Gordon: Scottish football needs to capitalise on 'phenomenal' product

Hibs owner Ron Gordon believes Scottish football is a “phenomenal” product and that the strategic review he and other owners have commissioned can help turn that into financial growth.

The Edinburgh side, along with Dundee United, Dundee, Hearts and Aberdeen, have employed Deloitte to carry out a review of the SPFL and report back on how the league and the clubs can increase their revenue.

Gordon believes that’s achievable because the Scottish game offers something he doesn’t see anywhere else.

“I honestly believe the league is a phenomenal product,” he said.

“I don’t know that you’re going to find as exciting a league, at the scale of Scotland, anywhere else in Europe. I honestly don’t.

“It’s a competitive league, you can see the table this year. It’s amazing and people are passionate about their football and their club.

“Obviously football is big everywhere but the energy in Scotland is unique and we need to capitalise on that. So the whole idea is to grow the pot and have it trickle down to everybody.

“But it doesn’t grow by itself, we need to do the things that are really going to drive that.”

Gordon and his colleagues have some ideas about how that can happen, and believe that a little change could bring a lot of benefits.

He said: “Probably one of the most important is broadcasting, because that’s the biggest. It’s one of the reasons I was in London on Monday (meeting Sky).

“But I do think we can do some additional things.

“Personally, and this is just a personal observation so I don’t want to pre-judge the work that Deloitte is going to do, we don’t have enough major brands involved in the game. I would like to get some more Scottish brands involved. That’s an area.

“We have some strategic initiatives that we could advance that would help the league grow its overall revenues. I think commercially we could do more, broadcasting is another area.

“We did some initial work a few months back about a structure in terms of how we go to market as a league. We’ve looked at the idea of maybe aggregating assets and putting them together.”

Though only five clubs are paying for the review, Gordon that it isn’t designed to exclude anyone and can benefit clubs from the top to the bottom of the SPFL.

“I don’t see anything we’re doing that would have an adverse effect on any club,” he said. “Whatever money we have trickles down. If we can make the pot bigger, there will be more trickling down.