Quality post - ignore your important clients and they wont be your important clients.

If you want to increase your asking price then there needs to be some justification - why should sponsors pay a premium for the same old garbage. If you think GH totally ignored his most important revenue stream then your understanding of business and how it works is lacking.

Some justification, have you seen the videos of the new corperate bars, boxes, dining area. They are vastly vastly superior to anything in the game and rival anything in any sport. And they are not asking for an unreasonable increase for those superb facilities.

Those facilities (which I agree look excellent) are only of any interest to customers who primarily want to enjoy the product on the field. I've done enough corporate entertaining (where I'm trying to get customers interested in an event) to know that if the event is poor then it doesn't matter a jot what the facilities are like.

The analogy is are you better off being happy at home or bored in luxury? Without the right quality product on the field (that means both teams) then the facilities are almost meaningless.

They are not that superior to the Lewis Jones - the boxes I would agree are pretty special but you have to be able to get customers to the venue - there is no parking either.

If the product on the field doesn't stimulate customers to want to attend then the money is completely wasted. That in a nutshell was a contributory factor to the decision to change management. RL isn't the draw that soccer is - so its got to be good.

Great facilities in the championship are not as useful as good facilities in SL.

Having been to a fair few corporate sporting events, the main difference is that more 'niche' sports have to work harder all round - both on and off field. If something's seen as an event it will sell itself (e.g. rugby internationals), whereas for the niche sports you have to create an experience that actually makes people want to come back. A run-of-the-mill SL game wouldn't be seen as an event, so the whole experience has to be good, and that does include the game itself IMO.