Football Crazy

One of the bold­est and most innov­at­ive ven­tures ever seen in Wel­ling­ton is almost upon us.

On 26 July, the Wel­ling­ton Phoenix will host two Eng­lish Premi­er League teams on the same day. This is the cli­max to Foot­ball United, a week-long cel­eb­ra­tion of the ‘beau­ti­ful game’, also fea­tur­ing matches in Auck­land and Dunedin.

Good things take time and this event has been two years in the mak­ing. It was in 2012 that Phoenix FC, backed by own­ers Wel­nix, first star­ted approach­ing Eng­lish Premi­er League clubs dir­ectly to see if they were inter­ested in com­ing out to New Zea­l­and in the 2013 off-sea­son. That time­frame proved to be too ambi­tious, not helped by the fact that it coin­cided with the appoint­ment of new Phoenix head coach Ernie Mer­rick, repla­cing found­a­tion man­ager Ricki Herbert.

       Things got more ser­i­ous last Decem­ber when Phoenix CEO Dav­id Dome made his first trip to Eng­land to add the face-to-face ele­ment to nego­ti­ations. By this stage the Wel­ling­ton City Coun­cil was fully on board as it real­ised what was on offer in terms of con­firm­ing Wellington’s repu­ta­tion as the centre of foot­ball in New Zea­l­and, and reaf­firm­ing its abil­ity to host big inter­na­tion­al events.

From there, months of plan­ning ensued, includ­ing pro­trac­ted nego­ti­ations and middle-of-the-night phone calls. More clubs were ini­tially going to be involved before the final details were con­firmed with New­castle United and West Ham United. Everything has been planned to the ulti­mate detail, and now loc­al foot­ball fans eagerly await two clubs from the Eng­lish Premi­er league play­ing in Wel­ling­ton at the same ground on the same day. Try even ima­gin­ing that five years ago.

It is hard to think of two Premi­er League clubs that can provide bet­ter value for the Phoenix’s money for this venture.

New­castle United is a club rich in his­tory, with play­ers like Jack­ie Mil­burn, Paul Gascoigne, Chris Waddle, Kev­in Kee­gan and Alan Shear­er, and man­ager Bobby Rob­son, all house­hold names in dif­fer­ent eras. The club is also one of the most widely fol­lowed glob­ally and until the last three years was rated in the top 20 of all foot­ball clubs world­wide. On and off the pitch things have been a little bit sham­bol­ic over the last few sea­sons, but life­time fans, wheth­er here or in Aus­tralia, do not desert a club like New­castle United in a hurry. The fact that the All Blacks are play­ing a match at the club’s home ground, St James’ Park, in next year’s Rugby World Cup is a remind­er of the mar­ket­ing pulling power of New­castle United (if one was needed).

The second-best Eng­land team to con­test a World Cup, the semi-final­ists of 1990, was built around Beard­s­ley, Waddle and Gascoigne, all New­castle play­ers at one time or anoth­er. But the best Eng­land World Cup team was, of course, built around West Ham United, as their fans will remind you at every pos­sible oppor­tun­ity. The core of that 1966 World Cup-win­ning side were Ham­mers Geoff Hurst, Bobby Moore and Mar­tin Peters, but more recently names like Billy Bonds, Joe Cole, Tre­vor Brook­ing, Paolo Di Canio and… um… Win­ston Reid have been chanted from the East End grand­stands. West Ham has a repu­ta­tion for being every New Zealander’s second team, and is a team with a stronger fol­low­ing in New Zea­l­and than in any oth­er coun­try. So why is that?

New Zea­l­and has affec­tion for the under­dog, espe­cially a styl­ish under­dog. Put­ting aside the sig­ni­fic­ant ex-Cock­ney expat com­munity here, there is the tra­di­tion­al jour­ney of Kiwis who have come late to the attrac­tions of the beau­ti­ful game. The jour­ney of the aver­age New Zea­l­and male goes some­thing like this: through school — and for a few years after­wards — immersed in rugby; arrives in Eng­land for a spot of OE; cheap­er accom­mod­a­tion is in the East End of Lon­don; finds a flat, gets work, finds a foot­ball club to sup­port and looks around. And bingo: you have a Ham­mers fan for life, blow­ing bubbles all the way from Lon­don back to Wellington.

Adding the Win­ston Reid factor is the icing on the cake. The Phoenix delib­er­ately did not make the approach to West Ham via Reid, pre­fer­ring instead to go through ortho­dox chan­nels. But once the All White inter­na­tion­al and 2013 fan-voted Ham­mer of the Year was brought on board, he act­ively pro­moted the idea with­in the club.

The oth­er bonus adding loc­al fla­vour is the trans­fer of Yel­low Fever’s favour­ite hero-vil­lain Shane Smeltz to Sydney FC, who play New­castle United in Duned­in dur­ing the tour

Both of the Premi­er League busi­nesses have com­pletely bought into Foot­ball United, accord­ing to Dome. Pre-sea­son tour­na­ments play an increas­ingly large part of clubs’ rev­en­ue-gath­er­ing and mar­ket­ing oppor­tun­it­ies. Over the last 20 years, Manchester United have led the way in this and the oth­er clubs are now catch­ing up. For example, last year’s vis­it to Mel­bourne by Liv­er­pool is rumoured to have come with a $5 mil­lion appear­ance fee alone.

New­castle and West Ham won’t be char­ging any­thing like that, but when you start adding up all the costs you arrive at some large num­bers. Both clubs will travel with an entour­age of around 40 people. As Dome points out, “Busi­ness class air travel, five-star accom­mod­a­tion; this is not a cheap exer­cise.” Then con­sider that the appear­ance fee still makes up the major­ity of the cost involved.
            New­castle United has been involved in such exped­i­tions before, but recently got burnt in a tour­na­ment in South­east Asia. “New Zea­l­and may not be so lucrative,
but the money is banked, and the sur­round­ings are more famil­i­ar,” says Dome. West Ham’s back­ground in pre-sea­son glob­al ven­tures is not quite so strong. For example, last year their pre-sea­son matches were in the Repub­lic of Ire­land. How­ever, the club is about to shift its home ground to the 2012 Lon­don Olympic Sta­di­um. They are up there with the big boys now.

The site vis­its have been com­pleted, and the logist­ics final­ised. Accord­ing to Dome it helps when the hotels involved can say, “Well this is what we do when the All Blacks and Walla­bies stay here.” The teams have even chosen their set menus, although they are nowhere near as demand­ing as the Eng­land crick­et team in Aus­tralia last year, with their 84 pages of detailed require­ments. This is a pre-sea­son tour­na­ment where play­ers are get­ting the fit­ness up: it’s pasta all round.

Plan­ning around the day itself kicked off months ago. Eng­lish Premi­er League sides in 2014 are a cos­mo­pol­it­an affair. Embassies have jumped at the chance to be involved dur­ing the day, with Italy, Brazil, Argen­tina and oth­ers lin­ing up to show­case their coun­tries, and  to bask in the reflec­ted glory of their nation­als play­ing out in the middle. A foot­ball World Cup reminds us of the glob­al nature of the sport, and dip­lo­mat­ic staff do love a good party.
Wel­ling­ton City Coun­cil is strongly involved, and not just fin­an­cially. All seni­or club foot­ball is can­celled that after­noon and col­lege foot­ball is tak­ing a leni­ent stance to teams who default that day. The fan zones for both clubs sold out in May and, although it will be hard to get a fully accur­ate fig­ure, it is estim­ated that around 4,000 people will travel here from Aus­tralia for the games.

The oth­er inter­na­tion­al vis­it­ors will be our friends rep­res­ent­ing the UK media. Tick­et­ing and accred­it­a­tion passes for the Wel­ling­ton games are restric­ted to one rep­res­ent­at­ive per organ­isa­tion, which is some­thing you do not often see. This tour is right in the middle of the trans­fer win­dow, so rumours will fol­low the teams around, along with the tabloid journ­al­ists doing what tabloid journ­al­ists do.

The pay-per-view deal with Sky is also a bit of a water­shed in the fast-chan­ging busi­ness of how sport is broad­cast in New Zea­l­and, as this is the first time a non-pugil­ist sport has been covered this way here. The rev­en­ue helps under­write the event, but the main motiv­a­tion was to act as a media black­out to encour­age people to actu­ally go to the event rather than take the flat-screen option at home. It is not often that such a large unsched­uled event comes along, so Sky can get away with clip­ping the tick­et. And with pay-per-view sport­ing events comes lots of bonus promotion.
But prob­ably the best example of atten­tion to detail has been in the schedul­ing: two day­time games, at 2pm and 4.30pm. A full day of foot­ball played at a child-friendly time. Strange that nobody has ever come up with that idea earli­er really.

This is more than just a Wel­ling­ton event, with matches also being played in Auck­land and Duned­in. There was a tempta­tion to play the Sydney FC vs. New­castle game in Sydney, but the pref­er­ence was to make this a purely New Zea­l­and event. And Duned­in Ven­ues Lim­ited has been very act­ive in their pro­mo­tion of that match.

The only poten­tial doubt around the Duned­in fix­ture con­cerned wheth­er the arti­fi­cial turf there would be suit­able. But when New­castle rep­res­ent­at­ives vis­ited the sta­di­um every­one remembered that the tech­no­logy used to devel­op the hybrid turf at the new For­syth Barr Sta­di­um was copied from the tech­no­logy used at St James’ Park, and that these organ­isa­tions had pre­vi­ously met. It is indeed a small world.

The match at Eden Park, with its notori­ously fickle fan base, is the ris­ki­est of the ven­tures. How­ever, the Phoenix has attrac­ted large crowds at that ven­ue in the past, and Auck­land is easi­er to get to from Aus­tralia than Wel­ling­ton, so there is a feel­ing of optim­ism there. When the Phoenix has played there in pre­vi­ous sea­sons, around 80 per­cent of the gate sales occurred in the final week.

There has been mut­ter­ing in some quar­ters that we will not get to see the best play­ers from each club, but this just does not add up. Not only do the Eng­lish clubs have con­trac­tu­al oblig­a­tions, but it would make no sense for them to do any­thing oth­er than field the strongest teams possible.

Let’s look at this from a West Ham per­spect­ive. They play six pre-sea­son games in total, so these matches will make up one-third of that. It is import­ant for lead­ing play­ers to have as much game time as pos­sible to pre­pare for the fol­low­ing season.

On top of this, it will be a chance for fans to see the Phoenix for the first time for a few months, com­plete with their own recent sign­ings. It will also be inter­est­ing to watch them up against sides from the most fam­ous league in the world. This is a big event for a club that wants to take foot­ball in this city to anoth­er level, and for a city to show that it is not afraid of com­ing up with ori­gin­al ideas, and quite likes being part of a glob­al event.

Much plan­ning and pre­par­a­tion have been under­taken to put all of this togeth­er. It was always a going to be a huge gamble, but it looks like it will come off. The club has even whispered that it might make a small profit, but that is just a tiny part of what is behind the event.

The club, and its own­ers, do not lack for ambi­tion. Let’s hope this is not the last time we get to see such a venture.