I spoke with Watford retail director today. A phone call had been arranged from an email last week.a The reason given for the Ayr Utd away top as our 'new' away top is due to time, contracts, manufacture and availability. This l found hard to believe. I was told that it take up to a year to roll out a newly designed kit for a club under an Adidas contract. As Watford had only signed a deal in December 2016, Adidas felt they would not have enough time,etc to come up with a 'new' design for the 2017/18 season. Remind me how large are Adidas! Watford were offered several templates by Adidas and had to choose one. This is the best that they could come up with. I asked why the kit is £50 when it just a copy of another team. You can buy the same top for £17.99 online. Watford have chosen not to sell any badges individually. My guess is that some fans would go down the fair, but cheaper route. They seem contractually obligated to maintain the high selling price. An iron on badge and sponsor print £32.01. All of this means that there will be two new kits next season. I was told that all major kit suppliers dictate the time and terms of the shirt deal. The club were in a position where they could not force any change. Good of them to call, it was appreciated and was explained fairly,but the whole 'new' kit issue leaves me feeling that we have been sold a 'pup' by Adidas and the club would have known this early in the deal. They did go on to say how fantastic the hospitality is, the new club shop, seating facilities , stands, views from the stands, the pitch, club website and the community work. I said the fans would watch them play on a Parks pitch as long as they won. I mentioned about the poor standard of play last season and the worrying concerns for survival that many fans have for the upcoming season, the 'fantastic' facilities will not score goals. It all went silent.
They'd be decent value if they had a shelf-life of more than one season. I very much like the home shirt and think the away's OK, but am not really prepared to shell out £50 for them. I'll take a chance and hang on until any reductions kick in towards the end of the season, and if all the fat-bastud sizes have gone by then, then so be it !
Full marks for honestly saying what you felt. And fair dos for toughing it out with the retail director regarding team performance and the club's attempt to deflect from it by selling prawn sandwiches. I'm sure he'll go back to Gino and pass on your concerns about our chances next season. Do you still have his email? I'd like to let him know I fully expect a fourth season in the Premier League, and I'll tell him I won't be buying the away shirt at the same time. It would be really great if you could put this to the club at an 'At your/our place' do, where the club can let you really know what they think, and your fellow fans can express their appreciation of your comments and assumptions, though don't be surprised if a few may disagree, or think you are being a trifle negative.
Thanks for the feedback. I find it difficult to believe a company like Adidas cannot come up with original designs and bring to market in a couple of months. Any royal or major celebrity who wears a fashion item will have their clothes copied and in the shops in a couple of weeks.
It's a kit, it's yellow, and it has three stripes on it. If we have a great season, we'll remember it fondly for years to come. If we get relegated, we'll all unanimously agree that it was sh1t and one of the many reasons we went down. We'll forget about it next season when the next kit comes out. For the record my favourite of recent times was the 13/14 kit, and what a season that was.
Sorry, you were talking about the red kit. Point still stands though. I know I'll look back at it fondly in a few years time if we finish top 10 and have a nice cup run. Just as I look back at that loans.co.uk kit with those horrible dots on the shoulders.
I know your intentions were good (asking why the kit is copied etc) but at the end of the day, the club is getting literally millions out of being partnered with Adidas.... If it means the money can be spent on better players and possibly even upgrades to the stadium, I couldn't give a toss about what the kit actually looks like. Though it would have been nice to have a kit that was designed specifically for "us" - even though it is almost definitely going to happen in the following seasons anyways
Oh and also, you are kind of contradicting yourself there pal... On the one hand, you are complaining that the kit is crap but then you go onto say that even if we had a crap ground it wouldn't affect us as fans as long as we won? So if I am interpreting that correctly, surely a design of kit wouldn't affect how we supported the team as long as we won as well? If the team won games with a crap kit, i'm inclined to believe that we'd still support them... Furthermore, a 'nice' kit won't score goals either which kinda confuses your argument as well.... Ultimately though , I think "It went all silent" because they didn't really understand what you were trying prove.... Sorry, just my two cents.
I like the home kit. I can live with the away kit. I'll possibly own 1 or both when they come down in price around March. No problem at all with a template design. As I think has been mentioned elsewhere on here, there are bigger teams than us that use template kits. It's all just very meh! Really need the season to start soon.
I do think that they should lower the price of the kids shirts. It's all so short termist. Enough kids start wearing Watford shirts at school and it's more likely to start a snowball effect and make kids less embarrassed to support a smaller team. The money would be made back fairly quickly.
I think we should go back to the good old days of Changing the home & Away strips on alternate years. Shirt sponsor was optional. People probably only buy one strip a year anyway. Oh and let's keep it cordial people. Others may have different interests and values than yourself. They're entitled to have them.
Nice idea, Meister, but impractical. In an ideal world we'd have a different kit for every match, which would make us loads of money, but Adidas sadly aren't up to it. Your mum, perhaps?
Millions maybe but not many. There's a well held misconception about what clubs make through kit sales. This article https://www.theguardian.com/football/the-set-pieces-blog/2016/aug/24/transfer-window-market-myths expalins it and states that "Adidas, Nike, Puma and other kit suppliers get 85-90% of shirt sale revenue and this is the industry standard" I know clubs get paid direct money but ive also read that clubs our size get between one and two millions pounds. Say we got a 2 million advance from Adidas.. added to which our shirt sales are supposed to be in the region of 10,000. I make that a further 75 grand from shirt sales (15% of £50 = £7.50 x 10K) and lets surmise half as much again from other Adidas merchandise (which i doubt it would be) best case scenario would be that the deal is worth little more than £2.1m to the club. If ive got my sums right that wont even cover Troy's wage bill. PS Shouldnt mention this.. but the Man U training top Pogba is wearing in that link is identical to one we have this season
I am not an expert in this sort of thing but i'm sure we'd be given more than 2 million from Adidas. I know we aren't the same size as Manchester United, but they were given £72.7 million last season by Adidas of which is part of a £750 million 10 year deal... As I said, we are not Man U but we are still in the Premier League; where offering £30 million for an average player is normal... I have a feeling we are probably being paid something around £10 million (at least) to have their sponsor. Which wouldn't be too shabby... I could be completely wrong but £2 million is barely anything these days; especially given the "giants of sportswear" that Adidas are. (even by Championship standards). http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business...nited-finances-soar-adidas-sponsorship-kicks/
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/football...t-bromwich-albion---premier-league-kit-deals/ According to this article West Brom & Swansea only got £2m from their kit deals with Adidas last season, much lower than Man United. I imagine we have a similar contract.
I reckon George by Asda would give us at least £2m if not more if it meant they could break into pro sports market
£2m is average for a club of our size. In our first season back in the Prem we received one million from Puma (no slouches in the market themselves) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/football...--premier-league-kit-deals-and-what-they-are/ What you have to remember is that we sell an average of 10,000 shirts worldwide. United sell 1.75 million.. 175 times more. So even before paying shipping costs etc Adidas will only bring in 425 grand from selling our shirts. OK it will be a bit more with shorts, training kit etc.. but i think they'd still be losing money giving us 2 million.
He stopped chatting the kit issue and went into to PR mode about the stands, seats, blah, blah. I was only really interested in why Adidas/Watford could not provide a kit that had not already been used by another UK side.
Fair point. I am just a bit confused as to why the sponsorship money for kit is so low compared to other sponsorship deals.
It's not just kit actually.. found this earlier while researching the whole sponsorship thing. http://www.totalsportek.com/football/premier-league-shirt-sponsorship-deals/ I cant vouch for it's accuracy but if true, £2m from FXPro wont go a long way and the difference between the top and lower clubs is as wide as the sports wear deals. Really it's chicken feed compared to the TV money and as such it goes without saying that we got to the Prem at exactly the right time.
Yet you brought up the team's performance last season and how 'we' were all nervous about relegation. Yeah, totally only interested in the kit.
Sure of? Well.. you do the math. 50 quid a shirt and if what ive read is correct we sell 10K shirts. Even if Adidas kept everything that's half a million pounds. Where is the rest coming from? Sock sales? Training wear? I doubt the residual market for Watford fc related goods is worth very much. Could it be that in this highly competitive market sportswear companies see getting their badge on a premiership clubs kit as a loss leader? Using it more like a sponsorship deal to promote brand image & placement.. and if Adidas didnt... then Nike would have.
Quite Stevo. Businesses pay for advertising. Adidas is a business paying WFC for advertising. I doubt that the specific sales figures for WFC gear come into the calculation much at all ...
