Meistriliiga 2010

[Mister]

Kus kohas see kalender on?

[-RoMaRiO-]

http://www.gol.ee/kalendar

[asdf]

Samas Esiliigas on jälle tore graafik:

Kolmapäev, 23. juuni

11:00 Valga FC Warrior – JK Tallinna Kalev
11:00 Lasnamäe FC Ajax – Tallinna JK Legion
11:00 Tallinna FC Levadia II – Tallinna FC Flora II
14:00 Kiviõli Tamme Auto – Viljandi JK Tulevik II
14:00 Pärnu JK Vaprus – Jõhvi JK Orbiit

Amatöörid ei taha võidupüha õhtul, kui kõik juba vorsti grillivad ja üle lõkke hüppavad, liigat mängida (kell 17:00 ja 21:30 on MM-finaalturniiri mängud).

[Martin]

EESSÕNA
Et ma tapsin selle teema ära, mõtlesin natuke tekstiblokke veel tekitada.

Millalgi eelmisel aastal kirjutasin ajakirja Jalgpall tsipa Eesti meistriliiga ja jalgpalli turustamisest. Materjali jäi veel kõvasti üle ja sellest kõigest tahaks siia kopeerida Christian Happeli vastused minu mõnele küsimusele (Happeli luba selleks olema).

Natuke taustast ka: enne seda intekat olin Happeli suhtes võrdlemisi skeptiline, kuid tema jutt ja ideed olid väga sümpaatsed ja ma tõesti loodan, et ta saab nende teostamisega hakkama ja ma ei pea jälle skeptiliseks muutuma.

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1) You have been in Estonia for a little time now - what are the main difficulties marketing wise that the local clubs face?

There are several difficulties the clubs are facing in terms of their marketing engagement. First of all though some has to define marketing in this respect, as this is much more than for example just printing a poster or giving out some free tickets.

Of course one of the main difficulties for a lot of clubs is human resources and financial capabilities. For a lot of clubs, the marketing aspect is not their primary challenge they are facing, but to invest into the team, the coaches and players.

Also to do a campaign like for example Nomme Kalju has been doing now for quite some time; in order to do something like this you have to spend quite some money for such a campaign or like in the case of Nomme, must be lucky to have someone who is willing to sponsor you for doing this (in this case a board member of Nomme is owner of the advertising company who does the campaign for them).

I have spoken with quite a lot of people and in those discussions I found that a lot of people really have some good ideas how to market their club and football in Estonia, but simply don’t have the time or resources to do it. This is why I think and this is very much in our (commercial department of the Estonian FA) plans, to help the clubs and to actively promote the football in Estonia, as this is elementary as well – that football as a whole gets more recognition and awareness among the people.

Football is already the number one sport in Estonia when it comes to players as well as followers. But especially when it comes to following the football on the local side there is still a lot of improvement which has to be done and this is very important for the local clubs and one of the main difficulties they face.

Since independence in the early 90’s we now really see the last players of the first generation (since independence of course) of players retire (Poom, Lemsalu, Reim etc.) and in order for the local clubs to “market” themselves, in particular in football, tradition and rivalry are some key components and this is simply at the moment still in the beginning phase, but everyone can see that football is continuously growing, not just on the professional level, but at all levels.

2) The Estonian Meistriliiga attendance is one of the lowest – if not the lowest – in Europe? Why haven’t the Estonian football fans found the Estonian league?

Well there are several factors which play into this. One of the main points, which I already raised in my first answer, is tradition and rivalry. The Meistriliiga is a very young league. Due to historic reasons football, during the Soviet times, was often referred to as a Russian sport by a lot of people, in particular the older generation (nevermind that football was quite oppressed in Estonia during Soviet times).

Football leagues live from tradition, rivalries, competitiveness of the league, stars and “characters”, local roots! This takes time, but we are already seeing progress here. Take for example FC Kurressaare in the Meistriliiga. This club is very much embedded into the community and most players are from Kurressaare. The attendance numbers are continuously growing and a local following has been established. It is important for them now to build on this as continuity is so important.

Also looking back a little bit – the first years of independence in Estonia and therefore the start of professional football again in this country also saw, international, and in particular English football, grew massively in importance and awareness in Europe.

A lot of the young people who are now playing in Estonia are fancying a team from the Premiership, also, but to a lesser extent, a team from La Liga, the German Bundesliga or Italy.

I will repeat – the interest in football in Estonia is much higher than people probably realise, unfortunately, and this goes back to your initial question, we haven’t seen the mass of these fans in Estonian stadiums. Now this is also a psychological factor which comes into here. It is so much easier to support a “foreign” team like Liverpool, Barcelona or Bayern Munich, with top stars, great football and to a certain extent guaranteed success, than a local team, which obviously doesn’t play such successful football or doesn’t have the star players.

I have the absolute deepest respect to those fans that follow their team through whole Estonia to support them!

Regular football fans, those for who the football is number one priority, not the “entertainment factor” of it (which doesn’t mean that I think that people should also be entertained at the stadium and that the facilities have to be improved, like food and drink stands, toilets, pre-match entertainment etc.), those people have a special reason why they support a football team.

Most of the time it has to do with local heritage, for some it might be because the whole family has supported this team, maybe because of the image of a team (like a “working men’s” club), some because they had their first real football experience with this club.

But for all of those, the success is not the main point why they follow “their” team. Nor are they at the stadium to be entertained, as a matter of fact, as Nick Hornby said quite rightly, they are there for 90 minutes of “suffering” as during the time of the match some cannot really relax and be entertained but suffers with his team (maybe some of what I say is lost here in English translation )

Now, I have seen the support the fans have given the U19 team during the U19 qualifiers in Tallinn this May and also the Portugal match. I haven’t been to the England qualifiers a couple of years ago but spoke with a lot of people who have been to the England as well as the Portugal match and everyone told me that the Portugal match has been far better in terms of support and atmosphere. Of course it was also very emotional as it was Mart Pooms last match, but what I witnessed on this day was truly great.

Not just were we in my eyes the better team and if we would have been more clinical in front of goal could have won the match (against a Top 10 team of the world), but the passion of the fans was unbelievable! So it shows that at national team level, although without being really too successful yet, the Estonian Football fans have established this fan culture. I don’t think that it is a coincidence that after the U19 and Portugal matches the attendance numbers in the Meistriliiga grew, at least for a short time, quite significantly.

The development of football, and therefore of course also the local leagues, needs these positive impacts, and therefore also the Brazil match is so important and can hopefully be some kind of a catalyser for this and in general I hope that people start to realise that the often unfair and inappropriate negativism from some parts is not helping the development of the game in Estonia at all.

[Martin]

3) The older leagues like the English, German etc… rely on traditions. In the Internet and TV age, do you feel that Estonian league will need to find another way than just to wait and hope that traditions will spread? Please elaborate.

To pick up at the point I made already – tradition is not something which you can force or artificially pretend to have achieved. Just to refer to your club being 80, 90 or 100 years old that doesn’t mean that from now on you have established a football tradition.

You cannot pretend something to the people which is simply not true, as you do cheat on them and this is simply the worst thing you can do. Football is based on traditions, on experiences, and this cannot be just taken away.

Also just to have some football clips on the web, mobile phones, shiny TV competitions etc. will not take away the fact that tradition has to be build over the years.

But that doesn’t mean by any means that the new media age can be a great chance, in particular as quite a lot can be used and accessed very easily nowadays (also with low initial costs) for football clubs and associations to raise the awareness of football, spark interest, advertise the game! Take Vannas wondergoal against Brondby for example – after three days the YouTube clip had already 300.000 clicks (now already more than 400.000).

This put Vanna and his club FC Flora at least for some time into the spotlight and people realise that not only the likes of Steven Gerrard can score goals like this.

Now of course, just a video will not get the masses into the stadium, but again continuity is the point. I do think, and in particular in Estonia where you nearly access Internet everywhere, that the digital media can be very much used to inform the people and to communicate with your fans.

This is why the FA have started their own YouTube channel and we are in the planning stage of an own web channel for the future. We are already on FaceBook and Twitter and have run a couple of successful campaigns including ticket competitions.

We are implementing a newsletter at the moment, with picture and video elements, feedback option etc. We are all doing this on a daily basis, we are communicating with football fans via Facebook every day.

But not only the FA is active - I just recently I saw a video clip of the 3rd division team SK Noorus 96 Jõgeva, where they advertised their next home match – brilliant in my opinion!

Of course content is king and it is important to understand this. More and more people are not only interested in the mere results but also in the stories, which are happening besides the football.

To summarize it – yes I think that the digital media and TV age possesses a lot of opportunities to promote football, in particular for smaller nations, and it should and will be exploited more and more by clubs and federations alike, but it cannot replace tradition.


4) How surprised were you to see the situation (not only infrastructure, but also extra entertainment and services that were provided) at the stadiums when you arrived?

I take out of your question that you assume that I was negatively surprised. I wasn’t. This doesn’t mean that I am naive and don’t see that there is a lot of improvement to be done in the infrastructure in Estonian football, as well as into the services and entertainment at matches.

Nevertheless I would like to point out that the Estonian FA has done a substantial job in the last couple of years to invest into the infrastructure of football (and not for example into a commercial department as the infrastructure has a higher priority and now the time has come to start to be able to really have something, which can be commercially exploited).

For the national team games we have started to implement pre-match entertainment (football based! i.e. children shooting on the goal wall, do football parcours etc.) and the feedback has been really good so far (to my knowledge not one negative feedback).

We also started to take advantage of the vast opportunities of the A. Le Coq Arena (which is probably the best stadium in the Baltics by the way) by establishing some VIP Hospitality with the EJL Business Club in the North End.

Now, this is at the A. Le Coq Arena where the opportunities are of course higher than at other stadiums. But I have also been to a couple of other places where I have seen fantastic facilities, like in Rakvere or Viljandi for example.

What I think is very important for the future and also a task which the clubs have (and should have), is to make sure that at every match there is food and drink available, in the colder days also hot drinks.

This is and must be possible and would already increase the services at the stadium immensely. In the longer run, it would be important to see the development of more club houses / facilities where fans can meet before and after the match, enjoy some drink and food and talk about the match. This also develops the fan culture and is a very important issue.

Again this depends very much also on financial aspects, but to fulfil a certain standard of food and drink, but also toilets or issues like match day programmes is something, which in the higher leagues is possible and the clubs have to be more active in this.

Regarding “pre-match entertainment” this is not only a question of human resources and money but also of feasibility and if the facilities are there. But at some stadiums I could well imagine that in the summer days a nice “pre-match-fan-party” could be arranged for example, but I think that the other mentioned points are more important for a start.

5) It seems to me that Estonian clubs have not really tried to bring people to the stadiums. Do you share that view or what are your thoughts on that matter?

This is a very general assumption and I cannot share a view like this. We have already spoken about the difficulties the clubs are facing and I repeat that I am saying that I think that there are a lot of really good people out there in the clubs who have ideas and the willingness to do things, but some has to be realistic what their resources are, not just in monetary terms but also in human resources.

For example during the pre-match entertainment we had at the U19 matches we had up to 6 volunteers plus two full time workers continuously on the place so everything is going smoothly, with a lot of work done beforehand behind the scenes. This should not be underestimated.

What I do think though is that the clubs have to increase their attempts of bringing people to the stadium, even if earlier attempts might have not been successful. This is somehow “easily said” as the main priority of the clubs is naturally the team and coaching, but there is a lot of potential still unused.

I also think that the clubs should work more together with each other in trying to get people into the stadium. Not just the home team, but also the away team, in particularly if the teams are from the same city or area, like in Tallinn.

If a home team has 2-300 supporters at the home match, it must be possible to lure a majority of them also to an away match if the game takes place in the same city. The interaction with fans I think is crucial and the clubs have to focus more on this in my opinion, as well as looking to attract new fans by directly contacting them.

In particular young fans are important as these are the future and once you have got them “on your side” you have the very good chance to have got a loyal follower for the years to come. Again this has to do something with fan culture and the nature of football.

If you don’t like a particular food, like a certain brand of cheese, you will probably never eat, nevermind buy it, your liaison to a football team though doesn’t vanish, even if you are not being successful.

[Martin]

6) Can you bring some excellent examples of how clubs can bring more people into the stadium?

It’s always very hard to generalise here as clubs simply have often completely different environments and structures.

I also don’t know if these are “excellent examples” but at least some ideas:

Club Memberships (for example for Meistriliiga clubs):

A lot of Meistriliiga clubs already have some fan clubs / groups but at least for some clubs it could be interesting to establish an official fan club of their team. This would not just give the clubs the chance to gather data of their fans (and therefore stay in constant contact with them and inform them about the club and what’s going on) but also gives them the chance to ideally involve some of their sponsors in this.

For instance if you become a member of the official club with your membership card you get discount x at official sponsors of the team. The club could organise monthly meetings, maybe even decide a place where to meet before the matches.

Once a month a fan meeting with one player who answers questions. Get fans involved with the PR of the club (maybe encouraging fans to contribute to an official Fan Club newspaper (or Emagazine like the Baltic League does). For companies this is an extra value as they can directly contact a very interesting target group, for the club it is an ideal instrument to create fan loyalty and for the fans, as long as the membership in an official Fanclub really gives them some benefits, it could be a great way to show their belonging to the club while receiving some nice features and to develop their fan culture.

I have worked for more than two years in the field of (fan) club membership and I see a great potential in this. Again, something like this can be started without a massive initial investment and then over the time can be developed accordingly (CRM management, Online Marketing etc.)

Also I see community work as vital for the clubs, not just to attract more young football players to the club (this has to be the main priority of everything, to get more people actually playing football), but also to get more followers of your team.

This includes football programmes with schools, youth days, partnerships with local institutions, events in the community (like a FC xxx football day), etc. This is of course something which cannot be done overnight and it needs a very clear structure and planning, but eventually the clubs have to embed themselves much more into the local community as this is the basic field of the support they should get.

Points like a certain standard of facilities and match day experience (from food, drinks, WC’s, half time music, competitions etc..) as well as a continuing Press and PR Work (Online and Offline) are elementary things which have to be done by the clubs on a continuous basis.

Even top clubs in the Bundesliga and elsewhere understand nowadays that they have to go towards potential fans, directly approach them. This is of course even more the case for Meistriliiga and other League Clubs.

7) What can Estonian Football Association do to help the clubs?

We can assist them for sure. How this looks like has to be seen in each case. One thing we are planning to establish are regular meetings with all stakeholders involved in the game, this means the FA, the clubs, the fans, the media, sponsors and even players.

I think that these round table discussions can be quite fruitful if they are organised well. Everyone has ideas and certain standpoints and I strongly believe in knowledge and information sharing.

The FA can organise this and we will in the future to have a continuous discussion on how to develop the game. Certain workshops might also be a possibility and a clear structure, in order to get the most out of this.

Also we are in the planning stage of an image brochure as well as a Estonian FA Image campaign (which should be done every year) to promote football as a whole in Estonia. This is something which definitely cannot be done over night, but I am very sure that this will be perceived as a very positive thing by the clubs.

In terms of pushing club football the FA, as mentioned in an earlier question, has set the structures for an improved PR and Press work.

This means regular newsletters, Social Media platforms like Facebook, YouTube or Twitter, Online media campaigns as well as continuous improvements on our Jalgpall.ee website.

All of them will promote the club football in Estonia. We are also in the planning stage of hosting our own Club Football homepage, but this is too early really to get too much into detail.

I think the FA can also be quite helpful in organising and promoting events together with the clubs, for instance pre-match events or fan meetings. Projects like the summer camps are for example a massive opportunity for the clubs to attract these young footballers to their own clubs.

Our massive campaign for the U19 tournament showed that there is quite some interest of young people in football and that is something where the FA and the clubs can work much closer together (for example why not present your club during some Youth national team games at the pre match event or even run some of the attractions?).

Also a lot of the things the FA are working on, like for example are we thinking about an Official Estonian FA Club Membership (see question before), some of them can be also taken over to a certain extent by the clubs and we can help them in setting things up like this.

This is why the communication between the FA and the Clubs as well as all stakeholders involved has to be developed and we will do this. One thing has to be very clear though – the FA has to set the structures and assist the clubs, but the work still has to be carried out by the clubs, the responsibility lies with them.

8) Have you set any goals for yourself – for example attendance wise for Meistriliiga? What are they?

Of course I have set myself goals what I want to achieve, but this doesn’t include any particular number of attendance for Meistriliiga matches as this is not my main indicator. We have several goals we want to achieve like

• By the time of the Euros 2012 to have strengthened our position as the number 1 sport in Estonia and to be perceived by this by the public and media!

• To build up a commercial structure in all areas of Estonian Football, while preserving the philosophy and values of the EJL

• To strengthen and promote the local leagues like the top league in domestic football, the Meistriliiga

• To create revenues, which can be reinvested into the infrastructure of Estonian Football

• Sustainable progress and steady growth!

These are all very broad goals and there are a lot of ways how to get there and targets have to be set in the process of achieving them (and of course achieving them doesn’t mean that it stops there, but we have to strive to continuously improve).

So to get there, there are so many issues which have to be addressed and who all contribute to this include: Ticketing structure national team games, new commercial structure in terms of sponsoring opportunities (for the whole FA, not just for the A- Team national team), the EJL Business Club, Club Memberships, ever developing Press and PR work (Jalgpall 3.0), CRM Management, Database Management, Business Development, identifying new revenue streams (like live viewing of WC matches, pre-match hospitality, Club football development (see above), Meistriliiga development, Image campaigns, Advertising (On and Offline), TV development Meistriliiga games, Merchandising, Marketing of Grassroots projects – just to name a few.

To come back to your initial question – I definitely want to see an increase in the attendance of Meistriliiga matches and at some stage we will also have some numbers which we want to achieve in terms of growth.

But this will apply for next year (which doesn’t mean that we are not already working on this). The commercial department has been in place for 4 months now and the challenges and tasks we do have are numerous and will take time, but for me they are all achievable and I look forward to “tackle” them and feel privileged and at the same time excited that I can be a part of this development!

A last note here: Quite some tasks we have already started to tackle and quite some people might see this only as some temporary action because of the Brazil match.

This is absolutely not the case – Brazil will be over on the 13th of August, but everything what we have done so far we will keep doing and of course develop even much more!

9) Do you have something else to add to the topic that I might have not asked?

Well, I could write another 10 pages about this topic but I guess it is already quite a lot, so I will keep this for a second interview

[odralauk]

eesti keeles seda ei ole?

[Jasper]

EESSÕNA
Et ma tapsin selle teema ära, mõtlesin natuke tekstiblokke veel tekitada.

Millalgi eelmisel aastal kirjutasin ajakirja Jalgpall tsipa Eesti meistriliiga ja jalgpalli turustamisest. Materjali jäi veel kõvasti üle ja sellest kõigest tahaks siia kopeerida Christian Happeli vastused minu mõnele küsimusele (Happeli luba selleks olema).

Natuke taustast ka: enne seda intekat olin Happeli suhtes võrdlemisi skeptiline, kuid tema jutt ja ideed olid väga sümpaatsed ja ma tõesti loodan, et ta saab nende teostamisega hakkama ja ma ei pea jälle skeptiliseks muutuma.

Ehk siis sa vaid arendasid selle mehe mõtteid? Nice steal

Linkige keegi facebook ja twitter ka.

[Martin]

Ehk siis sa vaid arendasid selle mehe mõtteid? Nice steal Linkige keegi facebook ja twitter ka.

Nagu päris algpostituses mainitud, siis needsamad mõtted leiad sa siitsamast foorumist (või mõnest vanemast versioonist) ka umbes aastast 2007 või 2008. Võib-olla isegi varemgi, pole eriline jalgratas, mida leiutada. Lihtsalt kummaline on, et keegi pole osanud sõitma hakata.

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Estoni...l/110931113814
Twitter: http://twitter.com/ESTfootball
(leitavad EJLi kodukal paremast veerust)

[Jasper]

Twitter: http://twitter.com/ESTfootball
(leitavad EJLi kodukal paremast veerust)

9:51 AM Sep 9th, 2009 from web - pole vist erilist mõtet ...

[aanvaller]

mis sa nüüd, me oleme ju e-riik

[Jasper]

Mulle jällegi, et peale 9 septembrit on toimuinud nii mõndagi.

[meesmuiste]

Martin, ma arvan, et sa ei tapnud teemat ära, vaid võtsid paljudel sõnad suust ja said nad panna mõtlema. Suurem arutelu on muidugi alati teretulnud. Tänud inteka eest, üpris huvitav lugemine

[vaikiv mees]

Mulle jällegi, et peale 9 septembrit on toimuinud nii mõndagi.

no nüüd jälle on jah
(eks allpool käsitletut võib täheldada ka noorte ja aktiivsete N.K eestvedajate juures, kes vahepeal oma kodulehekülge unarusse jättes "kalaparvena" (T.H.) üha uute ja uute väljundite poole tormavad)

kolumnit ja värki-
T.Hennoste: twitter on mõttetu paik

[Martin]

Tere!

Üks EKA inimene võttis minuga ühendust ja palus infot jalgpalliluule kohta, sest ta koostab sellel teemal raamatut.

Et sina ja teised teate ENDA KLUBI laule ja luulet (praeguseid ja vanu), siis palun saada mulle enda kontakt (privaatsõnumiga näiteks), et saaksin talle edastada, kui midagi selle vastu pole.

Ja ei pea olema meistriliiga meeskonnad. Kui tegemist on IV liigaga ja teil on toredad hõisked/laulud, siis andke endast märku.

Aitäh!