"We're Going Nowhere"
Monday, 31st Mar 2003 00:00

Club Dismisses Claims That Sites To Go

Home >Story Index> "Nothing To Worry About" Says Club

The Guardian claimed that news of a fresh round of redundancies at (PTV), the joint venture between the Football League and the cable giant NTL, sparked renewed fears among Nationwide clubs, already suffering from the £132m hole left by the collapse of ITV Digital. The first, second and third division clubs stand to lose a further £35m, if reports about Premium's imminent demise, together with its lack of parent-company guarantees, turn out to have legs.

Speaking today, Peter told us "The £35 million mentioned is the guaranteed income that has been taken away from the official sites. It was taken away before these job losses and replaced with a system that rewards the clubs/sites that put the most into the business. The job losses were not a surprise, my local area manager told me about them months ago. They have come about as NTL had staffed too highly in the first place and there were effectively people sitting around doing nothing."

Mike Bateson, chairman of Torquay United, is quoted in the article appearing in today's paper, clearly showing his knowledge of the way that the internet works "I'm sure there is a value to the whole web of the site. It could continue for 10 years or be closed down by the summer." Quite what a 'web of the site' does is anybody's guess on this occasion. Bateson though is clearly not a fan "If I just had my business hat on I'd shut the website down immediately because we are subsidising it to the tune of about £7,500 a year"

Peter Owen though is the other end of the scale to Bateson. Naturally you would expect him to be so, as it comprises part of his job but this is clearly a scheme that he believes in "You can get out of this scheme what you put into it. It is not just about the money that you get from your subscribers or the page views that the site generates but the other things that run along side the site. The on-line shop for example is generating between £250 and £300 worth of orders a week and I am convinced that some of these are sales that perhaps the club would not get without that facility. The betting link also brings in some income and we are just about to launch as part of this a telephone betting service. This means that Swans fans without access to the internet can still use SwansBet and generate money for the club by doing so.

"Also, the SMS news service. We have around 140 subscribers to that service at the moment and although the income is not massive it generates around £2,000 per annum for the club."

PTV has between 27,000 and 35,000 paying subscribers according to the article in the Guardian so how many of those are Swans fans? "The figures at the end of February showed that we had passed 100 paying subscribers. This now guarantees the club £2,000 every quarter. I would expect the figures for the end of March to be considerably higher as we had special offers for subscription during the period. 3,500 people have registered to use the site (non-paying) which is considerably high for a club in our position - we are between 35th and 40th in terms of the number of users. However, when you look at how many have subscribed to the SMS service out of that 3,500 then we are second in terms of conversion rates.

"The site obtains around 140,000 page impressions per month. All the official sites are now effectively under one Sports Portal and it is the biggest Sports site in the UK in terms of the number of users. It is also the 12th largest web-site of any kind in the UK. You only have to look at the adverts that have appeared on the site in recent months to realise the benefits of all the sites joining together in one portal. Previously the adverts were for relatively small companies but now they are for some of the biggest companies around.

"NTL clearly still believe in this project. They have recently stated that anyone signing up for their broadband service who has subscribed (and paid) to a PTV site will be entitled to a refund of their subscription backdated to August 1st last year."

It is clear from Peter's comments that he believes deeply in the service that he is providing and it's worth to the club. Others clearly don't agree. Cash strapped York City no longer have a full time web master on their books but it appears that this may be because of their financial situation rather than a belief that the system does not work. Other clubs though are seeing benefits - Brighton for example claim to have just under 1,000 paying subscribers - not bad for a club that is marginally above the relegation zone in the first division. Queens Park Rangers are another club boasting 1,000 paying punters to their site proof that maybe payment for content does work in some avenues.

Of course you can argue that you are talking with both of them clubs in London and the South East where maybe the cost of subscription and the broadband connection that makes the heavier downloads easier does not bite as hard as it would in South Wales.

Clearly people have a need to check official sites for news - the real arguments come about whether they are prepared to pay for that news - or the exclusive news that paying brings. As it stands with Swansea City, for every 35 people that want to read the site - only 1 is prepared to pay to do so. However, it is bringing income into the club and in our position we need every spare penny that we can get.

Peter clearly believes in what he is doing and asked if he had any worries about the scheme ending the categoric answer provided was "NO"

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