Exclusive: Swansea Vice-Chairman Leigh Dineen answers questions on commercial deals

With the Swans progressing on and off the field, I thought it'd be a useful exercise to try and get a grasp of what commercial deals are in place

Since promotion to the Premiership (and even before) the Swans have garnered more and more attention from the press and the football world alike, which has allowed them to secure increasingly impressive link-ups with big-name partners. 

With the announcement last week that we'd struck a deal with LG, I thought it would be an opportune time to ask the club about commercial deals in general, and Swansea City Vice-Chairman Leigh Dineen (who oversees commercial activities) has kindly agreed to answer some questions for me on the new deal with LG, as well as a couple of other things I was curious about. So, without further ado...

The reason I asked if you'd like to answer a few questions is I'm not 100% as to what the new agreement with LG will entail (where they've become official electronics & mobile phone partners). What can you tell us about the agreement?  

The initial partnership is centred around their release of their new phone. We have agreed a years partnership with them that hopefully will evolve in the future. The agreement is heavily centred around advertising rights.

 

Will we see tangible commercial activities or is this a deal that will simply benefit both club and commercial partner through increased exposure and "brand awareness"?

 

It is mainly centred around brand awareness for this year as the agreement was set up quite late. We are hopeful that there will be opportunities in the future to develop commercial activities

 

You stated in the BBC documentary about Swansea City that when the current regime took control, one of the first things which had to be decided was who took on exactly what tasks. Who was it who looked at the commercial sponsorship side of things back then, and what kind of deals were in place?

 

I did, and there weren’t really any deals of note in place. Even today it is difficult for clubs in the lower tiers to secure lucrative partnership/sponsorship deals as most are based around brand exposure and the lower leagues do not get the type of exposure required. The kit was being manufactured locally and a lot of sponsorship/advertising had dried up due to the situation the club was in.

 

Was there a moment where a new sponsorship deal was penned and the board looked at the numbers involved and thought "wow, we've done well here - we've come a long way since Stretchout!"? 

Each and every front of shirt we have done has been a step forward in the past few years. 32Red was influencial for us as it was done in the Championship and they were a brand that had sponsored a Premier league team in the past. It wasnt all about the financials for that deal – it was about positioning ourselves with a very well known Company.

 

With the club growing so fast, have you had problems where you've agreed a deal with one party, only for the club to quickly outgrow the deal that was penned, leading to the club having to renegotiate and/or pull out of the agreement? Obviously, the 32RED deal ended early - was that what happened there?

 

Yes to a certain extent and we now are very careful as to how long a deal we sign.

 

I understand we have/had an ongoing deal with Infiniti (Nissan's luxury-car division) - is that still ongoing? What does that involve and does it benefit the club?

 

The deal with Infiniti was for one year only.

 

On the official site, I can see we've got a shirt sponsorship with GWFX, the new agreement with LG, as well as Carlsberg, Adidas & the Barclays Premier League being listed as official partners. What role do Carlsberg play, and do we have any other commercial agreements in place which aren't openly listed on the website?

 

We have a couple of betting deals as well. One with European rights and one with Asian. Carlsberg are now the official beer of the premier league and they have also aligned themselves alongside some Premier League clubs. We are one of those

 

Are the club looking into things such as "training kit sponsors" as extra ways of producing revenue, or would there be a line drawn in the sand where the club felt we already have enough partners?

 

The likes of Man United have the reach to do these sort of deals whereas clubs like us would struggle at this stage to split training away from front of shirt etc. Companies aligned to the likes of Man United see more value in being able to promote the fact they are a partner of Man U rather than in the base exposure of being seen on the training top. 

Building the brand takes years and years of Premier league football not just a few years so we have a long way to go. Some clubs in the premier league have been there for 15-20 years and still cannot demand the rights fees that Man United and Liverpool can. Even Man City, Chelsea etc struggle to do so.

 

The one-year deal penned with GWFX was for £2million, whereas Fulham's deal with FXPro is worth £4million a year. Are the club looking to renew the deal with GWFX, or are other options being explored?

 

Don’t believe everything you read with regards to what a front of shirt deal is worth (although of course worth is different to what was actually paid as well). I know of one shirt sponsorship deal where it was quoted that the club received £5 million - in fact it was less than ours.

 

Lastly, could you point to two different agreements for more or less the same thing (shirt sponsorship?) which helps show how far we've come? For example, how much was the shirt sponsorship agreement worth in 2003 and how much of a smaller figure was it than the new deal with GWFX?

 

The shirt deal 10 years ago was worth less than 6 figures and we only had that due to one of our shareholders.

As I'd have probably wagered prior to these questions being answered, it comes as no surprise to me that the board are now having to factor in potential growth (and, no doubt, possible relegation to cover all the bases) when agreeing any kind of commercial deal. With LG being a South Korean firm, I'd also speculate Ki playing for the club next year would go a long way in securing an extended deal in the future. 

Also, as far as the GWFX deal goes I'm very interested to see what developments occur in the near future with regards to next season. If the club are exploring other avenues you'd imagine discussions are already ongoing, and another top-half finish coupled with (relative) European success would do no harm to our chances of securing a big, big name. 

The money raised by these deals could be crucial in a number of areas. Stadium expansion, player recruitment, construction costs of the new training bases - these are all multi-million pound projects and any commercial deal we put in place is welcome, in my opinion. As long as we don't go getting "Wonga" on the shirts, pretty much anything else is fine by me. In fairness, at the recent fans' forum the club stated that they do take into consideration the nature of the business in question before agreeing a partnership, and that's refreshing to see.

I'd be very interested to see what percentage of our revenue is now generated by commercial, merchandising and matchday sales respectively, and hopefully we can find out that from the club in due course. Yearly financial figures would give us a good idea, however with the figures involved increasing exponentially at the moment unless you know what's currently in place second-guessing the figures would be a futile exercise.

Big thanks to Leigh Dineen for taking the time to answer these questions. I doubt there's many clubs in the Premiership whose Vice-Chairman would respond so readily! It reinforces the honest and open nature with which they run the club, and as it stands we can remain proud and supportive of our board as they continue to work tirelessly behind the scenes to secure the best possible deals for the club.