This is my first effort at an AI transcript. I hope it works ok. If there is any feedback please reach out by email [email protected] Mike
**Mike Sutton Podcast - 6:01 PM**
Hello and welcome back to another episode, another season of Sutton United Talk Time on Podcast. It's the Sutton Podcast. Once again, I'm delighted to say that we're sponsored by Lucky Star Gin. As that intro just started, you could tell it's going to be the same old stuff. I can't get it right even in the intro, which I've done hundreds of times. I'm your host, Mike, and today we are taking a peek behind the amber curtain, and we're going to be talking to Gary Otto. We're going to find out a little bit more about Gary and his hopes and expectations for this season and beyond, hopefully. And we, as always, lead with the engagement. Please do continue sharing, liking, retweeting, all the things you want to put in the comments, and just join in the conversation. It really is nice to see, and I do love it when people recommend the podcast to others. It freaks me out. I see someone say, "Listen to the podcast," and I'm like, "Oh, what podcast?" And they say, "It's mine."
Gary, thank you so much for joining us. We have tried a couple of times, and then the timing has just kind of thrown one of us off or the other. I think last season we just went, "Yeah, it's not a good time." One of them was definitely me. I remember going, "I can't do this." But we got there eventually. For anyone who doesn't know you, people would have seen you around the place, would have heard your name. But can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
**Gary Otto - 6:03 PM**
Yeah, exactly. I appreciate your patience and your perseverance in getting it together. Well, I grew up, I was born and grew up in South Africa, started playing football at probably the age of about three. Like every kid, I really loved it. At some point, probably at age eight or nine, I discovered a football magazine. We got them in South Africa. I don't know if you got them in England, but Scorcher magazine, Score magazine, and there were some others. Through that, I started following English football. In the 60s, South Africa had no TV. South Africa only got TV in 1976. There was no TV, no football coverage on TV, so the only way to follow football was through these magazines, which generally arrived about two or three weeks after the published date. So, I'd sit by the mailbox for a week or two waiting for the magazines to come and then just devour them. I grew up being quite passionate about football. I was a massive Leeds United fan because, in the early 70s with the Billy Bremners and the Jack Charltons, they were a successful team. Obviously, a successful team is one that you pay attention to. I followed football, played football until probably age 16 or 17, and then came to the sad realisation that my dream of being a pro footballer was not going to happen.
So, I went off and did my military training in South Africa, came back, did my studies, and in 1986, I was lucky enough that my qualification allowed me to go out into the world and apply my trade. I eventually decided to come to the United States on contract with a chartered accountant firm because that was my qualification. I came over on a two-year contract, and 35 years later, well, 40 years later, I'm still here. But, you know.
**Mike Sutton Podcast - 6:07 PM**
Do they know? Do they know?
**Gary Otto - 6:07 PM**
Yeah, they do. They finally found out. Yes, I'm a citizen now, so they do know.
In the US, back in 1986, there was no coverage of English football. So, I sort of lost touch with it at that point. Then, in the mid-90s, there was some fairly spotty coverage, but I found it and devoured it and sort of raised my passion again. Coming back to it at that point, I was older and maybe a little bit more established financially as well. Knowing that I was never going to be playing competitively again, I just really had this desire to be involved somehow in a football club. English football was my passion, so that's where I wanted to be. Over a long period of time, I mean, this process probably started in 2012. Of all things, in 2012, I actually spent some time with Ken Bates in Monaco and actually made a deal with him to invest money into Leeds United. Unfortunately, a few weeks after we made a deal, the deal changed, and we sort of walked away as friends and didn't do that deal. But, on that process, when I made a deal, I came back to the US and called the British consulate and said, "I'm trying to do this. Can you guys help? I need to speak to someone who is based in the US but who knows English football very well." They gave me the name of Gary Hopkins. So, I contacted Gary. When that fell through, we got on really well. We became close friends and continued to look at football things together. We looked at Coventry City a couple of times because Gary's from Coventry. I think that's probably why. We tried very hard to get involved there as well and weren't successful there. In 2020, we had a couple of different people interested in looking at taking on investors, a couple in England and actually two in France as well. Gary and I had done a trip out to France, to Paris and then to Normandy, came back to London, looked at a few clubs in London. While we were travelling, one of the lawyers we had been working with called and said, "There's this club called Sutton United, and they're looking for an investment. You should talk to them." We're like, "Well, who's Sutton United?" Never heard of them before, unfortunately. But we were in London, and we had an evening span. So, we called and said, "Let's go have dinner." We went and had dinner with Bruce and Adrian and then with Martin as the MBuzz representative. We just had a fantastic dinner, and it was just a beautiful evening. We talked about football all night long. It was really, really nice. We just had a great time. We kind of came away from that meeting thinking, "Wow, that's really interesting, but it's really small."
**Mike Sutton Podcast - 6:10 PM**
Yeah, yeah, I've noted this down.
**Gary Otto - 6:10 PM**
It's not Leeds United, and it's not Coventry City, even though, you know, as we came out, we kicked both of their butts. Yeah, exactly. Which is sort of how the "If you can't beat them, join them" headline came a year later. But came back to the US and thought, "That was really fun, but it's really small. Is that really something that's even worthwhile?" So, I had to sit back, I think, at that point and take a big step back and say, "Okay, so why am I really trying to get into this? What is my goal in doing this?" After some soul searching, I came up with that. I really wanted it to be enjoyable/fun, not a huge amount of stress and not a huge amount of financial pressure either. So, yeah, I know you're laughing. But yeah, I know. Right. Exactly. But when I took a look at it that way and looked at a team like Leeds United or Coventry City under that umbrella, it just wasn't going to work. It was probably a good thing that nothing ever happened there. But Sutton United really seemed to check all those boxes. So, we eventually contacted Bruce and said, "Okay, we'd like to do something." And it sort of went from there.
**Mike Sutton Podcast - 6:12 PM**
Beautiful. We'll come back to some of that, but one of the things that's really interesting is the... I mean, it sounds a long time ago, but 76, it's only not that long ago at all. Everyone, shush. But you saying that, oh, you had to wait for two weeks to get the magazines and then we sort of fast forward to today and...
**Gary Otto - 6:13 PM**
Exactly. Yep. It's unbelievable. Yeah, it's unbelievable. It really is. Because there, you were completely starved. At best, you were three or four weeks behind everybody else. But, you know, it didn't matter. I was 10 years old, so it just didn't matter.
**Mike Sutton Podcast - 6:13 PM**
Yeah, but even when I was supporting Sutton United, unless you called this 0898 number, which is a premium rate number, you had to wait till the next day to get the results in the papers, and you're scouring all the bottom of the papers. I used to love it because when people on Monday used to tease me that Sutton had lost, I was sitting there going, "You had to really look for that, you had to see that."
**Gary Otto - 6:14 PM**
I'm using the term loosely there.
**Mike Sutton Podcast - 6:14 PM**
Interesting that you mentioned Ken Bates and you walked away as friends. I don't think an awful lot of people walk away with Ken Bates as friends. Well, there's a story about Ken Bates. I'm not sure if Zoe will hear it, but Zoe, our goalkeeper, her dad told me a great story
that he took her down to the Chelsea megastore years ago when Ken Bates was there. She was a baby, and Ken Bates picked her up, and she promptly did what babies do all over him. Her claim to fame is she threw up on Ken Bates. Absolutely, that would literally be on my CV. So you mentioned Gary and saying that he didn't potentially know Sutton United. I think he did.
**Gary Otto - 6:14 PM**
I'm sure a lot of people have wanted to do that, too.
**Mike Sutton Podcast - 6:14 PM**
So, yeah, my little curveball was, I heard you were going to buy Leeds, but obviously you've put that to bed. So, obviously, at the time Leeds were big, we played Leeds ourselves in the very early 70s. But you've mentioned kind of a little bit about the meal and meeting people. What was it about the club that you went, "Yeah, you know what, I'm going to invest?" Because to be honest, investing generally means you're going to get a return on it. That's what most people mean by investment. It's clear that football clubs are not overly the same. But what kind of drew you to Sutton in particular?
**Gary Otto - 6:15 PM**
Right, exactly. I think it's the people. I mean, I think that's the bottom line, it was the people. I've been in business for a long time, and I think it's the most critical thing that you can have is be with good people. So, yeah, that was really the number one issue. And the number two issue was that it was smaller, and it wasn't a huge financial commitment. Theoretically, it was going to be fun as well. It definitely has. But yeah, I mean, and that was pretty much it. I didn't know much about the National League, but at the end of the day, it was a league. It was an English league, it was English football. There was obviously promotion and relegation, so there was always that chance that we would get promoted into the EFL, which, six months later, we did. I invested in December of 2020, and in May the next year, we'd won the league.
**Mike Sutton Podcast - 6:16 PM**
That was a surprise. So, how does your experience benefit us or will benefit us in the future?
**Gary Otto - 6:17 PM**
Well, I think, going in initially, at the time, the club was fully a volunteer-run club. Last time in the National League, it was completely run by volunteers, and it worked great because there wasn't a lot of income coming in to cover salaries and things like that. From that standpoint, I think it was fantastic. You had people who had been involved with the club for decades, many, many decades. So, you had these people that were involved who are completely passionate about the club. I think that's been a fantastic thing. Going into the EFL, it's a little bit different. You're up against some very, very big clubs with big budgets, and you need to do everything you can to get as good a team as you can and to get as good an infrastructure off the field so that you can generate as much revenue as you can to pay those players. It becomes a sort of vicious cycle. But, starting from the promotion, I think the club has had to grow up a little bit. We've had to take on full-time employees. Even bringing Tim on as COO, that's more than a full-time job, just taking care of all the administrative things. There's just a lot, and you can't really expect volunteers to give 40, 50, 60 hours a week. Most of them have jobs and businesses, and that's very difficult to do.
**Mike Sutton Podcast - 6:19 PM**
Absolutely. So, when you first invested, as we said, the normal term of investment is, I guess I get out of this, what were your initial expectations? Were you thinking, right, this is a three-year investment, five-year, 10-year, or was there nothing like that at all?
**Gary Otto - 6:19 PM**
It was a long-term thing. I went in with my eyes open, knowing that generally, football is probably one of the worst businesses in the world. If you get lucky and the team is successful and you get promoted a few times, then the value goes up, and maybe you make money that way. But on a year-to-year basis, it's very, very difficult to make money. Virtually impossible unless you have something magical happen. I went in with my eyes open. I knew that it wasn't going to be a normal investment where you get a return on your investment and things like that. The longer story is that, when I invested, I really went in as a minority shareholder and put in a certain amount of money and had a small percentage in the club. But when we got promoted, as has been well publicized, we needed to change the pitch, change the floodlights, change the ticketing system, add capacity, add some seating. There were all these things that had to be done, and there was not money laying around in the club to do it. I was fortunate enough to be in a position to fund a lot of that. Most of the other shareholders weren't. So, I did that. As I did that, it diluted everybody else. My percentage grew and grew and grew, and over time has grown to a much more significant percentage. That wasn't part of the plan. The plan was to put money in, enjoy the games, come over once or twice a year, and watch some games, and just really enjoy the process. It sort of got to the point where I was spending eight to 10 hours a day working on it. It's the most amazing business because there are so many facets. For a small club like ours with a relatively small amount of revenue, if you think about what we're doing, we've got a football team, a women's team, an academy, juniors, an events business, a bar. I could go on and on. There are all these divisions that need people to run them. It takes a lot to keep your fingers on all of those different things to make sure everything is going in the right direction. It takes a lot of time.
**Mike Sutton Podcast - 6:22 PM**
Yeah, I mean, the word professionalism has been used a lot. There are some things that I'm like, that shouldn't be happening at this club, but I don't want that to stop because I really like it. I love my little wandering around, and I can say, "Hi, Gary, how are you?" and have a chat. There is nowhere else you can do that. But there are loads of things that need to happen. It's going to ruffle some feathers. I wasn't going to bring this up, but you know what, we're talking about it. They've given the curver to the away fans. So, my spot where I've stood all these years is not there. It's there, but I can't get there anymore, so I'm over it. I'm fine. It's alright.
**Gary Otto - 6:23 PM**
You probably could get there, but you just wouldn't want to.
**Mike Sutton Podcast - 6:23 PM**
Were there any little surprises that you were like, "Oh, hang on, I wasn't told that was part of the deal," apart from working 10 hours a day and being told, "Yeah, you've got to put more money in, put more money in"?
**Gary Otto - 6:23 PM**
You're right. I mean, those were the surprises, really. I went in a little naive, thinking that it was a club, it would run itself without any problems. That was a bit of an awakening. But other than that, no. I think as far as clubs go, because over time, as I said, we did look at quite a few different clubs, and Sutton United was about as clean as what I've ever seen.
**Mike Sutton Podcast - 6:24 PM**
Yeah, I mean, that's... People are bored of me saying this, but for years and years, whenever I saw papers moaning that fans saying about other clubs, "They're run by a bunch of accountants," I'm sitting there going, "How is that not a good thing?" That's making sure you've got the money. I don't understand why you're saying that's wrong.
**Gary Otto - 6:24 PM**
Yeah, I know. And that was just purely, we were expecting some money to come in. It didn't come in. I had already wired money to the club, but as you probably know, it takes sometimes three, four, five days for wire transfers to go through from the US to the UK. That was the problem. It took a day too late, essentially.
**Mike Sutton Podcast - 6:25 PM**
Yeah, we guessed it was an oversight more than anything else, and obviously, it's the cash flow situation. As you mentioned, very shortly after you signed up, we went on an amazing run in that COVID season, and none of us got to see it, but we won the league. Watching it all on a little screen, it's like, "I'm supposed to be there." But we then got to the EFL, which is something that, as I was asked many times on different podcasts, "Is this what you dreamed of?" I was like, "No, because I never believed it was going to happen." We were bobbing along quite happily. Then in our first season, we had that magical run to Wembley, which kind of capped it all off, and we were one point away from getting into the playoffs, which would have been insane. With the significant benefit of hindsight, do
you feel that we were all a little bit guilty of, "Well, this is easy. We should have done this a long time ago"?
**Gary Otto - 6:26 PM**
Yes and no. I think that first season was amazing. It's one of those things where adrenaline just seems to take over, and suddenly you're way up there. I think it's never as easy as what you think. Even in League Two, year after year, the quality of football has improved. The amount of money being invested has increased significantly, and that's had an effect on the quality of football and the quality of the players playing at that level. Every year, things have gotten a little harder and a little tougher. But I think you're right. That first year, at the beginning, we were scrambling to get the new pitch in and get the stands done, but once things settled down, it really did seem easy. Beating League One teams in the quarter-finals and semi-finals just seemed like part of the course. But thinking back, it was a huge deal. It really was. To me, being a football nerd that I always was growing up, that day at Wembley made every sacrifice worth it. It was completely surreal. It was the most unbelievable day.
**Mike Sutton Podcast - 6:27 PM**
I hold some of the responsibility because I was behind our goal in my bright yellow jacket as the seconds were ticking away. I just knew that if that final whistle went, I would be standing there in tears, and I was like, "Oh no, the camera will be straight on me, the fat bloke crying." Then literally I turned around and they scored, and I was like, "No, no, go back, I'll cry, I'll cry for the camera, I'll do it." It was absolutely amazing. But we didn't walk into the following season, which we didn't do an awful lot, and we possibly got found out. We're going to head into a possible conversation where you may not be able to say too much, so if I ask a question and you can't say what you like, we'll draw back. The rot kind of started towards the tail end of the second season, and we just couldn't seem to get going. We had quite a big clear-out and brought in quite a big number of names over the summer, which is partly why one of our conversations was delayed because you were quite heavily involved with various things there. Did you ever get a sense that some of these players maybe thought they were doing us a favour by coming to Sutton, or when did you start ticking that something wasn't clicking?
**Gary Otto - 6:28 PM**
I think it might have been a bigger issue than that. We did have a big clear-out at the end of the second season. Some of it, Matt felt like there were a couple of players that stopped trying toward the end of the season and never came back. There were a few that, for various personal reasons, wanted to be elsewhere. The result was a big clear-out. Going into that third season, this was more probably on me than anybody else, but I really strongly felt that we were getting Wrexham into the league, Notts County. We had some of those incumbent big clubs like Gillingham and Stockport with really big wage bills as well. Matt came and said, "I think that we need a bigger payroll." I tended to agree with him because I felt like to compete with these clubs, we had to be better than what we had been. I think the problem was more that we got the recruitment wrong. Matt played a very specific style of football, and the players we recruited didn't know how to play that way. It took us too long to get them to play the way that we needed them to play. The beginning of the season was just an absolute disaster. Most of the season was a disaster. There were massive gaps everywhere. The team wasn't playing as a unit. The forwards were moving forward, the backs were moving backwards, and there were huge holes in the middle. Obviously, you're playing against better quality opponents, and they were exploiting that every time. It was a very frustrating season, to say the least.
**Mike Sutton Podcast - 6:30 PM**
Okay, so obviously Matt's a really popular guy. He got us there. To be honest, had he been bobbing along in the National League, hitting the playoffs every now and then, probably everyone would have been delighted. But as you said, that promotion changed everything. I don't want all the ins and outs because some of these conversations are private, but the decision has been put to us that it was a combined decision. When did conversations start happening, and can you share any more about how the decision was made? Was there a point that we said, "Okay, you've got this many games," or anything like the dreaded vote of confidence?
**Gary Otto - 6:31 PM**
There was. Really, the conversation started in September. I think it was mid-September, most likely. As a board, we sat down and said, "This is becoming an issue. We're not playing well. We're losing a lot of games." We decided to collectively monitor it very closely and just see how things are going. But that seed had been planted at that point. Then we went on that run of a bunch of draws. Some people were very excited that we hadn't lost. Others were not excited because we hadn't won. Some people were saying we're picking up points, and others were saying we're dropping points. I was probably more in the latter. I was very frustrated that we couldn't win. It started in early December. It started getting very, very frustrating. To me, and this is my own personal opinion, the style that we were playing seemed to be getting worse and worse. We were getting the ball and just hoofing it up and hoping Harry Smith would somehow lay it off to somebody with four players draped on his back. I kept saying, "Hope is not a strategy," and that's our strategy right now. It started in early December. People started getting frustrated. When Stockport happened, we went away and lost 8-0. That was really just a little too much to bear at that point. There were conversations with Matt along the way, and Matt, to his credit, stuck to his guns and said, "I know how to win this way, and this is the way we have to play." Everyone put faith in him, and it just didn't work. We felt like, at that point, the way we looked, the way we were playing, there was no way we were going to win a game, and there was no way we were going to survive. To give ourselves at least some sort of fighting chance, we had to do something. I think Jason did a really nice job for us as a caretaker. It was really difficult for him because he and Matt are so close, so I think he was really conflicted. But he was a true professional, and I think he did a really good job.
**Mike Sutton Podcast - 6:33 PM**
Yeah. I'm a supporter of the club. Obviously, I like different people, but I support the club, and I'm like, well, this is the person in the job. There was a huge divide in the supporters with lots of people saying, "No, he deserves to stay in post," and a lot of people saying, "Well, the board have made a mistake. This should have happened months ago." Were you aware of that kind of stuff going on?
**Gary Otto - 6:33 PM**
Not really, no.
**Mike Sutton Podcast - 6:33 PM**
Do you feel that possibly we delayed that decision out of loyalty a little bit too long?
**Gary Otto - 6:33 PM**
Yes, I do. I do. Look, I blame myself for that one. I feel like at that point, I had a controlling interest in the club, and if I was a different person, I would have sort of shoved it down people's throats, but that's not me. We have a board, and we did it the right way. Just like there was a divide in the fans, there was a divide in the board as well. It's tight. But yeah, I think we did wait too long.
**Mike Sutton Podcast - 6:34 PM**
It's an unusual thing for the divide in the board because most people kind of go, "Yeah, we know what the decisions are." So most decisions are generally just, it's done.
**Gary Otto - 6:34 PM**
Yeah, look, I think everybody wants what's good for the club, otherwise they wouldn't be there. Everyone votes with their hearts a lot, but I think there was a lot of loyalty to Matt as well, understandably so.
**Mike Sutton Podcast - 6:34 PM**
Absolutely. So relegation is a tough blow. There's no getting away from it. A little bit of me is looking forward to having a bit of fun and going to games and being able to do a proper smiley video at the end. But have you gathered your thoughts on the relegation? Are you over it and back into the "Come on, we're going to go again" mode?
**Gary Otto - 6:35 PM**
Yeah, look, it's absolutely a bitter pill to swallow, for sure. It was a tough one. There's a famous instalment of the Ted Lasso show which is that it's the hope that kills you. We were all living that. We went down to the last day, and maybe there's only seven goals difference. There's got to be a way we can make it up. It was so well, but those things have happened. It wasn't the most bizarre set of circumstances that was needed to do that.
**Mike Sutton Podcast - 6:35 PM**
Were you at all surprised by Steve's
comments? I will be asking him this when he sort of afterwards was like, "I failed. I failed the job." I'm like, where we were and where we are now, I know the outcome was relegation, but we didn't expect to get to the last day.
**Gary Otto - 6:36 PM**
Right, exactly. No, I'm not surprised by Steve saying that because that's the person he is. He wants to go there and he wants to win. He's been fantastic. He's been absolutely just a breath of fresh air, and he's done fantastically well. If you look at it, the last 12 games, if we had done that all season, we would have been in the playoffs. He completely changed the style. Day one, changed the style of football. He got those players to be brave again on the ball and things like that. I'm forever grateful to Steve for what he did. To answer your question about relegation, I think it was a tough one to take, but this is our opportunity to change things up a little bit. We've already basically implemented a lot of this stuff, but one of the mistakes we made through the years was putting all the faith and responsibility on the manager. We had a manager who set the style of play, did all the recruitment, made all the decisions. When something like this happens, you're sort of out there with nothing. What we've done now is we've, as a club, designed the way that we want to play as a club. That's going to be our philosophy. That's going to be the way that we play. We will play that way. We will teach the academy to play in that same style. We'll recruit the manager and the players based on that style of football. I think it's a lot easier to make those kind of huge changes in the National League than it would be in League Two. So, I think this is the time to do it. We've done that. You may have heard people talking about the data, the proprietary data management system that we've had designed for us. We've done phase one. We're going on to phase two quite soon here. That's been a godsend as well. The way that recruitment worked for us in the past is that we heard a name of someone that sounded promising. A month later, a scout would go out and take a look at him, and he wouldn't play that well. So, maybe take another look at him. You'd go through three or four months going through that process. Whereas now, we can say we want a centre back that's tall, good in the air, fast, whatever it is. We have access to names of League One, League Two, National League, National League North and South. We've basically got a database of those players. Instead of taking three or four months to identify some people, we can do that with one click of a mouse. We've also now revamped and changed the recruitment system. It's not just going to be one person saying, "I think that player is a good player, and I think he might suit us." We've got a committee. We use data. We've got a whole checklist of things that have to be checked off on the positive, like medical records, character references, interviews, physical data, running stats, all those kind of things. We have a whole worksheet for each player, and he has to pass every single one of those items. The whole committee has to agree that he's the right guy as well. That's why this year, without being in a mad panic, we've had 13 signings already. I think very good signings. They're all young, energetic, progressive. I'm very optimistic and excited for the season.
**Mike Sutton Podcast - 6:38 PM**
I've spoken to fans of the clubs we signed them from. They all seem to tick all the on-the-pitch boxes, but they also seem like good guys off the pitch. Mister Sallis has been involved with his "we, not I, we, not me." Afterwards, I might ask you, how does one get access to all this wonderful data? That sounds right up my geek street there. All the players and Steve have already said, "What's the goal here? Promotion, promotion, promotion." Is that the be-all, end-all goal, or is there going to be, "Okay, we're going for promotion, but we're happy with progress and looking ahead"?
**Gary Otto - 6:39 PM**
For me personally, I don't think promotion is my biggest goal. I think setting a style of play, getting the club set up so that if Steve, God forbid, left tomorrow, we could find someone else who will fit into that slot. We've got players that slot into the way that we play as well. I think getting the club set up to handle something like that is a bigger goal. Instilling really good values into the club from top to bottom is one of the biggest goals. If we can do the right thing and do the right things the right way on and off the pitch, I think success will come. That's a bigger goal than just saying we want to get promoted because that's sort of setting yourself up to fail. Harry Smith gets suspended for six games; you just can't plan for that.
**Mike Sutton Podcast - 6:40 PM**
One of my next questions was about your personal long-term vision, and it sounds very much like the Southampton model where theoretically you could take the under-10s and put them into the first team, and they would know what they're supposed to do. Is it a case of, and being really harsh and business mercenary, is it a case of we're looking to bring in players, develop, and sell them on to make a profit?
**Gary Otto - 6:40 PM**
I think that that's not the goal, but in recruiting such young players as we have, that is one of the pathways to maybe helping the club increase income. If it comes to making a decision, do we get promoted or do we sell a player, we're going to keep the player. But that is part of the overall business model.
**Mike Sutton Podcast - 6:41 PM**
This question is probably more for Matthew, but what kind of plans are there for expanding the commercial side of it?
**Gary Otto - 6:41 PM**
That's probably a Matthew question. We brought Matthew in because that's what he does. We would like to improve the events. Increasing the number of events, maybe increasing the quality of the space that we provide and the service we provide, increasing attendance. Relegation probably doesn't help increase attendance, but through various promotions, working in the community, those are big goals. One of my biggest goals is the club being more involved in the community and doing more community work. The foundation is doing amazing stuff, but as a club, we may be falling short a little bit. Having the players' training facility an hour and a half away is part of that. We're anxiously waiting for an announcement to come up relatively soon, which I'm quite optimistic about. I think that will be a huge help in enabling the players to get to hospitals, schools, and those kinds of things. That would be a worthwhile goal for us. We also have some big announcements coming soon.
**Mike Sutton Podcast - 6:42 PM**
I love all the off-the-pitch stuff, the classic hospital visits, reading at schools. A lot of the players say they don't want to do it, but you see them there, and they're great. I did a little thing for Bobby last year, and I was at the disability section with a couple of the players. I heard one from Sutton say to another, "We should get everyone else around here to do this because this is great." That's what we need.
**Gary Otto - 6:42 PM**
I heard that about the Royal Marsden visit fairly recently. They really enjoyed it. We want to expand that relationship because they're right on our doorstep.
**Mike Sutton Podcast - 6:42 PM**
Exactly. So again, I put this one down for you, but I think this is more of a Jack thing. Initiatives in place to engage the fans and expand the fan base?
**Gary Otto - 6:43 PM**
Yeah, I love Jack. Jack is the greatest. I told him the other day, I want people to pay attention. They may criticise and may not like what you're doing, but as long as you get eyeballs, that's what's important.
**Mike Sutton Podcast - 6:43 PM**
Yeah, that's basically what he said. He doesn't mind any as long as they interact with him.
**Gary Otto - 6:43 PM**
Exactly. Exactly.
**Mike Sutton Podcast - 6:43 PM**
I know you've hinted at a couple of things, but is there anything coming up that you can give us an exclusive on that we can look forward to? I know we've got the new kit at some point. Jack might have been joking when he said I was going to model it. I hope Jack was joking when he said I was going to model it.
**Gary Otto - 6:43 PM**
He wasn't kidding.
**Mike Sutton Podcast - 6:43 PM**
And I know the training facility is there, but is there anything we can get our teeth into and back as supporters?
**Gary Otto - 6:43 PM**
Nothing that I can say right now, unfortunately. I'm under strict embargo about that, but there are some announcements coming. We've got a relationship with someone who will be very exciting, and the training facility, we can't announce anything yet. We're under embargo from the council, actually. But there are long-term goals for the club. One of the biggest goals is to find a home for the club, not the stadium, but for training. When we lost the 3G pitch at the stadium, the women's
team, the academy, everybody scattered and went wherever they could to find facilities, and we're still doing that and living like nomads. At some point, I would like to see a facility that houses the first team, the women's team, the academy, the college programme, depending on how big this all is. It's possible that maybe we could expand that, but that is a big goal to get one home for the club so that we can have somewhere we can call home.
**Mike Sutton Podcast - 6:45 PM**
Hopefully, the council thing gets sorted soon because it's election season, and there's a lot of stuff they can't do that might sway votes one way or the other. One last thing before I let you go. Thank you very much. It's a little apology because we were having a brief chat at the ground, and I was sidetracked because I was minding Jenny as Jenny, and that was obviously a far more important job than my knowledge. I did find that she was smiling under that costume, which I love. I love the fact she was smiling. You don't need to do that. But hopefully, we will see you at the ground soon. Thank you very much for your time.
**Gary Otto - 6:46 PM**
Of course, of course.
**Mike Sutton Podcast - 6:46 PM**
Everyone, this has been an episode of Sutton Podcast. I hope you've enjoyed it. Do let me know. Follow us, like, share at Sutton Podcast on social media, subscribe, and we will be back soon with another peek behind the amber curtain. I'm kind of doing these recordings at different times, so I can't tell you who's coming up next because I haven't actually decided the order, but I know this was episode number one. I hope you've enjoyed the episode and take care. We will catch up soon. Bye.
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