Previous Seminars 2006

Tuesday 12th December - 6pm

'Manchester Disunited And Other Football Feuds'

Adrian Goldberg, Journalist & Film-Maker

There's mutiny in the air at England's football grounds as fans tire of seeing their sport become the plaything of foreign billionaires overseen by apathetic "guardians" of the game. Nowhere more so than at Manchester United, where the Glazer family's takeover has saddled the world's richest club with millions of pounds of debt - which will have to pay for. In this personal video essay football fan and film-maker Adrian Goldberg celebrates the formation of a breakaway club, FC United, and explores alternative ways of running the beautiful game.

Read more about Manchester Disunited And Other Football Feuds

Tuesday 5th December - 6pm

'The New Wembley Stadium: A State of the Art Sporting Venue for the 21 st Century'

Jonathan Gregory, Marketing & Commercial Director of Wembley National Stadium.

Out of the foundations of the old iconic Wembley stadium a new state-of-the art 90,000 seater stadium is emerging which on completion many confidently predict will be the finest sports stadium currently in existence anywhere in the world that will soon acquire an equally iconic status of its own. In this seminar Jonathan Gregory will outline the history of the new 21 st century Wembley project, and present its vision for the future. In particular he will focus on the extraordinary challenges presented in developing a stadium of this size and complexity with the ambition to meet the aspirations of sports' spectators to an extent never before achieved at any sporting venue.

Read more about The New Wembley Stadium

Tuesday 28th November 2006

'Stadium Development: Prospects for Revenue Generation'

Mark Roberts, Senior Consultant, Sports Business Group, Deloitte

In this seminar Mark will discuss how sports organisations, and in particular football clubs, can develop their stadia as revenue generators for their organisations. In doing so he will explore the key trends in stadium and facilities investment in recent years, notably the move of Manchester City FC to the The City of Manchester Stadium which had been constructed for the 2002 Commonwealth Games. He will conclude by outlining some likely trends in terms of best practice development in the area of stadia investment and management.

Read more about Stadium Development: Prospects for Revenue Generation

Tuesday 21st November 2006

'Football and Its Communities: Final report and Findings'

Dr Adam Brown, Prof Tim Crabbe, Dr Gavin Mellor

This presentation is based on the conclusions of a major three-year research project (2002-2005) for the English Football Foundation entitled Football and its Communities . The Final report of this research was released in August 2006 and is available to download from www.substance.coop . The research is concerned with the relationship between English professional football clubs and 'communities' of various types, and the ways in which individual football clubs and the English football industry more generally can respond to new community development agendas.

Read more about Football and Its Communities: Final report and Findings

Tuesday 14th November - 6pm

'FIFA Quality for Football Turf'

Nigel Fletcher, Manager, FIFA Quality Concept Artificial Turf

In this presentation Nigel Fletcher will outline the FIFA Quality Concept for Football Turf, will explain both the strategy and latest developments in this important area, and will showcase the many successful case-studies from the 208 Member Associations of FIFA illustrating how football turf has made a real difference in developing football. FIFA has been concerned with ensuring the quality of football turf since 2001.

Ream more about FIFA Quality for Football Turf

Tuesday 7th November 2006

'Football in Britain - Still the Game of the People?'

Dave Boyle, Deputy Chief Executive, Supporters Direct

For the last six years Dave Boyle has been a leading activist at the Supporters Direct organisation. Supporters Direct exists to: promote and support the concept of democratic supporter ownership and representation through mutual, not-for-profit structures; promote football clubs as civic and community institutions; to work to preserve the competitive values of league football in the United Kingdom and to promote the health of the game as a whole. In this lecture, Dave Boyle, drawing on his experience at Supporters Direct but here speaking in a personal capacity, will review the key developments in the economics and governance of football in the UK over the last ten years, with a particular focus on the English game.

Read more about Football in Britain - Still the Game of the People?

Tuesday 24th October - 6pm

'Competitive Balance in a Professional Sports League: A Simulation Exercise'

Professor Stefan Szymanski, The Tanaka Business School , Imperial College London

The operation of economic competition between clubs in a sports league has been hotly debated by academics and policy makers in recent years. Conventional wisdom has it that economic inequalities will lead to a sporting competition that is so unbalanced that the league as a whole will suffer. On this basis redistributive policies are advocated in order to make competition more balanced and therefore more attractive. Using the standard economic model of a contest it is possible to construct a simulation exercise in which participants can play the role of club managers/owners, deciding how much to spend on purchasing talent in a non-cooperative environment.

Read more about Competitive Balance in a Professional Sports League: A Simulation Exercise

24th May 2006

Time: 6.00 p.m. to 8.00 p.m.

"The Construction and Location of National Sports Stadia in the UK and Ireland : Issues and Controversies."

Dr David Hassan, University of Ulster at Jordanstown

In this seminar David Hassan examines the issues surrounding the construction and location of national sports stadia, focusing specifically on the controversies that have beset the proposed developments at Wembley Stadium (England), the former Maze Prison site (Northern Ireland) and Stadium Ireland (Republic of Ireland). There are significant commonalities between each of the aforementioned projects. These include a failure to arrive at a consensus concerning the proposed location of any new stadium, a profound lack of leadership on the part of the project's stakeholders and an arguably over inflated level of public investment into each of the three ventures.

Read more about The Construction and Location of National Sports Stadia in the UK and Ireland

And

Time: 12.30 p.m. to 14.30 p.m. You are invited to the launch of the:

International Journal of Sports Marketing & Sponsorship: Football Special Edition

Guest speakers

IMR Publications speakers

Venue: Room B34, Main Building , Birkbeck, Malet Street , Bloomsbury, University of London WC1E 7HX

Admission: Free

Refreshments and informal discussion to follow presentation

17th May 2006

"Woodbine Wafflers, Solid Citizens and the Chumley-Warner Syndrome - Time for Sport Marketeers to Get on the Ball"

Dr Simon Chadwick , Birkbeck Sport Business Centre, University of London

Fans may question the need for it, managers often don't do it very well and academics frequently sneer at it, but sport marketing is here to stay. This presentation initially sets out to identify some of main reasons why marketing in sport has emerged and contends that effective development and management of sport marketing is central to the future of sport. It will be argued that sport displays unique features that require careful management by marketers, which thereby creates particular challenges and opportunities for them. As such, issues the presentation will address are: what is sport marketing and to whom should it be addressed? Emerging from this.

Read more about Woodbine Wafflers

10th May 2006

"The Football Industry in 2006: The Boom & Bust of Football's New Commercialism"

David Conn

Nine years ago David Conn wrote the best-selling The Football Business: Fair Game in the 90s? appearing at the peak of the post-Euro96 euphoria which engulfed English football as the full extraordinary financial fruits of the second BSkyB television deal began to wash over the game. In The Football Business David Conn was almost alone among informed commentators in highlighting that, far from enhancing the long-term future of the English game, this sudden influx of wealth was being mis-spent and mis-managed. David's second book (2004), The Beautiful Game? Searching for the Soul of Football (Yellow Jersey Press, £7.99) examined the state of football in a changed climate, in which most people generally recognised that for all the game's excitement and glamour, it has been in crisis in many ways.

Read more about The Football Industry in 2006: The Boom & Bust of Football's New Commercialism

3rd May 2006

"Arsenal: Whose Brand Is It Anyway?"

John Simmons

John Simmons is the author, with his son Matt, of Winning together: the story of the Arsenal brand. Prompted by increasing TV coverage, football clubs discovered branding in recent years, but they don't always get the full picture. Too often they see branding as the best route to commercial exploitation rather than as a way to develop relationships with their customers. Fans run the emotional gamut from euphoria to apoplectic rage while maintaining extraordinary loyalty - which encourages football brands to draw a lot of wrong conclusions. The seminar will explore those rights and wrongs.

Read more about Arsenal: Whose Brand Is It Anyway?

26th April 2006

"Player Representative Agency in the Football Industry: The Way Ahead"

Jon Smith

Jon Smith is the founder and Chief Executive of First Artist Corporation, and widely recognised as one of the pioneers of sports player agency in the UK . In this lecture Jon will be presenting a review of the development of sports agency in the UK and Europe , with particular reference to the football industry. Critically Jon will explain how the development of sports agency needs to be seen against the context of the modernisation of the wider football industry over that period from what in many respects was a cottage industry, with all the associated failings in business practice, into a fully fledged sub-sector of the wider leisure and entertainment industry. He will also discuss some of the current challenges facing sports agency, and present some scenarios for the sector's future development.

Read more about Player Representative Agency in the Football Industry: The Way Ahead

15th March 2006

"The Kick It Out Campaign: Fighting Racism in the Football Industry"

Piara Power, Director, Kick It Out

Piara Power is the Director of football's anti-racism campaign, Kick It Out; shorthand for the campaign slogan "Let's Kick Racism Out of Football Campaign". The campaign was launched in 1993-1994 as a partnership between the Commission for Racial Equality and the Professional Footballers Association (PFA) with the aim of tackling the very severe problem of racist behaviour that pertained at English football grounds at the time. The comparative success of the campaign is underlined by the fact that the kind of overt racist behaviour at Spanish football grounds is no longer a regular feature of the English domestic game. In this seminar Piara will discuss the history of the campaign, focusing on the reasons for its success, and the continuing challenges it faces in the future.

Read more about The Kick It Out Campaign

8th March 2006

"The Place of the Stadium in the Modern Football Industry"

Simon Inglis

Simon Inglis - whose recent book on stadium designer Archibald Leitch was runner up in the 2005 William Hill Sports Book Award - is Britain 's leading authority on the place of stadia in the football industry. In this seminar Simon addresses the issues outlined above by chronicling the history of football stadia development in Britain over the last twenty years. He will also place stadiums within the overall context of Britain 's sporting heritage, a theme he is currently promoting as editor of English Heritage's pioneering series, Played in Britain.

Read more about The Place of the Stadium in the Modern Football Industry

1st March 2006

"The Commercial Challenges Facing a Premiership Club"

Bruce Bale, Head of Partnerships, West Ham United FC

In this lecture Bruce Bale will outline and discuss the commercial challenges facing a Premiership football club such as West Ham United, as they strive to achieve success on and off the field in the UK and abroad. Bruce will expand on the revenue streams available to leading football clubs, and how best to manage and develop those, whilst also maximizing value for supporters and third party organisations. He will provide a detailed insight into the future of business partnerships in sport, including new media opportunities online, via mobile and most recently 3G.

22nd February 2006 - 2 Events

3pm Event

Extensive press coverage of  FC Barcelona's recent visit to the Birkbeck Sport Business Centre

 'Facing the Challenges of Going Global'

Ferran Soriano, Vice-President FC Barcelona

In this lecture Senor Soriano will be discussing the challenges FC Barcelona has faced in seeking to achieve global expansion. His visit to Birkbeck College coincides with Barcelona 's Champions League game against Chelsea . more .

6pm Event  

"Making the bid - becoming owners of your club: the case of Stockport County Football Club"

Dan Levy, Supporters' Trust Nominated Director, Stockport County Football Club & Norman Beverley, Chair of the Stockport County Supporters' Trust, and Interim Chairman of Stockport County Football Club

In late 2005, Stockport County Supporters' Trust entered negotiations with Brian Kennedy, the owner of Stockport County Football Club to buy the club. The deal was concluded just before the start of the 2005/2006 season after 6 months of intense negotiation. County became one of the four Football League clubs to be owned by its supporters, with 98% of the shares held by the Stockport County Supporters Trust. Dan Levy and Norman Beverley will discuss why and how the Trust bought the club. They will then outline how the need to inform fans and respect their opinions presents particular challenges for supporters' trust owned clubs.

Read more about Making the bid

15th February 2006

Roger Finbow, Managing Partner Ashurst LLP & Non-Executive Director, Ipswich Town Football Club

"Role & Responsibilities of a Non-Executive Director of a Football Club".

Roger Finbow is the Managing Partner of the Corporate department at leading City of London law firm Ashurst, where he also advises on competition law and is the head of the Sports Practice Group. He has been a Non-Executive Director of Ipswich Town Football Club for the last eight years. In this seminar Roger will first outline the broad corporate governance framework within which all company directors execute their duties; making special reference to the Combined Code corporate governance guide and other best practice codes. He will then discuss the particular challenges peculiar to being a football club director.

Read more about Role & Responsibilities of a Non-Executive Director of a Football Club

8th February 2006

'A New England ? Cricket, the Ashes and National Identity'

Dominic Malcolm, Lecturer in Sociology, Loughborough University

This lecture focuses upon England 's Ashes victory of 2005 to probe issues of national identity. The social impact of this sports event and the widespread celebration of this national sporting victory, it is argued, can only be understood in the light of the growing interest in, and expression of, Englishness which has been evident in the last 10 to 15 years. It is argued that cricket supporters have forged a specific and peculiar form of national identity and pride, which resonates with, and appears to be structured by, the themes of the broader cultural debate over Englishness. Consequently the form of national identity exhibited and celebrated by English cricket fans can be usefully counter-posed against more exclusive and retrospective forms of Englishness, such as those which have traditionally characterised cricket, and those borne out of a profound sense of insecurity and loss that have been mobilized in recent years (e.g. in relation to foxhunting).

Read more about A New England ? Cricket, the Ashes and National Identity

1st February 2006

'Labour market issues from a legal perspective arising in professional rugby union and professional football'

Brian Palmer, Partner, Charles Russell LLP

Brian is a partner in the Sports Group and the Employment and Pensions Department at Charles Russell LLP, one of Britain 's leading law firms specializing in sports law. In this seminar Brian will discuss the key challenges presented when drafting employment contracts for professional sports players and how to address them, with a particular focus on rugby union and football players. He will also make some reference to the experience of various forms of collective salary control systems in Rugby Super League (rugby league) and in the Football League (football) and the related implications for individual player contracts.

Read more about Labour market issues from a legal perspective arising in professional rugby union and professional football

25th January 2006

`Club Versus Country: the 2006 African Nations Cup'

Brian Sturges, Managing Director, Soccer Investor Ltd

Soccer Investor is Britain 's leading provider of business information and commentary on the English, Scottish, European and World football industry. In this lecture Soccer Investor Managing Director Brian Sturges will present the preliminary findings of a study analysing the club and country level impact of players selection for the 2006 African Nations Cup organised by CAF, football's governing body in Africa . The results are presented in the context of the club versus country debate which has intensified with the decision of the G14 group of leading European clubs to join Belgian club Chareroi in its legal action against football's world governing body FIFA in relation to the injury of one of the club's players while on national duty for Morocco.

Read more about Club Versus Country: the 2006 African Nations Cup

18th January 2006

'The Role of Player Representative Agency in a Modern Sports Industry'

John Holmes, Chairman/CEO SFX Europe

John Holmes is Chairman/CEO of SFX Europe, one o f Europe's leading sports client management agencies, representing many of Europe 's top sports stars and broadcasters including Michael Owen, Jonny Wilkinson, Gary Lineker, Alan Shearer, Steven Gerrard, Martin Johnson and Gabby Logan . In this lecture John will be presenting a review of the development of sports agency in the UK and Europe drawing on his thirty years of experience in the sector. He will also discuss some of the current challenges facing sports agency, and present some scenarios for the sector's future development.

Read more about The Role of Player Representative Agency in a Modern Sports Industry

11th January 2006

'The Market for Football Broadcasting Rights: Buying and Selling the Game - An Update'

Alex Fynn

Alex Fynn is a well-known consultant to the football industry who has also written extensively on the subject of the football business. His clients have included Arsenal, Celtic, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur football teams, as well as the Football League and the Football Association . Throughout his career Alex has acted as an advisor on the negotiation of the sale of TV broadcasting rights. In this seminar Alex will address three key questions:

Read more about The Market for Football Broadcasting Rights


Last modified: 01 February 2010