Sport for Business

Budapest Celebrations and Local Fundraising with Kevin Doyle

• Rob Hartnett, Kevin Doyle, Brian Farrell • Episode 140

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Kevin Doyle joins us to talk about the buzz after Budapest and the graft that keeps a community club alive. We dig into girls’ football growth, the cost of renting pitches, and how a guaranteed-prize lotto can fund a permanent home.

• The celebration that lifted Irish football spirits
• Stepping from parent coach to club leader
• The weekly grind of facilities and scheduling
• Building girls’ teams and keeping them engaged
• Success defined by smiles, health and friendships
• Pride in underage internationals without chasing odds
• Clarity of purpose for fundraising
• How a €15k guaranteed jackpot actually works
• Reducing risk with prize cover and digital sales
• Long-term plan to buy and develop facilities

You can find out more by visiting clublottojackpots.ie




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SPEAKER_04:

Screen here and putting our little nation on the map, it's just you know this is a stuff of of dreams it's spinning it's spinning chilling 60 Hello and welcome to the Sport for Business Podcast.

SPEAKER_03:

I'm your host, Rob Hartnett, and this morning on Friday, the 28th of November, we are joined by Kevin Doyle, a scorer of many goals in the Republic of Ireland Green, but possibly even more famous over the recent weeks with his celebratory run around the studio in RTE after that goal by Troy Parrott. Naturally enough, we talk about that celebration, but also we get into the roots of his passionate embrace of grassroots football in his native Wexford. Glean Barntown is his club, and we talk a lot about the importance that it has in the community and about how they are looking to raise additional funds to fuel their ambitions and using an innovative new service, Club Lotto Jackpots, in order to do it. Let's tune in and listen in to what Kevin has to say. The Sport for Business Daily is an audio blast of the content which we produce every day on sportforbusiness.com. If you want to find out more, please do visit us at the website or sign up, subscribe, comment, and share wherever you get your podcasts from. We're delighted to be joined today by Kevin Doyle, um, Republic of Ireland International, uh, sometime RTE commentator with uh Lucky Charm Will Discover, and most importantly, for to the purposes of today, a chairman of his local Glyn Barntown football club down in Wexford. Uh, you're very welcome on to Sport for Business, Kevin. Thanks for having me, Rob. Tell me something, just before we get into the meat of the conversation, how are the hamstrings after your celebration of Troy Parrots? Who the best miracle?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I'd say the hamstrings of a lot of people in the country, Rob. Um, I've I've seen videos of different pubs and houses and things of people celebrating. Um, I actually played Fivercide the following night, and surprisingly or not surprisingly, my grinds and hamstrings were killing me after that. I couldn't even run. So, probably something to do with that uh couple of laps at the RT studio. But um I was just uh we've been waiting a long time for sort of a big moment in in Irish football to you know, just everyone just let out a lot of frustration, joy, happiness to see uh see us see us do it in in circumstances like that.

SPEAKER_03:

I think so, yeah. There was a lot of uh burnt knees from knee slides across carpets and uh as you say, running around in a very tight circle uh the uh around the the rest of the year.

SPEAKER_01:

There's dips and jumps, I think I threw in as well.

SPEAKER_03:

So I think I think it might have been all right. Um let's move on to the the involvement that you have with with Glenn Barntown because it's great when we do when we celebrate the sort of the you know the top of the pyramid when it comes to to professional football in this country, and it doesn't get much more top than what it was in Budapest, but it's all based on what happens at the grassroots, and you're very involved in the local club.

SPEAKER_01:

Um, yeah, well, it has to start somewhere, doesn't it? And you know, without um Glenn Barntown is my lucky club. When I was a kid, it was Adamstown was my local club. We moved houses, but you know, without the people, the coaches I had there, I wouldn't have been a professional footballer. And Glenn Barntown where I am now, we act we have we've you know from very little resources and very little facilities. We've been very lucky. We've we've a few uh underage internationals over the few years. Uh we've won at the moment with the with the with the 17s, um, or another 17. So, you know, like anyone who volunteers or whatever with their local club, um, you you I went in as a coach to help with my son who was starting at seven years of age or whatever, and and uh you get roped in and uh you know somebody has to do do these things, and we're lucky we have we've lots of coaches and lots of volunteers, and everyone's trying their trying their best for for their kids to give them something to do and for soccer in Ireland in general to to try improve it, help it. Um I said everyone has to start somewhere.

SPEAKER_03:

I'd say there were a few kind of double takes, all right, when you went when you turned up at the pitch for the first the first time there.

SPEAKER_01:

Uh no, uh like I'm I'm home for uh I'm home living in Wexford now for a good year. So everyone knows me around the place. So um, you know, the the my Glynn, the lads there noticed uh we all blaggard each other, there's nobody there. Maybe a few double takes when we end up going away games and different things. Um I I coach a couple, I coach my daughter's team, and um I was helping with my son's team and and my other son's team. So um yeah, no, it's uh the odd time I might get a double take, all right, when we go away go away from Glenn, but not uh not in Glenn. I uh we all take uh we all have a bit of fun and we blaggard with each other. They know you well enough at this thing. They know me well enough, exactly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

That step then from you know from from being a dad, first of all, and and then a coach and getting more involved and you know, potentially using that visibility that you bring to it. What's the what's the main involvement now that you have in terms of helping the club to be as big as it can be?

SPEAKER_01:

Main involvement. Um the main involvement, well, obviously it's always fundraising. It's you know, but but probably the main involvement for any local club and all of us, and this is not just me, anyone on our committee or coaches, is making sure pitches are lined, making sure pitches are cut, making sure the nets are up. You know, with us, we we don't own our own facilities, we're renting facilities all the time. So, you know, making sure we have with so many teams, we have 20 odd teams every weekend, making sure the the just logistics of day-to-day, you know, making sure the teams have somewhere to train, somewhere to play. And um after that, you know, you're hoping to raise money, you're hoping to buy your own facilities, the bigger picture stuff, you're hoping to improve all the time. It's very difficult. Um and we we we try our we try our best. Um, everyone's just doing it voluntarily. Obviously, we all have our everyone that's involved in clubs has their own jobs and lives and things to be trying to sort out, but when we have spare time trying to come together as a as a group, as a committee, as a club to look at the longer term picture, not just I suppose the weekly issues that we have, but the longer term thing of how do we leave something in the future for the next group or the next committee when our kids are all moved on and done playing that the next group and the next committee come in today, they have something to work with as well.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. Is that the sense of of being a part of the community being more than just a football club as as such? Like how how embedded within the town, within the community is the uh is the club?

SPEAKER_01:

Um I think it's it well, I I don't know. From my I think it is well very well embedded. We started um it was it was a boys' club like most clubs in Ireland, and now we've moved in with girls' teams, and just the pleasure it gives, because my daughter, my daughter came to me a few years ago and said, You you coach your your son's team, why don't you coach like why don't you have a soccer team for girls and why don't you coach my team? So she guilted me into it. Um and a bunch of us um it set up different girls' teams at the same time uh a couple of years ago, and that side of it now is flying. And to see, you know, in my age group, it's under 12s. I do the under 12 girls, I think there's 17 in our in our sort of squad of training and playing. Um, and that's 17 girls who wouldn't have played soccer, um, wouldn't have played they all the majority of them would play Camoge in Gaelic football, but you know, they'd finish in October and they wouldn't, you know, have an outdoor sport to keep them going during the winter for seven, eight, nine months, and all of a sudden they do and they love it. Um you know, they keep I I thought we'd get 17 or 18, and you know, you'd come to the middle of winter and it'd start to drop off or games, you'd be struggling to get it enough to wear nine or side of that age group, and it's not, they keep coming, it's the same for all the teams, and that's what you know to see them develop, see a smile on their face, whether we win or lose. It's what you know, we've been we've been quite lucky. We have a very good bunch of girls, and they're they're excellent. But just to see that side of it, a bunch of girls um coming together, and they're from different schools, we're a big parish, there's a couple of schools in the parish, they wouldn't have you know been together and and you know, uh played together for long, long periods of time only for sport. So um to see that and parents on the touchline and people getting together and talking and communicating, having fun. Um, you know, you want you you want to everyone wants to do well and have a successful club, but the bigger picture is that there's people out having fun, enjoying it, getting fit, active, healthy, you know, creating friends for life. That's the you know how many you know, I just spoke about us having a um USIN McDonough and under 17 iron international, but realistically, that's gonna be very few and far between. From all the work and all the time that goes into different clubs from our club, it's probably one in 10, 15 years, maybe not even that you're gonna create uh maybe an international player out of it. The bigger picture is that they create friends, parents make friends, you know, people smile, have fun, get out and stay fit and healthy and have lifelong memories from it.

SPEAKER_03:

That really is the measurement of a of a great club, isn't it? That's the success. It's not the medals and the trophies so much as it is the memories and the uh after and the and the crack on the side. I'm sure Roshin has had a uh a fairly warm welcome back into the into the club after his exploits.

SPEAKER_01:

Um oh he listened, uh, the club is very proud of him. We haven't seen him since. I think he's gone back to his club. He's in he's in Italy. Uh uh, he plays for a team in Italy, so we haven't seen him again. I would have had nothing to do with his team um uh or anything over the years. There's been another bunch of coaches and obvious obviously did a very good job with them. And and you know, you can create players from anywhere, you don't have to have world class facilities. You want the best facilities that you can possibly get, but you don't have to have the best of everything to create players, you just have to give them somewhere to go and play and enjoy themselves. And we're very lucky and proud to have you know helped him some small way to to this in the start of his hopefully long career.

SPEAKER_03:

Absolutely. Um, so the ambition for the club is to field as many teams as possible, to be a part of that community. As you say, renting pitches and not having your own field of dreams is always a challenge, but yeah, part of that is trying to raise money in order to make those dreams come true. I noticed you got an FAI club map recently as well, which is a good indicator that you're you're moving in the right direction. When it came to the fundraising, one of the areas which I'm interested in is is your use of the club lotto jackpots. So the uh Irish-based company that's willing to actually sort of put in place uh a plug-and-play lock system, which means that you can guarantee that there's a 15,000 euro jackpot there every week. Where did you come across the idea?

SPEAKER_01:

Um, a couple of our committee members, um, Justin Finn and Denise Kent came across the idea. I think it was through our Club Funder app, which helps us, you know, all the logistics um of uh registered players and taking in money. Um, and the club law has been going for years, but uh you know, more and more they're falling by the wayside because they're an awful lot of man hours, time, effort every single week. Someone has to, you know, go through an awful lot of work to make them work. Um, and so we broached the idea for a while about possible club law, and no one showed a whole lot of enthusiasm for it until this um this system or this uh this was put to us. Um and and the first thing everyone said to me the first week we we had the law, everyone couldn't believe it was 15,000 euro. How we have a 15,000 euro law, you know, they started 2,000 and maybe after a year of no one winning it, they worked their way up to a big prize. And and that was a big thing for us to be able to start, you know, with a bang, to say, right, we have you know something that people go, oh, I want to win that, you know, and um and taking away the the man hours, the going to uh going to the local pubs, shops to pick up tickets, to be people going out and trying to sell tickets that it's all done digitally, all done online, um, all very transparent. And yet, you know, we we are able to offer a big prize, which you know, we said we've we've a committee and everyone works very hard, but the time and effort that goes into running fundraising, and we've lots of other fundraising ideas going on. But if we were we uh we we went with uh the club law and we've committed to it, and so far uh it's been an excellent start for us. And um, it's getting, I suppose, people to you know, uh my own wife said to me when she she she went and got the the signs uh the signs printed off, and she said, the fella in the printing the signs off said no it can't be 15,000 euro, you know, you can't be starting with 50 days. You sure you need to double check this that we're putting this up. So um getting that side of it out there and listen, all the money raised from it, it's it's you know, it's purely to go back into our club local community um to try. Our main aim for the lotto is to um is for longer, not day-to-day needs, it's for longer term development to create a fund to purchase our own facilities. We're talking about renting pitches there. I think in pitch rental last year we were between 20 and 25,000 euros just on pitch rental, which uh which you know you from you it's necessity, we have to have the pitches, but it's it's money that's just gone every year that we could be putting into our own facility. So we're working towards, and it's not easy where we are, we're near Wexer town, land is not cheap to try look and buy wherever is uh feasible or accessible is usually uh earmarked for potential housing. So it's a difficult uh task we have trying to do it, but we have to start, and we have a you know, the law was one of our ways of starting a fund, advertising it as long-term development for a club, and thankfully the lads have have made it you know straightforward for a club like ourselves to be able to go and do, and that's the that's the main thing you you want it to be straightforward as possible.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. We we're joined now by Brian Farrell, who was the man behind it, who who set up the business and who was actually running it. Brian, uh, can you explain to us how how does it work that there is that guaranteed jackpot? Because you've got this in place now across a multitude of clubs, across Gaelic games and football and and other sports up and down the country.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, we're delighted how it's gone last year or so. And I think a couple to uh a couple of points that Kevin made there. I think there's two real keys here. One is um, I guess I'm sort of preaching this at the moment, it's purpose and prize. And I guess Kevin's club very clearly has a purpose to running a club lotto. And I think a lot of clubs that run have been running lotteries for 20, 30 years, sometimes they forget to communicate the purpose. And it's really important. And whether that's your local community or your wider community, they need to understand why you're running a lotto. The second one is the prize, and as Kevin said, his sign people are going, Well, how can you be doing a 15,000 euro jackpot? I think traditionally the model here is that clubs fund their own jackpots and they do exactly as we all expect. They all sit around a table and they go, How much are we prepared to lose this week? And then if it's not won this week, it grows slowly and slowly and grows up until a point where it's very attractive, and then line sales increase and the club makes more money. But then when it's won, the club has to pay out that money because they're taking all the risk, and then they have to restart it again back at a small jackpot. So we partnered with um a prize cover broker who are underwritten by Lloyd's, and they've been providing prize cover to corporate and commercial entities since the mid-70s or since the mid-80s, I should say. And ultimately, what that enables a club to do is to pay a fixed cost, in this case, per lotto line sold, to cover the outpayment of a prize. So it completely removes the financial risk for a club and it empowers the club to be able to offer a large jackpot. Um, but a club like Kevin and Denise and his committee can sit around a table and say if we sell X amount of lotto lines, the club is guaranteed to have Y revenue at the end of the year. So it's forecastable, predictable, and financially risk-free. Um, the underwriters had never really been attracted to working this at grassroots level. So I guess my uh mission drive, I guess, last summer was having been involved with a lot of Gaelic football clubs over the years, it was very much I wanted to bring this to grassroots. And guess Glenn is a great example of that. So it doesn't matter how big the club is, how small the club is, whether it's basketball, swimming, like we've got swimming clubs, uh Ruby League clubs, sorry, rugby football clubs, soccer, and Gaelic at all levels. And it doesn't matter. The model is the same for every club. So we're delighted to have Kevin and Glynn on board, and please God, it goes on to be as successful as they need it to be.

SPEAKER_03:

Great. Well, yeah, hopefully it will. What what is the what is the ambition? How much, Kevin, do you think that this can contribute? Not in in absolute terms, but just yeah, we don't, you know what?

SPEAKER_01:

Be honest, we don't know, Rob. We're you know, we're only a couple of weeks in and we're still, I would say we haven't fully launched it yet. We're just wanting to get, you know, get it, get it working right, get everyone aware of it. We, you know, as as we're getting out in the butt room for Christmas, a real push is going to come on for the club lotto. People are becoming more aware of it, confident in it. Um, I suppose trying to trying to uh, you know, one of the one of the things with Club Lottos is is a lot of older people buy tickets and realizing they can go and do this digitally. And we're starting to see that as well. Um, that it's not an issue. You can just go on, and it's very clear, transparent how many lines you have one week, you want to buy for the year, you want to buy two lines, three lines, whatever it might be. Once you do it once, it's very straightforward and simple. I think that's what people are realizing. So we're hoping we have a big push as we get everyone gets more comfortable with and sees uh just gets out there, you know. And we don't know how many we're gonna we're gonna um sell. We have no real projections yet on it. Um we're just trying to slowly build into it. Instead of starting like a big flash in the pan and it dies away, we want it to last. And um and we've a big club, lots of members, and get it out to them and keep reminding them. I suppose like anything when you're fundraising, it's you know, you do it once and it's everyone who send a message on once. It's the consistency of doing it weekly becomes normal to people and and said the prize is very attractive. And and you know, I I do know there's you know, Denise and and Justin were telling talking to us about where we can um we can increase that prize maybe for Christmas or for Easter, we can make it a bumper one, we could double the prize. It's up, it's up to us if we want to do that. So um that's something we're we're talking about as well. And um, not hopefully, you know, on paper for us, it's it's a great solution to some of our fundraising issues, and it's up to us to make it work.

SPEAKER_03:

Brilliant. Well, the tools are there, all right, and hopefully it will. The ambition for the club as well is uh is great to see. Uh the very best of luck and and and continued good fortune in relation to both the football and the fundraising. Um, one last question uh on behalf of the people of Ireland, can I just check now that you're our lucky charm, have RE been in touch about an event that they might have you in the studio for next March the 26th?

SPEAKER_01:

Uh yeah, and we we find out what games we're doing a week or two before uh from from the from whether we're in the studio for the game or not. Uh lucky charm, I don't know. I've been at plenty, I've done plenty of Ireland games in the last year, Rob, where I haven't had to do laps at the studio, I tell you. Um hopefully, hopefully, I can't wait for those games. Hopefully, you know, I wish it was in the next week or two while the buzz is still there and the players are still on cloud nine. It's a long way away. Um but listen, it's it's a it feels like a corner turned and we have some, you know, we're making kids looking for triparrot jerseys, which there's not been kids looking for jerseys with Ireland players on it for a while. For kids to be looking for triparrot jerseys for Christmas, my own ones included, um, that makes that puts a smile on my face.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, so we probably haven't seen it since they were looking for Kevin Doyle jerseys back in. It wasn't too many of them sold.

SPEAKER_01:

I played up front with Robbie Keane. Now Robbie would have sold a few jerseys, all right. I think my ones were few and far between.

SPEAKER_03:

Oh well, listen it. Great, great to have you on with us today. And uh, as I say, the very best of luck. I think we'll we'll we'll keep that run around the uh the studio as something to keep us warm over the winter anyway. Looking forward to March 26th, and uh and the best of luck with the Club Lotto Jackpots. Cheers, Rob, thanks. Thanks. So there you have it, Kevin Doyle, Club Lotto Jackpots, fueling ambition through smart fundraising. You can find out more by visiting their website at clublotto jackpots.ie, and you can find out more about all of the content which is on sport for business.com. Today we are talking about the AIB Goal Mile and Patrick Horgan's launching of that. We're talking about Samsung coming on board as sponsors of the BKT United Rugby Championship and plenty more. Thanks for listening. Join us again on Monday when we will be back with an interview with Ellen McConville Boyd of Taneo, talking about a really innovative programme which is into its second year now, helping young female athletes to find their voice. Thanks very much and have a great weekend.

SPEAKER_04:

It's been challenging,

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Rob Hartnett

Host