Quote: jimlav "I'm sorry, are you questioning whether getting a deal 10% worse than one that could be achieved 15 years ago isn't a failure.
I have no idea if it is correct that it was 1m a year 15 years ago, but lets look at this as if its true. Using the Bank of England inflation calculator, £1m in 2001 would be essentially £1.5m in 2015 (it doesn't go to 2016 yet, but safe to assume it would be just above £1.5m in 2016) rlhttps://www.bankofengland.co.uk/education/Pages/resources/inflationtools/calculator/flash/default.aspxrl
So, an equivalent deal would be £1.5m per year in 2016.
This is without any growth. With 15 years to try and grow the game, I would say the failure to barely get 50% of an inflation adjusted amount is a massive failure!
Over 15 years you would hope to see the long term strategy starting to work, sadly, if this is true it wouldn't point to that, in fact it would be a catastrophic failure.
If the £1m figure isn't correct, the fact that someone could still actually make a defence of it as if it was is absolutely ridiculous.'"
Al that you mention here, if the numbers are correct, is correct but, although there was no doubting the failure, I think you should take the line from the Stobbart deal onwards, which has us going from nothing (well, just about) to £1 million, which is good going.
Of course, if things had moved forward properly, the deal should have been almost double where we are but, the fact is the sponsorship went severely backwards, leacing us to "start again" and in this context, its a good deal, not brilliant but, better than most would have expected.