An eclectic and eccentric view of football, business and management by media entrepreneur Chris Ingram.

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People talk about the ‘magic of the cup’ but for a small club it’s the money of the cup.

Look at Woking FC playing their 1st Round Replay against Brighton on Tuesday. We received £12,000 for reaching this round and ESPN were sufficiently intrigued at the real prospect of a giant-killing that they televised it.  This produced a fee of £33,000. Although gate money from cup games is shared home and away, overall we will have netted around £100,000 from our FA Cup run. That may be only ‘half of a Rooney’ (Rooney’s wages for one week being reportedly £200,000) but for us it compares with our ANNUAL t/over of £650,000. One fixture has increased our turnover by nearly 20% - and that’s only by getting to round one.

So what about our replay against Brighton? If you look up ‘replay’ in the OED it says ‘again’ and ‘a recording of an incident’. Well blow me down, that’s exactly what it was! Brighton DID play awfully again and we DID play a level of football again that we haven’t seen for 15 years at Kingfield. And again our defence was ‘massive’ and the Brighton defence hated our forwards running at them. It was just that this time, we created lots more chances, got to 2-2 all in extra time and finally, damn it, went out on penalties. That was the only time when Brighton’s professionals really did look their 85 places above us in the league. A terrific, emotional, spine-tingling evening.

So, for small clubs, of which there are some 30,000 in the UK, it really is ‘The Magic and The Money’ of The FA Cup. It’s a phenomenon that appears to be unique in the world and long may it continue.

Enough of Woking, this is meant to be a serious blog using football as a bridge with management and business.  There is a business lesson here, perhaps a bit tortuous: Brighton are known as The Seagulls.  And in multi-national business there is, what is known as the Seagull Method of Management – the global boss flies into a subsidiary office, craps on the team and then flies out again.  Not a lot of people know that but I didn’t make it up.

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Chris Ingram is as passionate about football as he is about business. Owner of Woking Football Club, and a majority shareholder in the fast growing sports media business Sports Revolution, Chris is one of the UK’s most successful entrepreneurs.

Recently celebrating 50 years in the media industry and still actively involved with Woking, Chris is ideally placed to comment on the business side of football.

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READ more of Chris Ingram’s work at our Football Business Section