As a young lad at Kirkcaldy High School in the not too dim and distant past, being offered a place on the school yearbook team was something not to be sniffed at.
Along with my fellow Sixth Year pupils, I seem to recall being given a very short timescale to put the thing together and were told right from the start: ‘If you don’t get the advertisers in to help pay for its production, there will be no yearbook.’
That was the stark choice we faced and I recall running around High Street businesses after school hours for about a week trying to convince them that taking out a wee advert in the yearbook would be good for business.
I can’t remember what we charged, or how many we secured, but at the end of the day we got our yearbook out on time and on budget thanks to our sponsors.
Which brings me right back to the subject of Scottish football.
It might have passed some people by, but while the dulcit tones of those reading out the scores on the TV at the back of five on a Saturday happily rattle off the names ‘Barclays Premier League’, ‘Skybet Championship’ and even the ‘William Hill Scottish Cup’, Scottish football’s league set-up remains firmly in the shade when it comes to the issue of sponsorship.
As I write this, we are six games into the new Scottish Premiership season and five into the Scottish Championship, League One and League Two campaigns.
And while Neil Doncaster appears relatively comfortable with the fact that the Scottish Professional Football League is still without a sponsor, I for one am not.
The new league set-up has been in operation for a month-and-a-half, although the reconstruction was formally completed at the end of June and some could argue they’ve had even longer than that to get their act together.
Doncaster of course has been typically upbeat I was going to use the word ‘ebuillent’ but don’t think that’s the best fit on the whole issue, suggesting that it is important to find the right sponsor rather than the first one that comes along.
Agree with that wholeheartedly.
I also agree with him when he says that the sponsorship issue is not “fundamental” to the finances of the game, as the vast majority of cash being ploughed into the SPFL comes through broadcast rights something like 90% of the entire pot.
That’s a fair enough point as well.
But when you consider that the Clydesdale Bank deal struck in 2007 was worth a reported £8 million a year to the Scottish Premier League, we are not exactly talking about small fry.
Even Irn-Bru’s association with the Scottish Football League was worth over £3 million over the course of the last three years again, not figures you could easily dismiss as paltry.
Any cash coming into the national game has to be welcomed and although I appreciate a reluctance on the SPFL’s part to sell their soul to the highest bidder, as far as I can see the head honchos at Hampden don’t seem to have any great urgency when it comes to attracting a sponsor.
Surely that must have had an impact at clubs like St Johnstone, Motherwell and Kilmarnock (just three plucked out of the air) when they were trying to finalise their budgets for the season ahead?
And surely that has impacted on the ability of some managers to strengthen in the transfer window which, I might add, has now shut until January and means bosses are stuck with what they have?
The fact that we’ve got a sixth of the way through the campaign and indeed beyond the first international break without businesses because that’s what they are – being able to factor this mystical sponsorship cash in or out of their plans is nothing short of disgraceful.
I’m sure if and when a sponsor is unveiled, the PR machine will go into overdrive and it will be spun into some sort of ‘unexpected’ windfall for our football clubs.
But for me, the lack of sponsorship branding is a bruise on the SPFL’s image that it could have seriously done without especially in this, its fledgling first year.