Newcastle United owners need to adopt the SCAMPER model – Lead the way instead of following the rest | OneFootball

I read a good article on The Mag the other day about Newcastle United fans and tickets for the friendly at Celtic, it referenced the Eighties and being able to just pay in home and away.

I loved football in the Eighties for that very reason.

I firmly believe that football is missing a trick, if it does not allow supporters to turn up and pay in. Or at least keep a section of the ground for those who are willing to get there early and queue (Even better would be to create an under eighteens section).

I went to a couple of games in Italy over twenty years ago and I remember one in particular.

It was a three o’clock kick off on a Sunday afternoon, the ground was full very quickly after the turnstiles opened at midday. Cracking atmosphere at the game, probably because Inter had brought ten thousand travelling supporters, but hey back in the Eighties, Newcastle would simply take over English towns with their volume of support, similar to Inter back then.

And so some forty years on from the paying in days of the Eighties I now pay to get a Newcastle United membership for the chance to maybe get a ticket. This season I was lucky enough to get three games for me and my son, exactly half of what we got the season before. With that trajectory we will be lucky to get a ticket next season.

The football business model in my opinion is not fit for purpose.

Football finance expert Kieran Maguire often points out the failings of football clubs to maximise revenue, as they are in a fixed mind set and continue to squeeze supporters for cash, instead of looking at the bigger picture and what the potential of the football club is.

How about binning the fixed mindset and creating a growth mindset to develop our club in a progressive direction.

Let us see Newcastle United evolve into a cutting edge supporter-centric club, unlike the stale model that is the so-called big six.

Look at the empty seats at Man City games, blaming it on the cost of their success. Their model is broken.

Our club needs to step out of the shadows of the self-appointed big clubs and be radical and move into a brave new world which is there for the taking.

With the scale of our support, Newcastle United needs to look at creative thinking through the SCAMPER business model.

(ED: The SCAMPER business model is a framework for fostering innovation and creative problem-solving, particularly in product or service development. It utilizes the acronym SCAMPER, which stands for Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify, Put to other uses, Eliminate, and Reverse.)

Newcastle United can create the most forward looking SMART club in the world.

(ED: A smart business model uses a structured, data-driven approach to achieve objectives, often employing the SMART framework to define and track progress. This involves creating specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound goals.)

If the Newcastle United owners want to be at the top of the game, they also need to keep and nurture their fanbase, otherwise we will be another hollow empty club like Man U, Arsenal, Liverpool in a few years time.

Season ticket holders and ordinary working class folk priced out and replaced with a sterile atmosphere.

The game is not just about money.

It is about living history, culture and people and not the so-called big clubs iteration of the past and their success.