Andrew Parkinson, Plymouth Argyle CEO: ‘Hiring Rooney, Beating Liverpool, and Fighting for Championship Survival’ (Ep62)

29:56I think you can get really caught up in trying to sell something in order to get a quick return. January is so difficult because you've got one month. You're paying generally a higher price for players in that period because people know that if you're towards the bottom of the league, I think you've got to have half an eye on the longer term. As it happened, and as I go back to what we were saying before, we needed to strengthen our defence. So we looked for two centre-backs, a left-back, a centre-mid, and a striker. To get five positions in that time frame is really difficult. Then you've got the complication of then saying, does a player want to come to a club that might be struggling in the championship?

30:40You've got to really do your work to make sure that they want to come, they really buy into it and they can come. So that's really difficult. Like I say, you can overpay. You mentioned overpaying then, negotiating for the right price. How does that actually work logistically? Are you on the phone with another club CEO saying, I want five, no, I want six? Are you on the phone with an agent saying, I want five? How does it work? Well, it works differently in every club. So I can only sort of comment really on our goal because even within the clubs within the championship, you have executive chairman who might take a big part of that.

31:22Say you'll sometimes it'll be down to the head coach. Sometimes it will be down to different person, the sporting directors. But for us, the way we do it is the head coach will identify the positions that he wants. So I want a left wing back. Then he's got to have these characteristics. So then the recruitment team will then look for those types of players within our kind of budget range, obviously. And then the head coach will have the final say, might be a list of three people, let's say, and he prefers this one or we'll recommend that one. But in between that, there are three negotiations that really go on.

32:02First of all, technically speaking, the first conversation that needs to happen is with a club. You can approach a player directly before speaking to the club to ask for permission to speak to the player. So you need to agree a fee. Once that has been done, you then speak to the player and then you try and agree the personal terms. So what can happen sometimes is you can agree a fee with a club and there may be three clubs that they've agreed the fee with and then it comes down to the personal terms. In the reality, I think what does happen is all the conversations go along in parallel. So there's discussions going on indirectly between an agent and clubs.

32:48And at the same time, there's a conversation that's going on with the club itself. Where does it normally break down? Club approval of price or player approval of personal terms? Which is the biggest stumbling block? Player approval of personal terms, in my experience, it would be. I think agents are obviously looking for the best prospect for their client, as it were. So they will look for the best wages and the best prospects. So I think it's definitely on the player wages where it doesn't. Because an agent actually could say, okay, that sounds a good price. We'll come back to you. And then somebody goes up, basically.

33:28So that's where it breaks down usually. It's really fast. It's really fast moving. It is fast moving because that sounds like quite laborious to have those stages. Well, it's a bit of yes and no, really. I don't know if when you ping the club being like, hello, we'd like to buy Andrew. Do you send an email? Is it like a WhatsApp? It again varies. So we found that Europeans like WhatsApp. So you would WhatsApp the other CEO? Yeah, it might be the CEO, but sometimes it might be the sporting director. And then, you know, some people like, we like picking up the phone, but there are others that don't like picking up the phone.

34:05So even if you pick up the phone, you'll get a message back saying, what are you looking for? And then you'll send an email. So it depends. Have you ever had an offer come in where it's like, yes, sell, sell? I don't think we've had one that which is sell, sell, sell. No, not where it's been. Do you agree players are bought, not sold? Do you ever have to actively push a sale? Yeah, you do have that. Yeah, you do. I mean, you've only got a certain squad size, you know, that you would want. And if the player isn't going to be playing and the manager doesn't like them, then you've got to find a solution.

34:42And it's obviously in their interest. I mean, they see the writing on the wall a bit. If they've been left out the match day squad quite a few times, then, you know, it's in everyone's interest, isn't it? to move them on, I think. Do you say to their agent, you know, we want to get rid of him? Usually the two things coincide. So I think the agent might say, oh, what about so-and-so's future? You know, whatever. But equally, we've had occasions where we think he's not a player that the manager really sees as being part of the squad and the matchday squad. So we should look at, you know, where's the best place for him.

35:17What do agents do that players are most often not seeing? i think again i'll be sitting on the fence here all agents are different i think you can make an offer to a player and quite often that could be the player so you know the agent come back to you and say we'd rather wait till the end of the season and see how everything transpires so you might have increased their wages or prepared to increase their wages significantly and in that time they are not getting that added wage now i don't know whether they go into the player really gets that they must do but seems to me sometimes that's a big risk to take that you know you get then get to the end of the season a does that club still prepare to offer you the same rate and B, is the club that you thought the grass was greener on the other side prepared to offer it?

36:18Do you not feel a bit sack and fiddle? I mean, it's a bit like, I'll come back to you at the end of the season if there hasn't been a better offer. Well, I think in all of these things, everything works both ways. I think you can feel that, but you've got to be smarter in how you do, you know, when you offer contracts. There's risk attached to that. You see now in the Premier League where people have got contracts of seven, eight, nine years. is generally in League One, League Two championship. In League One, League Two, one year, two year, three year, three years is generally the max. So when do you offer the player the next contract?

36:54Ideally, you don't want to leave it till the last year of the contract. So effectively, if you put in a three year contract, you're offering a player, you could be offering a player in year two, and there's a lot of mileage to go in that time. Do you worry that when you're in a position that you're in now, You know, you have to kind of ensure they keep this collective mentality and that self-interest doesn't come into it. They don't start going, you know, if we go down, what happens to me or I want to leave? We have to face into it that everyone's an individual and they've got careers. And it's very rarely that your career is going to be at one club.

37:28So I think that's part and parcel of football, particularly in the leagues that we're in. But that being said, you know, going back to what we're about, what our location's about, what the club is about, I think always has been the ethos has to be culture and all together and everything else and you would hope we stand a better chance than most of that being a useful tool for us because of all of those things because if you come down to Plymouth as a player your wife your girlfriend needs to come down you don't have that support network you're a collective and so I think being together is really important in that.

38:03Tell us about your ownership but we've mentioned Simon a few times and i think if i'm correct you're also looking for some investment at the moment tell us what the situation is there so simon hallett is i think he came became principal owner in 2019 which is more or less the same time that i arrived too and he a vast majority of the club about two three years ago we also had some investment from a collective group a us group called Argyle Green who own about 13 % of the club. So Simon's still 87%. Going back to sustainability, going back to the need to be able to invest both in infrastructure and having competitive wage budget.

38:44We set out about 18 months ago to get some added and added investor into the business. The ideal model that we want for that is to have somebody that would come in, invest into the club, understand what we are about as a club. So it'd be both investment in infrastructure, perhaps the stadium, perhaps other aspects of the growth of the club to drive revenues, but also to be able to put more money into the wage budget at a sensible level as well. So we could have a mid-table budget in the championship and not towards the bottom. So 18 months ago, we went out to the market and we're quite way down the track now of having an an investment group come into the club it would be a transition over time so simon would be heavily involved for some time to come there isn't a timeline on when that would be but he wants to leave the right legacy so that we've got the same principles of the new ownership group when they do take over at some point would have the same principles that we've got now so is that initially by a minority and then yeah gradually gradually gradually increase yeah was going into market what you expected you know ryan reynolds and the private equitization of football has made sports and asset ownership in sports very much a sexy thing in finance as well was going into open market what you thought it would be no i don't think it was i think it's different because i think the model that i just described i think most what we found is either investors want to have very much a minority and just stay there with their 10%, 15%, or they want the whole thing.

40:26And to find that kind of gradual transition, I think we found quite tricky because it really does play into personal relationships and having the right people with the same principles and ethics. And I don't know all the other club sales that have been going on, but I don't necessarily think that that happens as much. So I think it has been more tricky than we thought. We've had tons of interest. We've had loads of conversations almost daily, but there are obviously private equity. There's US investors, there's Far East investors, generally not one person things anymore so it is all collective what do you think they want out of their investments how does that differ i think that that's hugely different too between you know the two but i think some of it is to have some fun along the way some of it is to get into the premier league and we've had discussions with groups that actually have now invested in the premier league who i think wanted to be in the Premier League straight away rather than a journey.

41:38So that I think you've got to find the investor who might want to do that over a period of time. And also, I think there are clubs that have been bankrolled and then gone into administration as well. And we were in administration in 2011. We lost money. I think that set our model for how we want to be because you are only as good until somebody decides they don't want to do it anymore. Now, I appreciate obviously Premier League clubs, the top Premier League clubs, there'll be somebody else that will probably come along, but most clubs are not top Premier League clubs, are they? If you're looking to buy a team, you are completely on your own where you are.

42:15Plymouth is one club city. As you said, everyone's in green. If you're looking at that as an investor, do you think that's an attractive proposition to be able to leverage? I would say yes, it is. I think you can see that the club has got a lot of opportunity. So we have a population of 270 ,000 in the city, got a catchment of over a million people if you take Cornwall and most of Devon. And we've got things like an academy being built now, which we didn't have. We have never had a single site academy. so players can come from if we really do it properly can come from all age groups right through into our first team so I think you've got the support of the city so things like council etc to invest I think the fan base we've grown been able to grow so all of those things would point to there's a lot of opportunity I mean there are clubs in the Premier League now you might not have thought would be Premier League clubs 10 years ago and there's somebody who's seen the opportunity through catchment and other aspects, of course, that there is opportunity there.

43:25And I would say that Plymouth, for all the things I've mentioned, and Argal, obviously, present a great opportunity for somebody. It's got a great supporter base. So I would say absolutely. Is Cornwall and the surrounding areas not one of the poorest? Yeah. Does that not impact the revenue that one is able to generate? Does that not make it harder? I think there are different aspects to it. We're selling out every week at 17 ,000 and we could get to about 22, 23 as being the right amount where we wouldn't have a half empty stadium. Where are you going to grow your fan base over and above that?

43:59You've got to look at different platforms, not just about people coming to the game or visiting the site. You know, we've got a great connection, Plymouth, the city with the US. So how do you then monetize that? So we're competing in a tournament this summer in the US. We're looking to next year, perhaps do our preseason tour in the US because the pilgrims, there's a sort of natural association. So we've got to look at those different opportunities, which are not just about visiting home park every other Saturday. Is pre-season a pure objective function, get fans across the seas to love Plymouth?

44:38First and foremost, pre-season should be about making sure the players hit the ground running for the first game of the season. Yeah. Now, after that, we've not done the US. But we've then got to look at how we then take it forward to another step where we can do both. as lots of clubs do in particularly in the Premier League we have to grow that base but I would say going back to opportunity where better to think about the connection with the US from the city where the first people went over to the to the states. How are you leveraging media are you doing that as a way to interact we see clubs doing some really interesting things throughout the league how are you addressing that?

45:22We have our own TV platform Algal TV so we came out of the collective probably now three years ago so we do our own we do a lot of our own content i think the media team are up for an award fairly shortly too so does that pay for itself you obviously get subscribers but you're obviously limited as well about now with the sky deal where what you know what the differential is but if you can put the content on that does differentiate you outside of some of the games you know obviously you can only do a limited number games then i think you can make it wash its face whether you can make it make a lot of money at this stage is another question but i think growing the brand and growing the profile of the club is really important so the indirect benefits from doing that you know go back to we're talking about before some of the things have happened this year and over the last three or four years i would say you know this year whether you look at it one way or another the profile of the club with with Wayne being here, winning cup games.

46:21We've done a lot in other aspects other than football, sustainability awards, fan awards, all that sort of stuff. That all helps, I think, to grow your reputation. And we're also financially solid as well, which a lot of clubs point to us in saying that as well. So I think it's really important. And it goes back to that investor. When you then look at your club and the profile of the club, you're more likely to get investment into that club. Now, I think that's got to be a good thing for us. So that, going back to the TV proposition, I think it's all part of it and part of your profile, all part of your brand and all part of growing it.

46:58Can I ask, academies and women's teams are expensive to run and do well. How do you think about doing that effectively and what budget does that garner? So I touched on our academy. So a slight story, deviation here. When I first went to, given our catchment, when I first went to Argyle, we had a part-time recruitment officer who was doing all of Cornwall and all Devon. So we hadn't really taken it seriously at that point. So with a previous sporting director, we really looked at, you know, we've got a fantastic catchment here. We should really be looking at how do we develop this. And that's therefore led to us building, as we are at the moment, an academy which is going to be completed next year in a single site in the city.

47:43where land is at a premium, which as the council have been fantastic in supporting, give us the land for free for community benefits to them. That will be good from two points of view. First of all, that pathway right from our under nines right through to the 18s, that's fantastic catchment that we've got. The city will really buy into it as well, which is obviously really important but it does come with investment at the moment we spend about a million pounds a year on that on the existing academy which isn't academy site our teams are playing all over down devon and cornwall different games different places i should by the way say that our under 18s are in the quarterfinal of the fa fa youth cup as well which is an amazing achievement play on Friday.

48:33Anyway, so to get to that point, we've invested, we've now got to see the fruits of developing that site and then selling players, frankly, for the future. If we can get them into the first team and then they have a good few years with Argyle and then can then go to another club, that will then pay for the academy. That's really important. So that's the kind of model that we've adopted. Now, some clubs, I think, particularly in different catchments, might see it more difficult to invest in an academy. But with our catchment, we feel it's really important that we do do that. To the women's, I think that's a different story, really.

49:12I think everyone would agree that the profile of women's football has gone up tremendously in the last couple of years, particularly with the Lionesses and so on. And Women's Super League has developed. You see a lot on TV now, games, and they're full. The tiers below, I think it's a struggle. We're in tier three. We spend about£300 ,000 this year. We'll lose, if that's the right word,£200 ,000 of that. It's the first time that we've taken it under the coverage of the club as opposed to the community trust. And what we found is it's really difficult. What's difficult? Getting supporters into the ground.

49:55Now, I can see that in some clubs with women's football as well, where they've had to play at a training ground or a ground which is not at the main stadium, that can be given as a reason for why supporters might not come. But we played most of our games this year at Home Park, our stadium, and we haven't had the cut through. Now, we've learned quite a lot from that, and that's because where we marketed to or have been marketing to is the existing supporter base of Argyle. And that transference doesn't happen. So I think it's got to be marketed in a completely different way. How does it need to be marketed and who does it need to be marketed to?

50:42Well, this is a thing that we're going through at the moment to have a look at that. So I think it is a different supporter base largely. I would say it's a younger, more family orientated experience. And I think also you've got to look at not just the football, what do you put on as well as an event on the day, etc. There's potentially more connection with players and the social media is probably more important. So the way you communicate is different. And the way they do it in the States is very, very different to how we do it over here, where it's been marketed as a women's super league. It's an entertainment product.

51:18It's an entertainment product. Yeah. And that's what we've got to make it. And whether the club should be Plymouth Argyle women's team or whether the club actually should be a Devon team being slightly, you know, would that, question mark, would that be a better model? you know i i think that we've got to look at it in a different way would you like to just cut it i mean if it's like 300 grand it's a small part of the budget and losing money no i would like to go down the route go down the route but which i think is really exciting which is to look at how it could be marketed differently and how it could be set up perhaps in its own entity be in the city of plymouth but have its own investment and so on but you know to get to that point i think we have to be help in that journey now if it ends up being as i say a separate entity and it can survive and flourish and supporters want to come to it that's all well and good but i don't think at this moment in time that sitting under as a entity plymouth argole women's team i think is a really difficult model i wouldn't have thought you would have to do much based on you said the strength of your catchment so with a bit of marketing to the to the right people to the family environment to get the people in the surrounding areas to know about this and the fact you're putting it on the stadium means just automatically the experiential product is better so even just in doing that for you i get you but that's all investment yeah but some things need investment at the start of its life we're looking at a legacy product and so plymouth is 124 years old right or even older than that it has a history steeped in things that the women's team doesn't treat this in a different way which is what we're saying it should be not in the way that men's football currently is, playing off the same market and audience, looking at the same business model, because that has baggage.

53:07The fundamentals of men's football are actually now not as amazing as the women's league may think it is, which is why they're trying to copy it. We had quite a lot of communication with supporters last year when the women's team didn't come under the auspices of the club that we should have it under the club. Now, that hasn't, as I mentioned, hasn't translated to people coming to the games. And even in terms of sponsors as well, it's more difficult because sponsors want eyes on. Some may have very much, you know, want to support women's football or women's causes or so on. But that's not translated into people coming.

53:44So I do think there is the general sense that people want to support women's football and that there should be something in the city for women's football. But I don't think it's at any cost. and I think therefore going back to a point I think we have to find a way of marketing it differently having a different customer base supporter base if you like and appealing to different sponsors for different reasons so I think as long as there was somewhere in the city to do that I think people would support it but not at any cost should we do a quick fire let's do it you go first non-player related what would you like to spend money on currently that you don't bigger stadium training ground for the players that's big that's big yeah that's why we need investors and we're in preliminary discussions about that so that's what i'd like to do yeah what's the hardest thing about being ceo i think the number of different stakeholders that you have to deal with but please as well sometimes not please so you're in between the ownership group supporters your executive team you know it's many and varied but it's kind of fun too so I wouldn't I'm not saying I think it's difficult at times but I think it's also fun too you've been chief executive of the club when you're in league two you're now in chief executive of the club in the championship what was the biggest challenge that you faced in league two that you don't have in the championship I think the finances were really stretched in League Two.

55:23So our budget at that point was two and a half million for a wage budget was two and a half million. And we also were just coming into COVID. The challenge we had with COVID when you didn't know whether you're going to be playing football again was a real challenge. and actually when those you remember, it seems 20 years ago, doesn't it? But five years ago, we had about five or six games left and we had the challenge of that money going back to it's not great deals of money. Your wood supporters ask for their money back because they haven't got their season tickets and so on. They haven't got the full value of their season tickets.

56:04Some of them are paid for hospitality. We didn't know. We looked at worst case scenario what could happen to the club. And, you know, there was quite frankly, could we actually survive if there was six, seven months out without being able to play football with no certainty? And as an aside, we went out to, and this goes back to really important communication with supporters, we went out to our supporters and said, look, completely respect the fact that you have got your own challenges and your own financial situation to face into. So if you want your money back, you can have it. But obviously any penny that you can keep in the club would be really helpful to us.

56:44And 98 % of people kept their money in. Really? And 2 % didn't get a Christmas card. But I would say that's probably the biggest challenge that we had as a club. Really difficult. And obviously clubs up and down the country had that. What would that have been that they left in there? We talked like that's£100 or... You know, it could be more than that as well. You know, people who pay for hospitality for the rest of the season. And obviously some people had to take the money because, you know, they had circumstances which had to face into themselves. But I think there were, you know, not going down the route of saying terms and conditions kind of thing.

57:27I think that could backfire if you go down there. And I think some people maybe may have done that. What was the biggest surprise about working with Wayne Rooney? It's a good surprise how easy he was to deal with, actually. Nice man. He was a nice man, very genuine, really connected well with all the people at the club, speak to anybody, really easy to have a conversation with, good and bad. I thought he was a top person. 3pm blackout, outdated model or essential to protect the integrity of the Football League? I think that there are clubs that would be really worried about not keeping the 3pm blackout and that's because if they're in a catchment where they've got the big Premier League teams, would that really impact them?

58:18but I think we have to face into it that people want to watch when they want to watch and equally I think there's lots of supporters who can't get to games who'd watch watch your games as well people that may be a bit older that can't travel etc and I think you've got to put a product on at the at the stadium which means people will want to come because there's other aspects to it yes obviously it's football but it's the community aspect you know it's people coming in early meeting mates, friends, etc. And we've got to face into that because you can watch it anyway, really. It might be a blackout, but it's not really a blackout.

58:55Some 12-year-old with a phone streaming it somewhere, yeah. So I think we've got to face into it and deal with it as a collective. Andrew, it's been amazing having you in. Thank you so much for joining us and taking us through it all. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you so much to Andrew for coming in and joining us today. another fantastic show with a football league CEO. The championship we haven't touched for a little while and I think it's really important to continually remind ourselves of the gaps that exist between not only just the Premier League clubs and the rest of the football league but even the clubs that sit within the same systems in lower league football.

59:32Having a budget of 14 million against clubs with a budget of 90 million is a significant challenge and some of these clubs to maintain a competitive balance are having to think well outside the box of how they address this problem. It was particularly great to have Andrew in here considering the club isn't where it would want to be in the table and I think it's so important that clubs are able to come out and speak and talk to their fans when things aren't necessarily going right as well as obviously when things are great. I hope you enjoyed it and there were plenty of interesting things to take from it.

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