the Celtic world huddle: value for money?

If there is one thing that just about all Celtic supporters are agreed on it is that Celtic needs money to buy players to win games at the highest level. The £64,000 question is: how should Celtic raise the money?

One of the latest initiatives, and one very heavily promoted by Celtic Plc, is the Celtic World Huddle which supercedes the Huddle Club (for kids) and the Millennium Club (for adults). There are now two categories of membership for adults (Select and First Team) and two categories for kids (Under 16 and Under 5). Prices vary from £30 for Select, £20 for First Team, £15 for Under-16's to £12 for the Under 5's, with an extra £3 charge across all categories for overseas supporters.

Although Celtic claim that the scheme is "uniting Celtic fans worldwide", implying some sort of membership scheme, the World Wide Huddle is in fact a classic case of what marketing executives call segmentation - dividing up every bit of your customer base by their key characteristics and then offering them specially tailored packages of benefits that best suit their needs.

It is quite a good idea where the benefits are accurately pitched and fairly priced. But does the World Wide Huddle meet these criteria? Sadly, when the key benefits of membership are subjected to close examination it is far from clear if the benefits match the sales pitch.

1. Preferential treatment in ticket sales for the two adult categories.
The promotional material's claim for preferential treatment on ticketing is not wholly consistent with the small print (i.e. terms & conditions). For example:

* Select members will have "priority" access to "available home" tickets before the public sale.
But the terms & condition makes clear that these tickets are not guaranteed and a call to Celtic Park confirmed that they need to be purchased at least three weeks' prior to the game.

* First Team members are "guaranteed an allocation of two home match tickets throughout the season"; that's one home ticket twice a season. But if you want to go with your son/daughter/friends, presumably they would have to join the First Team too if you are to avoid travelling solo.

* The promotional material for the "First Team" refers to membership being "guaranteed " a ticket; but the terms & conditions makes reference to the fact that this is "subject to availability".

2. Membership of the season book waiting list.

You can now only get onto the season book waiting list by joining the Select Team membership of the Huddle. Millennium Club members keep their existing place. This does however raise the question as to where on the list those people who joined before the advent of the Millennium Club stand in the queue? In other words:

* It is unclear just how long the season book waiting list is and what position in the queue Select Team Membership buys you.

* As the season book offered to Millenium Club membership in the close season explicitly excluded the two home Rangers SPL ties the potential value of paying to queue for a season book is further diminished. Are Celtic going to offer any season books including the Rangers ties in future?

3. "Over £100 vouchers for Celtic Merchandise" says the promotional material. This is potentially a significant benefit. But in order to use each of the thirteen "£10 off" vouchers, you have to spend at least £45. So to save £130 you have to spend at least £320. Or to re-coup your £30 membership you will need to spend £135. A benefit for big spenders only?

4. The possibility of your son/daughter being selected to be a ball boy/girl or a mascot as part of membership of the Under 16's.

While a tremendous experience for the kids involved it is still in reality a very remote possibility for the vast majority of World Wide Huddle members.

5. Gifts.

Your membership gets you a certificate of membership, a badge, a glossy magazine and a video summarising the history of the last two seasons. Again, for subscribers to The View, or those who have already purchased their video stock, the benefits would appear to be pretty marginal. Would a discount on general video purchases not have been more appropriate?

6. "Direct communication links with the Club."

It is unclear how these links will differ from the communications from Celtic via The View and the e-mail messaging service. Essentially what it would appear to consist of is becoming a recipient of a direct marketing service from Celtic, not in itself a bad thing if that's what you want to sign up for, but worth paying £30 for?

Conclusion

To summarise, when subjected to an in-depth analysis it is not obvious that the real benefits of membership of the Worlde Huddle are substantial. The principal benefit of the Select Membership - paying for privileged access to ticket sales over non-members - is created wholly artificially; and, as the terms & conditions clearly state, such priority access to tickets is "subject to availability". It will be interesting to see just how many tickets for the first home Rangers game are made available to World Huddle members.

There is also a question of equity. Before the Millennium Club supporters without season tickets were all treated equally. With the introduction of the Millenium Club/World Wide Huddle those supporters without season books effectively have to pay to join a queue to secure privileged access to popular games for which they are not guaranteed a ticket. You used to be able to join the queue for free. Now you have to pay for the privilege, which is unfair. It is like creating a turnstile to get to the turnstile - and yet another financial barrier to getting to see Celtic play football.

In business, to build a sustainable relationship requires the building of mutually beneficial relationships. In itself the World Wide Huddle is not a bad idea. But if it doesn't offer real benefits to Celtic supporters then in the medium term it will fail and rightly so, leaving only a bitter taste in the mouth among the long-suffering and deep-pocketed Celtic support.

The Plc should re-examine the structure of the Huddle's benefits so that they become real benefits- there lies the route to truly sustainable income stream.

The Celtic Trust will be taking this matter up with Ian McLeod at our next quarterly meeting.

The Celtic Trust

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