sponsorship Player Sponsorship 2024/25

[Scotty]

It's time for Player Sponsorship for the 2024/2025 season. 

For 20+ years we sponsored one or more ICT players each season. We were proud to have been the main shirt sponsor of Grant Munro through his entire ICT career from a youth breaking into the team to his final season with the club, then we moved onto sponsorship of Liam Polworth. We have also sponsored other players over the years for boots, gloves or other items including record appearance holder Ross Tokely and most recently Cameron Harper for four years, until the end of the 2022/23 season.

Like many others, we took a hard decision and paused our sponsorship at the end of the 2022/23 season due to a lack of confidence in our (now former) CEO. It was a hard thing to do, as we all love the club, but it had to be done. We remain proud to have sponsored so many players over the years and as Alan Savage appears to be coming in to right the ship, ably assisted by club legend Charlie Christie slotting into the CEO role (for now?), then it is time for us to also re-commit to the club and play our own meagre part in helping with the rebuild of ICTFC so we can once again become the 'Pride of the Highlands'. 

With our former sponsored player - Cammy Harper - gone, and the other player we were able to sponsor in 2022/23 (Lewis Hyde) also gone, it is time to choose a new player, or hopefully multiple players. I have been in contact with the club yesterday and have been told that many people withheld sponsorship in the way that we did so there are a lot of opportunities.  Typically, we have chosen one of the young local lads with a view to maintaining that sponsorship throughout their entire ICT careers, but the field is very open right now. I have my own thoughts on who it should be but want to gauge everyone else's ideas so have added a poll to this thread to get an initial set of opinions and go from there. I will take the names from the club website where the main shirt is not showing a sponsor name. Whoever finishes the 'winner' can be who we look to sponsor and if we raise more than the cost of one sponsorship we will go to the next player on the list. All very democratic and open

[UPDATE] After a week of polling we have now settled on our chosen player(s) and will initially sponsor the home top of Matthew Strachan. Should we raise enough money we will then sponsor an item from Ethan Cairns and the others listed below. 

The format will be the same as previous years - all monies raised will go to the sponsorship. We will focus on getting enough for player home shirts, which will be randomly given to one of our sponsors at the end of the season, and if we raise enough, we will sponsor other player items up to the level of cash received. 

 

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(INITIAL) PLAYER TO BE SPONSORED: We will try to raise enough to sponsor more than one player in some fashion, but based on the poll results, the order is as shown below.

• MATTHEW STRACHAN
• ETHAN CAIRNS
• ADAM MACKINNON
• SHAE KEOGH
• ROBBIE THOMPSON

 

COST
Home Shirt - £450 inc vat [to be confirmed]. Other costs as shown below. [We will not be aiming to do any sponsorship on the manager.] 

 

HOW TO TAKE PART

1. For now, answer the poll so we can figure out who to sponsor. Feel free to add any additional comments in the thread below, especially if the player you want to include is not listed. I took the names form the ICTFC website and did not add any players who already had a main shirt sponsor. I will delete the comments when we are ready to start accepting memberships to clean up the thread so if your post is a different point for discussion please use a different thread. 
    
2. Join the "Player Sponsor" group. We will use the money received from these memberships (minus PayPal fees) to purchase player sponsorship(s) from the club. We will set all memberships - regardless of when ordered - to end on June 1st of each year. This allows us time each year to gauge the interest in continuing for the following season. The cost to join this group remains the same as before at £16.00 (this amounts to £15.00 joining fee plus £1 to cover the PayPal fees). You may purchase multiple memberships if you wish, just amend the total in your shopping cart and add a note when placing the order if it is to cover family members who may not officially be site members!
    
3. To join the group simply go to this page http://caleythistleonline.com/store/ or access the CTO Store from the main menu at the top. All our site membership upgrades are handled securely via PayPal's platform which will accept direct payment from most credit/debit cards so it should be easy enough to upgrade your membership whether you live in Sneck or somewhere thousands of miles from there. Unfortunately, we do not accept cash payments. 

 

Once we know how many members have joined the group, we will decide on who/what gets sponsored. The first item will be the selected player's Home Kit ... but the more members who upgrade to "Player Sponsor" membership, the more we can sponsor. At the end of the season, members of our sponsor group will be selected at random to receive any gifts we may receive from the club. For any events that occur during the season (like sponsors nights or meet and greets etc.) we will offer first refusal to members of the sponsor group to attend as our representative.  

If you are interested, please add your name to this thread or go ahead and join the sponsor group. You will be marked as  once we confirm payment received via membership upgrade .... (once we have enabled it)

 

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[Scotty]

Pledged/Paid List

1. Scotty 
2. ICT29 
3. Gringo 
4. Mrs Gringo 
5. Tree 
6. Optimist 
7. TheCaleyOne 
8. snorbens_caleyman 
9. snorbens_caleyman 
10. old caley girl 
11. arbeem 
12. arbeem 
13. arbeem 
14. arbeem 
15. arbeem 
16. Hiro 
17. Weeman 
18. The Mantis 
19. The Mantis 
20. The Mantis 
21. Doofers Dad 
22. TM4TJ 
23. TM4TJ 
24. TM4TJ 
25. Jagster 
26. CaleyHedgehog 
27. IBM 
28. IBM 
29. IBM 
30. Northern_Jaggie 
    -----------------------
31. Robert 
32. Robert 
33. Robert 
34. L_G 
35. Mossie 
36. Mossie 
37. The Fly 
38. The_Sponge 
39. The_Sponge 
40. The_Sponge 
41. Badly_Drawn 
42. Roarer 
43. High1ander 
44. Stu160284 
45. Wanderer 
46. CaleyHedgehog 
47. Naelifts 
48. EvilWhiteStripe 
49. CaleyHedgehog 
50. Wazzow 
51. ICT29 
52. ICT29 
53. snorbens_caleyman 
54. IBM 
55. IBM 
56. IBM 
57. Jagster 
58. INVTONC 
59. INVTONC 
60. INVTONC 
61. INVTONC 
    --------------------------

[Scotty]

I have cleaned up the thread a bit and removed the discussion stuff as noted. A few updates/comments below.

• The poll is closed now and the names are edited into the main article at the top. 
   
• I have updated payments to those received by 2pm on Friday 23rd August 2024. I will update daily, or maybe more than once per day if time allows. If you made a transaction and dont see it, let me know. 
   
• The direct URL for the sponsorship can be found here or you can click "STORE" in the menu up top and it will take you to the shop page to purchase this membership :   
• If you encounter issues, please check that you have actually checked out. You can see your pending transactions and invoices as well as completed purchases on your shop profile. 
  https://caleythistleonline.com/clients/purchases/
  https://caleythistleonline.com/clients/orders/
  
   

[Scotty]

Thanks for recent additions over this week. Looking for 18 more contributions to reach 2 player home shirts .... 

[+CaleyHedgehog]

I can't make it to todays game, so I've spent my ticket money on player sponsorship instead, to banish my guilt at not attending. Hope we get those contributions that are still needed Scotty.

C'mon Caley 

 

[Scotty]

Almost there ... 12 more slots available. 

[+CaleyHedgehog]

Oh go on then...

11 slots now!

[tm4tj]

48 slots taken

We have 3,000+ members

[Scotty]

52 slots now .. thanks to the people who took additional spots. 8 to go. 

[IBM]

Nearly there! 

[+snorbens_caleyman]

One closer.

Have you tried Alan Savage?  

Ketan Makwana? 

[Scotty]

25 minutes ago, snorbens_caleyman said:

One closer.

Have you tried Alan Savage?  

Ketan Makwana? 

We did have someone say they would like a digital subscription to try and win a physical shirt from one of the sponsored players ... I think they called it a phygital experience ... but the money never materialised when the checkout button appeared. 

However, your contribution was received so another step closer

[CaleyCiuin]

What does the money to sponsor a player get used for? Is it used for the player,s benefit? 

[Scotty]

it is just revenue in the same way as merch or ticket sales. Not specifically going to the actual player. We held our nose for a few years and continued it while the former CEO was there, but we suspended it last year (like a lot of people) as we simply could not justify it any more.  

If this is a subject for wider discussion I would suggest it gets its own thread. As noted above, this thread will be tidied up (and closed) as its really only for getting the names and not a discussion thread per-se. 

[CaleyCiuin]

19 minutes ago, Scotty said:

it is just revenue in the same way as merch or ticket sales. Not specifically going to the actual player. We held our nose for a few years and continued it while the former CEO was there, but we suspended it last year (like a lot of people) as we simply could not justify it any more.  

If this is a subject for wider discussion I would suggest it gets its own thread. As noted above, this thread will be tidied up (and closed) as its really only for getting the names and not a discussion thread per-se. 

Thanks for clarification on that

[IBM]

I have taken some more just another 4 to go now to get the second shirt.

[+jagster]

Bought another one myself Scotty. I really am useless with technology I’ve purchased it the way I did last time by paying direct to yourself. Maybe I’ll get it right next season. 

[Scotty]

Well, we got there folks. Many thanks for this. We will now sponsor the home top for two players. I will let Keith know to invoice us and get it paid. I will leave the sponsorship opportunity open just in case we do get any stragglers wanting to add more to the campaign, and if we do get any more then this will be used to perhaps sponsor some lesser (cheaper) items from the players who still have slots available. We will use the poll results to decide who if we get to that point. 

 

 

[+CaleyHedgehog]

Well done INVTONC for getting this over the line and thanks Scotty for starting it in the first place.

[Scotty]

Just to close the loop on this one. Confirmation that the payment has been sent to the club for the sponsorship of Matthew Strachan and Ethan Cairns today. Took a little longer than we had hoped but we had to work with the club to verify the PayPal address was still active during administration. 

 

[tm4tj]

Well done Scotty and everyone that contributed.

Give yourself a round of applause 

[+CaleyHedgehog]

Go Matthew and Go Ethan. Have a great season!