mostly a part time league as it would have very little commercial appeal

 

His club certainly benefits from the money the bigger clubs attract and bring into the game, but I wouldn't necessarily agree that they rely on us. Small, but well run clubs like Ross County will always try to live within their means. If they have less money, they will spend less money. It's a simple common sense logic that recent & current custodians of our own Club appear to not understand.