United's new signing bigs up the brand

Mar 16 2009 by Andrew Mernin, The Journal

LAST month Newcastle United recruited one of the youngest directors in English football in a bid to boost revenues at home and abroad. Andrew Mernin talks to new commercial director Barry Webber about his plans for the future, amid uncertain times at St James's Park.

NEWCASTLE United are on a bus bound for Brazil, Russia, India and China. The bus, according to Barry Webber, is the Premier League, and the stations along the journey are where the club’s potential future revenue lies.

But what happens if the club is thrown off the bus? Instability and unrest this season have left the team flirting dangerously close to the relegation zone.

Should the club be extradited from football’s promised land, it could be forced to rethink its corporate strategy – a strategy which its new 31-year-old director of commercial affairs hopes to breath new life into.

Although he admits the club has had the foresight to prepare for the worst, the Cambridge-born executive is thinking positively.

And such is his optimistic demeanour, even the most downtrodden Magpie would be hard-pressed not to be lifted by his genuine, if clichéd claim, that “we’re too good to go down”.

Webber is one of a new breed of directors being nurtured in Premier League boardrooms up and down the country – young, forward-thinking salesmen with a network of corporate and sports contacts which spans the globe.

Despite being the same age as some Premier League footballers, he has achieved an awful lot in the global sports marketing sector in a short space of time.

His career as a young tennis star, representing Great Britain, led him on a journey into sports commercialism which took him to the boardrooms of some of the biggest brands on the planet.

He was responsible for the largest stadium sponsorship deal in English football, has worked alongside numerous top-flight English and Spanish football clubs and helped secure multi-million- pound contracts for two of tennis’s most prestigious competitions.

His latest remit, as set out by fellow directors Derek Llambias and David Williamson, is to grow the brand at home and abroad and tap into new revenue streams which may have been neglected by previous regimes. And he doesn’t intend to let the “R” word offset his master-plan to grow Newcastle into a global commercial empire.

Webber says: “What is this word relegation? I think if it ever happened, which personally I don’t foresee, it will just be a case of rebuilding.

“Newcastle will still have a huge fan base and the black and white will still be very much a strong brand that people recognise, but maybe the types of brands we target will change.

“If you do remove the Premier League, then the global appeal we have is reduced, so maybe we bring the focus back to national brands and national, rather than global partnerships.

With all the audacity of a great salesman, he even argues the commercial positives that could be taken if the club did find itself in football’s second tier: “A lot of brands could see it as an opportunity .

“I imagine there are a lot of companies that, because of the loyal and passionate fan-base, would look at Newcastle and think they could make a long-term investment.”

It is only a matter of weeks since the young director was ushered into his new role at the embattled Gallowgate fortress and some topics remain off-limits for now.

“If you weren’t a journalist I could tell you a lot more about the last month,” he says. Questions about owner Mike Ashley are met with pensive looks, silences, then quick deflections, although he does joke that corporate tickets at away games are harder to come by now that Mr Ashley and friends have returned to the stands in recent weeks.

“Mike is getting involved more and more,” is just about all he is willing to say about his new employer.

Webber was headhunted for the role after impressing in his most recent position as a senior member of AEG Europe, which owns, operates and promotes 12 professional sports teams, 85 stadiums, arenas and theatres – including London’s O2 Arena – and over 400 concerts per year.

He is not entirely sure how his name came to the attention of Ashley’s ranks, although he has heard a story.

He says: “I heard that Newcastle were talking to two of the clubs I’ve worked with in the past [about their] frustration at the lack of commercial directors in the Premier League, so my name got brought up and from that point Derek called Mike and said ‘go and get this guy’.”

“More and more Premier League clubs are bringing people my age in. Fulham, Villa and Spurs all have a good team. We’ve been called the new generation of commercial directors.

“All clubs are switching on – they have to, just to compete with other clubs. Essentially you’ve got 16 clubs, apart from the top four, who are all saying the same thing in the market place. So the question is, why should people invest in Newcastle?”