Academy sponsorship manager Simon Milton is the man charged with raising a third of Town’s £1.5 million annual investment in a Category One academy. He told TWTD a bit more about the Academy Association and what local business people and supporters will get for their contributions.
"Over the last few years I’ve been trying to raise £100,000 a year. What we’ve done is we’ve got all the team sponsors, we’ve kept that the same, scholar sponsors as well, but I’ve introduced Business Members and Academy Friends," said Milton, pictured above with academy director Bryan Klug, Tommy Smith, academy operations manager Helen Broughton, Luke Hyam and Kieron Dyer.
"Regarding Business Members, we’re looking for companies to sign up for five years, £1,000 a year. The benefits are hospitality at the football club, we’re putting sponsors’ advertising boards up here and at Portman Road for everyone to see, and there’s a brand new website.
"That’s for the businesses who went to get involved. Then there’s Academy Friends. I’ve always had Academy Friends, it was £150 a year. I’ve changed that now, it’s either £5 a month or £10 a month.
"You sign up because you want to support the academy. For that you get listed in the programme, listed on the website. We’re doing some academy gifts, car stickers, silicone bands, things like that.
"We’re asking people to sign up as part of our five-year plan. If we get to the play-off final in that five-year period and you’re paying £10 a month, you’re guaranteed a ticket. You have to buy the ticket, but you’re guaranteed one.
"If we get to the play-off final this year, there’ll be 100,000 people wanting a ticket and we want to make sure all of our season ticket holders, all of our new academy people, everyone who gets involved gets the tickets they deserve.
"I went to [MDs] Jonathan Symonds and Ian Milne and said that in the new Academy Association, if you’re a Business Member at £1,000 you’re entitled to two play-off final tickets and two home play-off semi-final tickets, guaranteed. That’s a new incentive to get on board.”
The former midfielder, who will no longer be doing his player liaison role in order to raise academy funds full-time, says he’s conscious not to simply look to existing sponsors for more money: "If I get 1,000 people at £10 a month, that’s £120,000.
"What we’re trying not to do is keep going back to the same people. I’ve got my group of sponsors. I’m not going to go to someone who spent £1,000 last year and this year ask them for £2,000.
"That’s not the way that I’m going to get to my £500,000. If people want to get involved, I’ll go to the meeting and say ‘What do you want to do?’.
"Like the guy I spoke to today, he said ‘Yes, £1,000, five years, done’. He’s already got seats at Portman Road and stuff like that but he really fancies getting involved more.
"For £1,000 you can come with me to an away game and have hospitality and sit in the directors’ box. There are some really nice things that we’re doing for people in return.”
That £500,000 would be a third of the £1.5 million required to get the £800,000 Premier League grant and Milton says owner Marcus Evans is continuing to make a significant investment: "The owner is still putting in a shed load of money.
"Category Two is a minimum spend of £480,000 to get another £480,000 grant but we’re actually spending more than that anyway. We’re spending well over a million [including the grant] running at Category Two.”
On the field, he says there are big advantages to the step up: "We’ll be playing against the best teams again and we ring-fence our players more, protect them from other academies if we’re at Category One. When you’re at Category Two the Category Ones can come and have a look at your players.
"Actually, when we’re playing, for example, Chelsea, I think it’ll work both ways. They might be looking at our best players, but we might be looking at players who get released from Chelsea.
"There’s some really good news coming out, the five-year plan, the application for Category One, the amount of staff that we’ll have.
"The academy is going to be better than it’s ever been before and now there are lots of opportunities to get involved.”