An interview in the Evening News with United’s marketing director Peter Draper.
Points to bear in mind:
1) Before coming to Old Trafford Draper was a match-going Leeds fan. He now professes an allegiance to United
2) He was brought to OT after working with Peter Kenyon at Umbro.
On FC United:
“It’s only a question of scale. The most interesting thing (about FC United) is that they aren’t letting anybody in for free. They will have a sponsor in due course. If they win promotion they will want to buy better players. In order to fulfil that wish they will start to sell nice butties rather than curly ones. Whatever they say about commercialism, you can’t exist without funding of some shape or form.
“People will have to pay to go through the gates. It might only be 50p at first and then it might increase to 60p. They’ll want to sign better players. It might be that I’m playing for Stalybridge United and getting paid £35 a week and FC United want me to sign for them for £37. but I don’t knock them for it. All power to their elbow.”
On ‘selling’ United sponsorship deals to companies:
“I have to go and explain it. It may be that these people are actually helping to pay for a deal which they know nothing about. I have to help justify that.
“I think we have helped to write the rule book and some of what I’ll be saying this week [at a marketing event, ‘Brand Stretch’, ugh!] is ‘So what’s next?’
“The model which we have is based on deeper relationships for more money. The deeper relationship of the few is more beneficial to the few.
“The significant difference between now and five years ago is that everybody is getting as professional as Manchester United. We have to be as compelling a buy as the World Cup.
“We decided to be a big, international football team with the business to generate that income. We don’t think there’s anything wrong in that, provided the offer we make to customers is a good product or service at a good price.
“A lot has been written in the Press of late about the Premiership bubble having burst. It is not something we should dismiss lightly. It’s incumbent on clubs to think about this very seriously.
“Football is very well run by professional people with good ideas. There has been a little bit of over-reaction to a couple of gates, but I don’t call it clap-trap. It’s up to us to take a long and hard think about the product that football offers – all the old stuff that people are concerned about on the terraces, such as how come, whether it’s true or false, that television is dictating kick-off times?
“Maybe we could win some people back.”
On the Glazers:
“I think a few more people have heard of us in the US now. Don’t get me wrong, we were already known to a lot of people.
“I’m very supportive of Joel and Bryan. We have learned so many things from the States. You’d have to have a head as big as a planet that you couldn’t learn anything from anybody.
“My appreciation of what’s happening with the new owners is that we are being trusted to do the same thing that we were known for doing.
“They are in this for the long term. I see no distinct change. For a few years we were publicly owned. But for most of our history we have been owned by a couple of blokes.”
Of course, a profitable entity changing overnight into a debt-laden one owing hundreds of millions of pound is anything but a “distinct change” isn’t it Peter? And we wonder if your son shares your view of Glazer, because if it wasn’t him one of our spies saw down at Old Trafford the night of the protest then it was someone who looked pretty damn similar.