I've said this before and I'll keep on saying it until Ashley is gone. Mike Ashley will not sell Newcastle United Football Club until it provides no commercial benefit to or is a commercial drag on Sports Direct.
Mike Ashley's sole motivator (likely in all things within his life) is the success and value of his Sports Direct brand. Everything he does is either an expansion of the Sports Direct empire or is designed to increase the value of the Sports Direct empire. NUFC falls into the latter of these two and only exists to increase the value of Sports Direct. Our issue, as fans, is that we believe that NUFC should be at the top of its owner's priorities and all things should be subservient to the needs of NUFC. What fans have failed to accept is that, in effect, NUFC is just an project within the marketing department of Sports Direct.
The attractiveness of NUFC to Mike Ashley is the club's ability to increase the brand awareness of Sports Direct and to increase the brand value of Sports Direct, with very limited amounts of money from Sports Direct to achieve those outcomes. Essentially, NUFC is an ideal investment for Mike Ashley because it boosts the global brand awareness of Sports Direct without the need for Sports Direct to actually pay for an equivalent brand awareness marketing campaign.
This means that Mike Ashley will not sell NUFC until one of two things happens, either:
[*]The club becomes a financial burden to Sports Direct - that Sports Direct (Mike Ashley) is having to regularly, over a number of years, inject money into the club to keep the club in a position to promote the brand of Sports Direct; or
[*]The brand value of club is a negative to the brand value of Sports Direct - if association with the club becomes toxic to the image of Sports Direct and thereby lowers the value of Sports Direct.
Option 2, above, is why when protests have become more significant (e.g. protests outside of Sports Direct stores; AshleyOut.com banners; etc) Ashley has dusted off his wallet and has paid to bring in some players. Because at that point the brand of NUFC has become a drag on the brand of Sports Direct and Ashley knows the flakiness of NUFC fans means they can be bought off with a modest amount of investment.
Option 1, above, is why I think it will take a number of successive relegations (like Sunderland have experienced) before Ashley will sell. I think a number of successive bad performances causing the club to do a double drop (to League 1) would then cause successive years of financial loss for NUFC, which would cause Ashley to have to put in substantial investment to get the club back to a position to being useful to Sports Direct (as a marketing tool), which Ashley won't want to do and hence he will sell.
So, in my opinion, if the fans want Ashley gone without the need for a double relegation then they need to pursue Option 1 above more aggressively and damage the brand of the club in a way that causes damage to the brand of Sports Direct. If fans are not prepared to do this then they have to wait until successive relegations (or at least being well and truly stuck in the Championship for a few years).
Good post. Shutting down the Sports Direct twitter got his attention as i'm sure promoting Sports Redirect did. Another sustained campaign like that would be nice.
