For many years I have sponsored an ICT player.  Firstly goalies gloves, until they spat on them!, then boots - hoping for these boots to score ICT goals.  Unfortunately this past season ICT player sponsors have been unacknowledged,  ignored, considered unworthy despite paying £££S.    Not even a letter or email to say what the current situation is.  As a supporter since childhood of Caley, then ICT, I find this non-communication more than disappointing.  Does this mean ICT don’t want us, ordinary supporters, to sponsor players in the next season?   What do other sponsors think, or have they had communication? 

 

 

 

 

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last communication 9th July 2021 from Mavor and Keith with the invoice for Cammy Harper's home shirt and Lewis Hyde's home shirt (for younger players it was cheaper so just noted we would get a 'gift' as thanks not a shirt). No word on 2022/23 season or on the pickup/availability of 2021/22 items although we did get a thank you email when we paid the invoice 🙂  

8 hours ago, Scotty said:

last communication 9th July 2021 from Mavor and Keith with the invoice for Cammy Harper's home shirt and Lewis Hyde's home shirt (for younger players it was cheaper so just noted we would get a 'gift' as thanks not a shirt). No word on 2022/23 season or on the pickup/availability of 2021/22 items although we did get a thank you email when we paid the invoice 🙂  

I didn't sponsor 21/22 as couldn't get a reply on what we got for our money. 

Previous season no gift although the top sponsors got their top. Not even a thank you for your support. Since Emma left (made redundant?) Communication has been non existant. 

If money is a donation just say so? We get it......

I actually agree with Lizi in that ordinary fans money doesnt seem to matter? Even hospitality has been priced and pitched at corporate not fans. Pre covid this was not the case. 

I see the Wyness shuffle looking for questions for an interview with the CEO. Get your questions in folks.....

I didn't sponsor last season neither, but have done so in the past.  Does seem like  its just turning into a bit of a donation to the club.   It seems odd especially when you look at the names of the sponsors, the vast majority are individual supporters and not companies.   To do a sponsors night and a wee thank you in recognition would not cost the club much but means a lot to the fans who have used their hard eared cash to sponsor a player.

As for hospitality,  its such a shame that its become very expensive and not as inclusive for the day to day fans.  As somebody who would do at least a couple of hospitalities a season, usually more, just feel that the bread and butter fans are not really the clubs target audience any more.

 

24 minutes ago, old caley girl said:

I didn't sponsor 21/22 as couldn't get a reply on what we got for our money. 

Previous season no gift although the top sponsors got their top. Not even a thank you for your support. Since Emma left (made redundant?) Communication has been non existant. 

If money is a donation just say so? We get it......

I actually agree with Lizi in that ordinary fans money doesnt seem to matter? Even hospitality has been priced and pitched at corporate not fans. Pre covid this was not the case. 

I see the Wyness shuffle looking for questions for an interview with the CEO. Get your questions in folks.....

I've posted this in the podcast thread so thank you for flagging it up here. 

As @old caley girl says we are chatting with Gardiner this week (it might be tomorrow night). We'd love to get some questions from fans to put to Gardiner especially if you have concerns about certain things and it seems that player sponsorship is one of them so I can make a note of it and ask the guys to put that to SG.

Ok, just to close the loop on this one... Keith was in touch with me yesterday and the explanation was acceptable and makes sense.

In my opinion, it would have been better to give us a quick update at the time, or at the start of playoffs, but I can see how those playoffs and then the players going on break literally the next day could impact things. Good to see they have also acknowledged the lack of 'functions' during the last couple of seasons, and again, with COVID, not entirely within their control...  If I have one suggestion for Keith (and anyone else at ICT) it is simply to communicate with us, and by 'us' I mean the broader ICT support whether on here, on social media, via the Trust, in email, podcast, or some other way. Plenty of avenues open to the club and almost all of them biased in the club's favour so no-one is looking to tear them down until they start shooting themselves in the foot!         

Here is what Keith sent:

Quote

On behalf of everyone at ICTFC, many thanks for your generous sponsorship throughout the tumultuous last couple of years.  We have all been massively stretched as we have endeavoured to carry out all of the everyday functions of a football club, as well as new ventures to try and introduce new revenue streams.   Player Sponsorship has always been and will always be one of the cornerstones upon which our Commercial Department is built, so as ever we are hugely grateful for your support. 

Ideally, your sponsored shirts would have been available much sooner, but with the play offs prolonging the season and the players then immediately going off on their close season break, it’s taken a bit of time to collate all of the relevant paraphernalia.  Both Cameron Harper and Lewis Hyde’s shirts are now available and as a small token of our appreciation for your ongoing support, I’d also like to offer you Shane Sutherland’s pink shirt from last season.

I’m also conscious that some of the traditional features of Player Sponsorship have not been fulfilled over the past two years.  I’d like to in some way remedy that by inviting a couple of your members to a meet and greet with the players and staff on 23^rd August 2022.  This is part of your sponsorship of last season, so they’d be very welcome to attend regardless of whether you choose to sponsor a player for season 2022-23.

As I said, Player Sponsorship is an important part of what we do, so we’d be very grateful if you were in a position once more next season to continue with your generous backing.  To that end, I’ve taken the liberty to include our sponsorship renewal forms for the 2022/23 season, which we are hoping will be both exciting and successful for everyone at ICTFC.  If you could kindly either email me the form to <email> or have it dropped off at the Stadium for my attention, I’d be very much obliged. 

If you could also let me know if you could attend the meet and greet evening on 23^rd August it would be appreciated.  The plan is to host it in the Highlander Suite from 7pm onwards.

 

So we have 3 items to draw for our Player Sponsors and I will get that attended to. Will post the draw info once its done. As in previous years we will use randompicker to do this as the mods/admins are also sponsors. If anyone is interested in going to the event scheduled for August 23rd let me know. It is scheduled for 7pm so may be an issue for those outside of town, but if you are around, and part of our player sponsor group then let me know. if we get more names than are allowed to go then we would do a draw via randopmpicker the same way as for the other goodies 🙂

 

Finally - based on the response above from Keith then we will try to continue sponsorship for this year and we would likely look to continue Cammy Harper's shirt, then Lewis Hyde away shirt (if we raise enough) . The form the club sent indicates the same cost as last year so £450 inc VAT for a Home shirt and less for lesser items. I will get a thread for this up and running soon. Our costs to site users would also be same as last year which is £16 per membership with users able to purchase multiple memberships if they wish.   

 

Bring back Emma W.

A massive thank you to our Player Sponsors for their continued support! The photos from last night’s sponsors evening are available now on: http://facebook.com/ICTFC

Who attended from the CTO sponsorship? 

no-one that I am aware of. I posted the invite but no one contacted me to say they wanted to go. 

Never knew about it until I saw the pics on official pages. 

I did read Scotty’s post with the invite but didn’t want to go. 

I saw it but thought I should give those who have been sponsors longer the chance to attend. I may volunteer next year if the date works. 

I missed it as it was hidden in with other stuff in Scotty's post.

I attended and thoroughly enjoyed it. Well done to Keith on organising it

6 hours ago, Scotty said:

no-one that I am aware of. I posted the invite but no one contacted me to say they wanted to go. 

Apologies, I didn't see it.