FAI search for a men’s team sponsor goes on but now in a ‘much healthier position’ financially, says commercial director Seán Kavanagh

Unseasonal sunshine streams through the windows of the Football Association of Ireland (FAI) headquarters at Abbotstown in Dublin. Wearing an on-message green sweater, commercial director Seán Kavanagh has a financial forecast that is as sunny as the weather.

From being a basket case a few years ago, the FAI is on track to over-achieve against its commercial targets for 2023, Kavanagh says, with ticketing, media and sponsorship all delivering double-digit growth.

Ten sponsorships were recently renewed, all on better terms. Overall revenue is set to top €55 million in 2023, while about €20 million has been paid off the FAI’s still massive debt in the past two years. A record 24,500 season tickets have been sold. Almost 36,000 people watched the Republic of Ireland women’s team in a Nations League match at the Aviva Stadium last month, soon after 49,807 saw the men’s team take on the Netherlands in a Euro 2024 qualifier. “I genuinely believe we are in a much healthier position,” Kavanagh enthuses.

Yet there is one black cloud in the sky, and everyone keeps pointing at it, wondering when it will disappear. Ever since Three Ireland ended its sponsorship in July 2020, there has been no main partner for the men’s team. The issue will come up at the FAI’s AGM on October 21st, since it will be in the minutes of the last such meeting, in July 2022, when chief executive Jonathan Hill said a number of conversations with brands were “particularly advanced”. They haven’t advanced much since.

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“We are in live conversations with a number of potential partners and we would be hopeful for some positive news in the near future,” says Kavanagh, almost exactly echoing what Hill said. The difference now is that Ireland was confirmed on Tuesday as co-host of the 2028 European Championships – along with England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland – which will boost the profile of the game, and should make a partnership more appealing.

Kavanagh’s last job was as global director of sponsorship with Pentland Brands, which owns Speedo, Canterbury and Mitre.

So, how do you attract a major sponsor? Are there special tricks and techniques? “What you need to be able to do is tell your story, and we have a really positive story to tell,” Kavanagh says.

He rattles it off again, about how the quality of the League of Ireland has improved along with attendances and the number of televised games, and how there is a real desire for the two international teams to succeed.

Kavanagh tells the story well, as you would expect from someone who says “football is my passion”, and who manages a boys’ team with his club Stella Maris. Kavanagh signed for Leeds United at the age of 15 and left O’Connell’s School on Dublin’s northside after fifth year to move into digs near Elland Road. Ian Harte joined the club a few months later. When David O’Leary came to Leeds from Arsenal in 1993, it fell to Kavanagh to show him around.

Ultimately, Kavanagh did not fulfil his ambition to be a professional footballer. “For the first few months I was playing really good football. Then it waned, and I struggled,” he recalls of his experience with the Leeds youth team. “From a stature point of view, as you can see, I am not the biggest, and I wasn’t fast. I went from being an attacking midfielder to a left back. Mid-1990s football was very much about physicality and pace, not attributes I was blessed with.”

I was very conscious of the challenging past of the association

—  Seán Kavanagh, FAI commercial director

After attending the 1994 World Cup in the United States as a fan, he decided not to return to Leeds. Instead, Kavanagh went back to school in Dublin, completed his Leaving Certificate, and began to train with Shamrock Rovers. His proudest moment in football was representing Ireland in a schoolboys’ game against England, where he came up against a former Leeds team-mate. “Shoot! magazine [in the UK] saw us talking before the game, asked what the connection was, and did a little piece about us,” he recalls.

A summer job with Premier Marketing, an Irish sports agency, morphed into a full-time occupation, and eventually eclipsed his League of Ireland career. Before he hung up his boots, Kavanagh had a five-week loan period with Longford Town, where the youngest ever manager in league history had taken over at the age of 26. “I played briefly for Stephen Kenny, which he reminded me about when I came back into the association,” Kavanagh smiles. “He remembered how I performed, better than I did.”

In 2009, Kavanagh became a country manager for Puma, “a huge step up”, as the world’s third-biggest sports brand was challenging Nike and Adidas. After six years there he went to Pentland, and being sponsorship director for all its brands “got me involved with swimming, cycling, football and rugby”. Then the job of leading a new commercial division in the FAI came up in summer 2022, “and it was something I jumped at”.

Commercial and marketing had been a joint role in the FAI and “selfishly, it suited me they were being split”, Kavanagh explains. “My key skill set is within commercial, and building relationships with brands.”

Louise Cassidy was appointed director of marketing and communications.

“I was very conscious of the challenging past of the association,” Kavanagh says, a polite way of describing the chaos John Delaney left behind when he stepped down as CEO in 2019. “I’d seen the new team that Jonathan Hill was building and it was something I really wanted to be a part of. We can give out from the sidelines, or we can jump in and try and be part of the change, and ultimately that was the main driver for me to come back into the association,” Kavanagh says.

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He believes the public perception of the FAI has changed. “Time is a healer in terms of some of the challenges of the past. People see what we are trying to do, and there’s no egos in the association, which is really good. We are all trying to do what’s best for Irish football.”

As well as renewing 10 existing sponsorships in his first year as commercial director, Kavanagh has brought in five new partners. They include a link-up with Castore to manufacture kit; with Nissan and Circle K; and with Sports Direct as sponsor of the FAI Cup. A deal has also been done with Ballygowan water and Energise Sport, both owned by Britvic Ireland.

Yet no matter how many “hydration partners” or “official vehicle partners” the FAI signs up, media attention never strays from the lack of a shirt sponsor for the men’s team. A number of complicating factors are making the sale more difficult, according to Jill Downey, chief sponsorship officer with Core.

First, the high end of the market is cautious, with old deals being renewed – such as Vodafone’s with the Irish Rugby Football Union – rather than new ones being struck. “The GAA had some difficulty with their football sponsorships, and Dublin GAA have found it tougher than usual to replace AIG,” Downey, says. “There are not many brands who have the budgets to spend at this level. You are fishing in a shallow enough pool.”

Secondly, most sponsors now want to cover both genders, but the Republic of Ireland’s women’s team already has a “primary partner” in Sky, which signed up in late-2021 and has got plenty of bang for what is thought to have been a modest buck. Kavanagh does not agree, but it was surely a strategic error for the FAI not to do a wider deal with Sky in 2021.

It is thought that Three was paying almost €2 million a year, and that the FAI is looking for the same again, and has turned down offers of lesser amounts. John Trainor, chief executive of Onside, a sports and entertainment advisory firm, does not believe the FAI has been asking for too much, and believes it should not be discounting. “I think the price point is not an issue in terms of not securing a sponsor,” Trainor says.

Trainor says brands must be able to afford to activate a sponsorship once they buy the rights. That can cost almost as much as the headline price.

Kavanagh insists the FAI is active in the marketplace. “Ideally we would have secured a principal partner for the men’s team by now. However, from our point of view, we need to ensure we receive a fair market value. We believe it’s one of the most appealing sports properties within Ireland.”

Dismissing suggestions the asking price is too steep, he says the FAI did a benchmarking exercise against other Irish properties, and against European football rights, “and we believe it represents good value for money. Interest in the team is only going to get bigger, especially with the 2026 World Cup in North America, and the Euros in the UK and Ireland in 2028. So we have not decreased our asking price”.

Bookmakers have been ruled out, so who is he tapping up? “Tech is one of the areas we are looking at, and we had a number of positive interactions and conversations with some big tech companies,” Kavanagh confirms.

“There are categories where we don’t have partners, and that’s where we are focusing on. If you look at our portfolio, there is dry land we can go after.”

Though he declines to identify the sectors, our guess is that airlines, financial services, pharma, legal and construction are among them.

The new FAI executive team may not always get everything right, Kavanagh concludes, but “the intent will always be from a good place” and it is starting to deliver results. “We know we have a long way to go, and we need partners. We need corporate Ireland to go along with us on that journey.”

That last cloud needs to disappear.

CV

Name: Seán Kavanagh

Age: 46

Family: Married to Sharon Kavanagh, with two teenage children

Home: Castleknock, Dublin

First job: Professional footballer at Leeds United

Something you would expect: Is passionate about sport, particularly football, and worked all his career in the sports sector.

Something that might surprise: Appeared in an ad for Roscrea Rashers