Lack of SPFL sponsor is unacceptable

At long last, Scottish football sorted itself out this summer!

Now we have all the things we need for our national game to become great once again - merger of the league bodies, more evenly distributed prize money, the beginnings of a pyramid system - if only we had a ten team top flight, Henry McLeish would even be able to sleep at night...

So, the start of the 2013/14 season heralds a Great New Dawn for the Scottish Professional Football League.  Everyone can agree on that, right?

It seems like the fans aren't the only ones who are taking all this bluster with a pinch of salt.  Sponsors are, too.

The first round of top flight games is already over, yet the league still does not have title sponsorship.  Given that the SPL (Clydesdale Bank) and the SFL (Irn Bru) managed to each have their own sponsors last season, this is a bit of a surprise.

It should certainly be a surprise to Neil Doncaster and the rest of the SPFL board.  Back in mid-June, Doncaster proudly told the press that the new league would "enhance the value of being associated with football in this country".  At that point, nearly two months ago, he claimed "the discussions on a new title sponsor remain ongoing".  By the beginning of July, he was very bullish.  “There is considerable new interest.  Over the last few days we have been contacted by a number of companies in terms of a title sponsorship and other partnership agreements.”

That optimism appears to have been misplaced.  Or, possibly, to have been bulls***.

Not to worry, though, for The Powers That Be came up with a solution that couldn't possibly fail - rename the leagues.  Because 'The Scottish Professional Football League Premiership' is a really snappy title for a product.  Rewind 50 years, and 'the Premiership' was a title that leading Soviet politicians used to kill each other in order to obtain.  Now, it's the name of a league that, in every single parallel universe in existence, is won by Celtic.  How times change.

The lower tiers, have, imaginatively, been named 'The Championship', 'League One' and 'League Two'.  When pressed on this, Doncaster claimed weeks of discussion had taken place before this decision.  One can only hope he was lying - if it took them weeks to decide that the best they could do was copy the names of England's divisions and try and piggy-back on their established brand, then that is a little worrying.  I can't help feeling that, if he had held a Consultation Group in a children's primary school looking for new names, they'd have thought of that.  If you're going to put that little effort in, at least call the top division The Celtic Always Win The League - at least it would do what it said on the tin.

The new names for the divisions, and the rather cheesy new logo, have still failed to tempt a sponsor to part with their hard-earned cash.

But it's okay.  In June and July, the potential increase in sponsorship money was a major reason for reform.  Now, according to Doncaster, it's not actually essential - "More than 90% of the income is from broadcasting.  And title sponsorship is only a part of the remaining 10%".

If nothing else, the man can at least boast that he has chutzpah.

I strongly suspect the proportion of income from a title sponsor to be much higher than that.  If I'm right, the lack of one will have a significant impact on prize money.  Given that financial redistribution was one of the reasons for forming the SPFL, it's going to look bloody stupid giving everyone bigger slices of cake if the cake has actually got smaller.

Putting aside my pathological cynicism for a moment, this summer's reforms were, on the face of it at least, a chance for a new beginning.  But Doncaster and his cronies have stuck to 'promoting' the product in the same old way - through banal statements stinking of spin rather than transparency, which couldn't inspire less trust if they came from the mouth of the Iraqi Information Minister.

The recent launch of the SPFL saw Doncaster joined by Graeme Souness and John Collins.  The main topic of discussion?  Not the summer's transfer activity.  Not who could challenge Celtic on the field, or, at least, who would be best of the rest.  The main topic was how much they liked the f*****g logo.

Over the last couple of weeks, we've had a rare fillip - St. Johnstone's outstanding run in the Europa League.  More than seven thousand people went to the second leg of the Rosenborg tie.  If anyone at the SPFL had any public relations expertise, they would have tried to jump on the back of that and claim that the Perth Saints' shock win over the Norwegian champions was a sign that the quality of Scottish football is higher than some might believe, and that the support is still out there - heck, that statement might actually be more true than anything else they normally spout.  Instead, silence.  And because Scottish sports hacks make their living from being spoon-fed, I looked on the Scotsman website last Friday morning to see the report of the St Johnstone game well down their list of stories...below several articles about a certain third-tier Glasgow club, and two stories about Celtic (one of which was the report on their game with Elfsborg, a full 24 hours older than the St Johnstone game, and the other an interview with new signing Derk Boerrigter).

Plus ça change?

Whisper it, but Scottish football actually has a few things to shout about at the moment..

Only one or two, mind.

But if Doncaster and co could shout about these things, instead of spouting the usual crap, that might help.

L.