The Luton Town Supporters' Trust interviewed Chief Revenue Officer Ben Kensell for a piece which appeared in Tuesday's matchday programme.
In advance of this interview, we asked all Trust members if they had any questions for Ben, whose role covers many key areas of interest to fans. Ben provided us with answers to them all – but we started with a couple of our own….
Before we get on to questions and answers, tell us a bit about yourself please Ben, your background and what’s brought you to Luton Town
So, for 20 plus years I’ve worked in football. I was at Arsenal for eight years and worked through the organisation on the commercial and operational side as they moved from Highbury to the Emirates. There I looked after the club and box levels – a huge commercial operation – and also the setting up of premium events like concerts at the stadium.
It was a brilliant apprenticeship at a fantastic club, but I’d hit a glass ceiling and wanted to achieve more, so moved to Charlton at a senior level as Chief Commercial Officer where we achieved promotion to the Championship under Chris Powell and then onto Norwich City where I had an incredibly productive seven-plus years.
At Norwich we established an operating model of being the most successful financially sustainable club in Europe under Delia Smith, relying entirely on the income generated through the club and player trading, with central distributions and the three promotions during my time there.
I had a Managing Director type role at Norwich and that really set me up for my next role, which was Chief Executive Officer at Hibernian in Edinburgh, where I took on running both the football and business sides of the club. I was there for over three-and-a-half years and, after success off the pitch and European football on it, I oved to Luton earlier this year, back in May.
What does your role as Chief Revenue Officer involve?
I look after all club-controlled income areas from ticketing, sponsorships, catering, retail and more. There are many areas that sit under a role like this but in summary everything that generates income outside of player trading.
I also oversee communications and community activity. I’m part of a terrific Executive team here at the club, and we share the day-to-day operations across all areas of the club in essence, and of course support Gary as CEO.
But I would like to point out it’s not just about optimising income – the real value of revenue is derived from better engagement, better communication, better processes and better understanding of the supporter. My role is shaped by my experience across those 20-plus years – I’m really focussed on fan engagement and the fan experience and building that up, not just for now but as we look to Power Court. I’ve been brought in to address some of the areas the club is looking to improve – which is one of the reasons I’m keen to answer supporters’ questions and address their concerns and find solutions and make improvements where possible.
With my experiences and track record I can also support the commercial planning, execution and movement to Power Court and this is another big part of my role.
Thank you – we’ve rounded member questions up into a set of ‘themes’ to avoid repetition. Let’s start with your revenue priorities, focus and KPI’s (question from Angus), budgeting considerations (Neil) and transparency between the club and the playing staff budget/transfer fees received (Paul).
My focus and main priority is to grow the club-controlled income as much as we can - but not to the detriment of the fanbase, or the ability for people to be able to afford to come to Luton Town and have great experiences. My other priority is help the club define and deliver the future revenue potential at Power Court, both on a matchday and every other day.
The more successful we are off the pitch, the more success we can potentially bring on the pitch by contributing more to the overall football operation and player budget year on year. Along with club-controlled income, we need to maximise our player trading model to ensure that we can remain as competitive as possible and give the largest playing budget that we can to Jack, Chris and the team.
In terms of financial transparency, Luton compares very well with all the clubs I’ve worked with. We operate on a very tight and sustainable model with revenue, in a balanced way, going towards delivering Power Court whilst remaining as competitive as we can be. Revenues need to grow, and we need to remain as efficient as possible with our operating costs to maximise what we can make to deliver it back to the playing budget or improve our club to ensure we can grow year on year.
Obviously, football is an emotional business and there will be fans wanting us to spend all the available money on the pitch and players which I understand. But we have to build and work towards being a competitive sustainable club for decades to come, and Power Court will allow us to achieve that.
What I would say around transparency is that the Board do allow the Supporters’ Trust full view of the finances of the club and, having worked at other clubs, Luton are much more open than others with finances and communication – and I applaud that – but it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try and do more and this is where my work with the communications team will hopefully mean supporters can feel even more involved and connected and communicated with.
You mentioned the fan experience, and we have a number of questions based around commercial issues like shirt prices, the costs of player sponsorships and merchandise and match day mascots. (Thanks to Alex, John and Paul).
This is something I’m very much looking at with the wider commercial team. Having arrived in May I couldn’t just come in and change them instantly or make sweeping changes without understanding the club, the commercial landscape or even understanding the targets and strategic plan for growth and Power Court.
It takes time but hopefully fans have already seen some movement – lower price academy sponsorship through the Trust and SoLYD, the commitments we’ve made, again in discussion with the Trust, about future shirt designs and frequency of changes. We have also made big improvements to our fan-zone with the marquee and big screen, and food and drink offers, and we have seen more and more supporters come earlier to the ground and enjoy themselves, so we are making progress. I’ve also personally spoken to many fans, and I am always keen to gather as much information to assist us I ensuring we do the right things for the club and its supporters to move us forward.
Regarding shirts, prices are dependent on the price we pay our suppliers, but we’ve compared across the market and ours are competitive and the quality of kits manufactured by Reflo are very good. We managed to get them out in good time this season, but we are looking to do even better and earlier for next season.
We’re looking at retail in general too, an area we know we can – and should be and will be – doing far better in but I was really pleased with the retro range, and we have fantastic and committed staff.
We’re actively looking at the mascot packages as well, and will be introducing changes to make them accessible to all: we understand what a memorable experience that is for young supporters and their families, so watch this space as we look to implement changes and make improvements which we hope fans will appreciate.
I also think it’s worthwhile that we hold fan forums and ask fans and focus groups what they want and get feedback before making sweeping changes so we’re in the process of doing that.
On the broader subject of sponsorship and partnerships, are you looking locally or nationally? (Paul, Julian)
For me, everything starts with Luton and Bedfordshire. Local business must be the foundation of not only our sponsorship and partnership strategy, but ticketing, hospitality, conferencing and events.
Local support is the bedrock of what will make us commercially and financially sustainable for many years to come. Once we have got this right, only then can we turn to developing domestic and international strategies. The club has a rich history with its local business community, but there’s a lot of opportunity to reconnect with those who have since parted ways with the club and reconstruct the pathways for a business of all sizes to grow their brands alongside ours.
When I arrived, we hadn’t developed any long-term partnerships, outside of the University of Bedfordshire. There are many reasons behind this, but primarily it’s been down to resource. We’re strengthening this area of the business, with several new colleagues joining the team whose remit will be to engage, support and nurture this local business community into long-term thriving relationships.
In my first six months, I’ve met with dozens of local businesses and consulted with the right people. We’ve taken every piece of feedback very seriously and are using it to generate our commercial plans for the seasons ahead. These aren’t overnight fixes, but I believe that those involved would agree we’re making small steps every day to bring about positive change.
It's important to also share that we’ll uphold the values of the football club throughout all our partnership agreements. That means no betting sponsorship and no brands that would, in any way, bring the club’s brand and reputation into question. This naturally does limit the value we achieve through partnerships, but that’s something I and the board remain very passionate about.
That brings us on to communications, including improving the website (Paul) – and fan engagement.
From a communications perspective, the focus for me has been on how we can maintain constant dialogue with local media, supporters and fan groups. We’ve heard the feedback from supporters that they felt there had been a disconnect between them and the club, so we moved to bring about change in that area and bring everyone closer together.
Media and communications are areas we’ve really been active in introducing change and improvements – take the recent podcast and fan created content session at The Brache for instance. Affording those creators the opportunity to speak directly with the newly appointed Jack, Chris, the coaching team as well as Gary on the process. I thought the content was unprecedented in its transparency and landed incredibly well, and this is something I look forward to replicating in the future.
We’re constantly reviewing various new communication and fan engagement initiatives that will bring us all closer together. This is a collaborative effort that now also includes our Community Trust. A great example of this I think is the redeveloping of our overarching Fan Engagement Strategy and the introduction of a Fan Advisory Board. It’s critically important that we have an appropriate number of forums per year to listen to our supporters and report back to them on developments across the club. That’s a key priority, complete transparency.
On the club’s website and mobile app, yes this is currently under review. But not just these areas, we’re reviewing a lot of commercial technology as part of a broader tech roadmap as we prepare for Power Court. We’ll share progress updates on the website and app process with the relevant supporter groups. Ultimately the platforms we currently have don’t allow us to serve our content as well as we would like for supporters but also they don’t allow supporters to enjoy one seamless journey between news, ticketing and retail. So, this is a priority project that will conclude this season.
What do you see as the key opportunities inside and outside Kenilworth Road to improve fan engagement and awareness, (Rob), in the build up to and opening of Power Court (David) and in the final season at Kenilworth Road (Steve)?
We’ve been doing a lot of new things on the Kenilworth Road apron to entertain fans and attract them pre-match and will continue to do so. As for looking to the future, the single biggest success for me would be to understand our fanbase better, understand their experience better, understand what they want and how this will help us optimise the opportunities to build our fanbase ready to attract bigger attendances at Power Court.
We have a real opportunity to build on the sheer passion of our fanbase: though attendances are limited by current ground, we have tens of thousands on our database. We have the potential to be a big club, in a big town with a big future, but it needs to operate in a much more modern way when we move into our new home – and the new systems we’re putting in place will help us grow and transition seamlessly. We also need to expand our community activities so more and more people engage and identify with the club, and it becomes part of their lives.
As for that final season – I think there needs to be real celebration through the year, not just an event at the end of the season. We’ll be collaborating with all supporters to explore all those possibilities but we already have a lot of ideas ourselves – what does that final year look like? What do we all want? What is the fitting tribute to Kenilworth Road?
We want to make sure everyone is on board and feels part of it, so it’s a commercial success and a real celebration at the same time. And that’s all about communication and collaboration.
That’s a good cue for your final thoughts Ben (for now – this discussion is to be continued!)
I hope our supporters can see and understand that the club and I are committed to improving all supporter facing areas. The club does a tremendous amount of great work, but there’s always a lot of exciting areas to grow and improve.
To do that I need feedback, and I want supporters’ ideas also. They are welcome to email me at [email protected] anytime, or grab me – or anyone else in the commercial team, or Gary – on a matchday. Equally, I’m also happy to hop on a call, host a forum or meeting, all to ensure that I’m true to my commitments that we want to act with the utmost transparency and in true collaboration.
Lastly, let’s all get behind Jack and Chris. Despite Saturday’s blip, they’ve made a very promising start and long may that continue by getting back to winning ways tonight.
Thank you to Ben and to all who sent us questions: we hope we have covered everything, even if in broad terms due to space limitations. And we certainly hope to do this again in the near future!
