Snoop Dog’s appearance at the Swansea v. Preston North End midweek match is one of the most surprising, if not bizarre, events of the Championship season.
Indeed, the only thing that surprised me more was when one
of my granddaughters told me she had discovered her inner Welsh woman and was
moving to Swansea (Abertawe) despite not speaking a word of Cymraeg.
Swansea City do not seem to particularly emphasise their
Welshness as much as Wrexham.
Paradoxically, I did some consultancy for a Swansea client. They were happy with what I did, and asked me
to do more, but I didn’t get paid until I got one of my Welsh speaking nephews
to draft an email in Cymraeg.
In some ways, it’s hard to make sense of the Swansea and
Snoop Dogg story. But maybe this is just how the Championship rolls these days.
Wrexham have their Hollywood owners Ryan Reynolds and Rob Mac, the seven-time
Super Bowl winner Tom Brady is a minority investor in Birmingham City, and if
Snoop had hung around for Swansea’s next game, at Portman Road on Saturday, he
could have performed a duet with Ed Sheeran, who has a 1.4 per cent stake in
Ipswich Town, the club the singer grew up supporting.
In contrast to Sheeran, Snoop’s relationship with Swansea,
who have spent the last eight seasons in the Championship after being relegated
from the Premier League in 2018, is still at the getting-to-know-you stage.
“The story of the club and the area really struck a chord
with me,” Snoop said in July last year, after Swansea confirmed that the
American had become a co-owner. “This is a proud, working-class city and club.
An underdog that bites back, just like me.”
By then, Brett Cravatt and Jason Cohen, Swansea’s
controlling owners, had already added Luka Modric, a former Ballon d’Or winner
who is currently playing for Milan, to their ownership group with the help of a
well-connected business associate.
A third A-list celebrity arrived when Martha Stewart, the
84-year-old American billionaire, TV personality and close friend of Snoop, was
taken in by, among other things, the sight of Adam Idah scoring a late winner
for Swansea against Wrexham in December.
Swansea’s broader strategy with Modric, Snoop and Stewart is
to use their global profile and reach — more than 200million followers on
social media between them — to increase the Welsh club’s exposure and, in
Gorringe’s words, “to attract and monetise new audiences”, all with a view to
returning to the Premier League.
“We are at a financial disadvantage with the way the
regulations are set,” adds Gorringe, alluding to the EFL’s profit and
sustainability rules. “We will never naturally be able to compete with the
top-end teams. And so we have to look for new ways to be able to generate more
income to enable us to invest in the team, to get to where we want to be. So
that is the model, and we’re making really good progress. Snoop is helping us
engage with new partners and sponsors all the time.”
Some people will be sceptical, question if this is all some
sort of elaborate PR stunt, and wonder if Snoop will ever return to Swansea
again — whether that’s to watch a game, DJ on an industrial estate, or take
part in another finishing drill at the training ground with the club’s coach
and former player Leon Britton (yes, that happened too).
Comments
Post a Comment