Throughout the day, Aldridge led Carter on a formal tour of the Millwall club, and the two kept talking about Millwall's current situation, and Aldridge informed Carter of the information that would not be released to the public.

For example, Millwall's specific operating costs, revenue streams, co-sponsors, and ongoing and future business plans.

After lunch, the two went to the team's training ground, which was empty for the first team, and the two sat on the ground.

Carter, after getting a general idea of Millwall's current situation, did not ask Aldridge about his ambitions and goals for running Millwall.

Since they met and become best friends, Carter has been able to guess the outcome based on what Guò knows about Aldrich.

"Aldridge, half of my role is to keep the club in order and the other half is to make the club richer.

Aldrich nodded, agreeing with Carter's words.

In fact, there is only one criterion to measure the ability of CEOs of 99% of the world's enterprises to work: whether the company can be richer!

It's not about charisma, being in the limelight on media platforms, and so on.

Carter continued: "Football is the number one sport in the world, and the number of fans in the world is more than two billion, so whether Millwall can be richer and increase the value of its commercial brand is not whether the team wins the championship, just like Manchester United, Manchester United's championships and achievements in the past ten years cannot be compared with Millwall, but Manchester United's commercial value is only a little lower than Millwall, and the gap is not obvious. And Real Madrid. Their green field achievements are even more unmatched than Millwall's. But with the addition of superstars for several years in a row, their commercial brand value has skyrocketed, second only to Millwall. There is only one core, the number of fans of this club, the more the number, the higher the natural commercial brand value, because the more fans, the more attention it can bring. Sponsors' advertisements on this team will also have more attention. ”

Aldrich nodded, he understood what Carter was trying to say.

Manchester United's record in the past few years has not been too glorious, but Manchester United is also very profitable, profitable every year, and the club wealth list is at the top, before Real Madrid burst onto the rise, they were in second place.

The reason is that since the Edwards family took over Manchester United, they have worked tirelessly to commercialize Manchester United, and their brand value has been accumulated over decades.

And the core of brand value is actually the number of fans. Because fans are the ones who consume football.

Not the fans, who the watches the game?

Even if it's a pseudo-fan chasing stars. It's also a kind of fan.

For example, if you have only one fan on your team and no one else pays attention to it, then only this one fan will see the title ad on the chest of the jersey and form an impression in your mind.

If you have ten fans, that's ten people who will remember.

This is not to deny the significance of achievement on the green field, but it is not a core part.

Champions will increase exposure and expand the fan base, which is one of the means for commercial value to soar, but this was the mainstream before the "global village" era, and the more champions the team, the greater the influence, but after the Internet era, it is different.

The eyeball effect may be more sensational than the impact of a team winning a title, such as Real Madrid's introduction of a superstar.

"A big part of the club's revenue comes from broadcasts, matchday revenue, but also sponsors. If the broadcast fee wants to increase, we can only follow the trend of the entire football environment, Millwall already has an exclusive official TV station, even if it is to maximize the benefits as much as possible in this regard, the game day income mainly revolves around the development and construction of the Lion King Stadium and the surrounding commercial chain, these jobs are on the right track, close to saturation, it is difficult to change or expand anything, because the space around the stadium belongs to the club is so large, London is every inch of land, and if you want to expand again, the income and expenditure may not be proportional, After all, the number of local fans has also reached a state of near saturation in the past decade, and the growth of the new generation of fans will only develop slowly, and will not suddenly skyrocket. I think the focus is to start with the sponsors, to make the club richer, to increase the value of the commercial brand, and to get the sponsors to increase our revenue and influence. ”

Aldridge nodded slightly, Carter's work idea is very clear, and he knows where the focus of his work will be after his future employment.

Once upon a time, Carter negotiated with Millwall as a sponsor representative.

In this regard, he understands better what sponsors need.

If Millwall is not popular in the United States, then companies whose main market is in the United States will not sponsor Millwall, so what's the use of spending money?

And the world's leading companies that are trying to open up the European market will come to the door.

Sponsorship is actually mutually beneficial, both sides take what they need, not who gives to whom.

Carter continued: "Millwall I think there's a lot of material that we can use in this regard, as long as our fan base grows, as long as our fan base expands, our brand value will naturally increase, and when the time comes, we will have more confidence in negotiating with sponsors, and you can understand that, and in terms of how to do it, I think the key is how to use Millwall's hype material for promotion. ”

"For example?"

Aldridge is very interested in this topic, and he also hopes that Millwall's fan market will get bigger and bigger, but how to expand, in his opinion, may be more dependent on playing commercial games, and the team maintains a record in top competitions.

Carter laughed: "Millwall has had a successful decade in the past, I think there is a lot of hype in this decade, the team's record, the loyalty of the stars, the influence of the flag, we can use the Internet resources, the past season review condensed into a documentary, for fans to download for free, can also be sold to all the fans around the world who are interested in us, in order to expand and deepen Millwall's influence, at the same time, Millwall in Europe, but also in Asia, has opened our own football school, Why not use these football schools as outlets to specialize in selling fan memorabilia? Also, when we are right, we are going to go to areas with low fan coverage for commercial games, even if those places are poor and backward and can't give me millions of pounds to play, but as long as we make a splash in that area, our sponsors will be willing to increase the sponsorship fee to expand their sales of products in that area, and also, we have to learn to package our own stars, how many commercial resources does Manchester United get from a Beckham? We should also keep up with the pace in this regard and highlight the charisma of our stars and make them cross-border stars. ”

'No, no, no, I wouldn't want David Beckham to be in my club, with endless business and a lot of money around it, which is not good for the team in the long run.

"Then we are invisibly wasting resources."

Aldrich agrees with many of Carter's ideas, but he also has his own ideas.

After a moment of silence, Aldridge said in a deep voice: "In the past ten years, I have learned a truth, it is good to have pursuits, but you can't overdo it, if Millwall not only wants to use commercial resources and stadium capabilities to the limit at the same time, I think this is impossible, because this balance point is too fragile, we must have the bottom line of running the club, if we tend to commercialize to the extreme, once the situation collapses, it may be the consequences that no one can control anymore." ”

Carter was thoughtful and finally said, "It sounds reasonable, so you can give up on that." Next, I want to talk to you about the construction of the team. ”

Aldrich laughed and said, "What? Are you going to be a staff officer? ”

Carter shook his head solemnly and said: "There is no one in the world who can compare to you when it comes to player selection, and it would be a shame to discuss this topic in front of you." I would like to say that in response to the leak of Adam's shortlist for Millwall, Millwall will need to adjust its development strategy in the future. ”

Aldrich put away his smile and said, "I want to hear about it." ”

Carter sorted out his thoughts and said: "In ten years, Millwall has gone low and high, step by step to the top of the world, the competition within the club has become more and more fierce, and now it has reached the most cruel Cheng dù, like Rooney, Robben and other talented players who have a place in the national team can only wait for opportunities in Millwall, and their departure should be inevitable." ”

Aldrich nodded, not denying it.

The current Millwall is not the past years, he can promote four or five people to play the main team in a season.

Even if they are like Kaka and Ronaldo, De Rossi before them, and Alonso are on the throne, they need to endure for a while.

Those who can't bear it can only leave.

"The core of the problem is that we may have an average of two or three years to have a handful of talented players in the team to survive, so unless there are special circumstances, such as we have a talent gap within us, and there is a lack of players in a certain type or position, we will bring in talented players to give them opportunities, under normal circumstances, even if there are talented players who we like, they can't bring them to the team, and under the negative impact of the departure of Robben and Rooney, there may be many talented players who are not willing to come to us and wait for opportunities. Because it's too difficult, just like Rooney and Henry, choose one of the two, and now out of 100 sane people, maybe 90 will choose Henry instead of Rooney, and I think Rooney himself knows this. ”

Aldridge sighed: "The world is changing, footballers can make a lot of money, they can get rich overnight, and the younger a talented player is, the more he wants to be famous sooner, and there is nothing wrong with that." (To be continued......)