An interview with: Dan Martin (Part 1)
A look behind the scenes with a recognisable face from matchdays
A few weeks ago I took a trip to The Hive to sit down with Dan and find out who he is, where he came from and what the future looks like with his involvement, here is part one of a two part interview:
TK: Who was Dan Martin before he arrived at Barnet Football Club?
DM: Dan Martin was in TV, media and broadcast! I started off as a tea boy in Soho when I was 18 making cups for celebrities, brilliant place to be in the mid 90’s.
Famous people everywhere, no word of a lie I knocked over Kylie Minogue when running down the street, she was very good about it mind! Robbie Williams popped in often, his manager was going out with the receptionist, here’s a story Robbie Williams actually ate my banana!
We had a fruit bowl in reception, great tasting stuff from Berwick Street market, Robbie was in, hanging no doubt, ate the three banana’s in the bowl and then had the one off my desk as well, three clearly weren’t enough here!
TK: I thought I was bad at name dropping but you win this one! Was it a recording studio or something else?
DM: It was post production, so the editing and final cuts, we did music videos, promotional work including E4 and Film Four when they launched, that kind of thing and I worked my work up to become Documentaries Editor.
TK: Was it something you wanted to move into career wise or kind of fell into it?
DM: School wasn’t great for me, I really wasn’t academically minded and when I left I was pretty clueless with what I wanted to do, there wasn’t the support to help you like there is now.
The advice given to me was go to uni and study French and Business Studies, the only things you’re actually good at, that’s coming from the careers officer who was the Chemistry teacher puffing away on a pipe!
Needless to say I didn’t take his advice, but it wasn’t easy to get into the industry. My grandad knew a client of the production company and got me an interview, the rest was history as they say.
I wanted to learn more on the business side so I became a producer until a company buyout, took voluntary redundancy and set up a broadcast media business which turned out quite big. We’d take things like ‘Top Gear’ and make it to the specification of BBC Worldwide and around the world it would go.
I had a production company as well that did some good work for people like Bacardi, Hilton Hotels etc, but left them to it in the end or we kind of all walked away from each other and I moved in consulting work and marketing.
TK: How did you end up becoming involved at Barnet Football Club?
DM: I was introduced to Tony (Kleanthous) through a mutual friend, my cousin’s husband, if you remember the ‘Wash n Go’ April Fools campaign, that was his ad agency.
I came in to BFC as a consultant for a few months and here I am now three years later! I was originally here to head up all the marketing and Tony was very clear from day one ‘we want bums on seats and we need to build’. If I knew what I know now and go back three years the approach would be a little different, although a couple of the programmes we have run in that time have worked out well.
But six months in and the pandemic began, it becomes a weird place to be as everything is so full on here, in a good way. It’s always so busy, sometimes it feels like a working week is a month.
TK: I think that’s very much the case even with clubs below the National League, you hear part time manager’s saying it’s a full time job now and very much 24/7 alongside their own work or businesses.
DM: Absolutely, I love it though. I didn’t think I would being around football all the time, I was a Tottenham Hotspur supporter but I lost interest in it when the money came into it and haven’t touched it and then coming here I think I’ve fallen in love with a different sport but the same sport if that makes sense.
TK: I think the fact that everyone here and levels below are approachable, you can speak to players and managers, clubs want your money, it has that respect for people unlike the top division.
DM: I took my son to watch Spurs when they played at Wembley during the new stadium build, I’d spent £30 just on food and drink, it was madness, not to mention the cost of the seats as well. I couldn’t go back to it now; this is for me.
TK: Just going back slightly, when you moved away from the consulting into full time at Barnet Football Club was it a little bit of a wrench leaving the self-employed world?
DM: No, not really. This kind of place makes you thrive or you run a mile, one or the other. Did I think I could work for someone else again? I said from day one if I think I add value then yes, the day I don’t think I do is time to shake hands and move on.
We do it all for the fanbase in effect they’re our audience, if we’re not doing it for them who are we doing it for? I read Twitter daily, I think it’s a good barometer for every club and I think we have the most engaging fanbase, yes Notts County, Wrexham, Chesterfield bigger fanbases but ours engage more.
And in constructive ways whether that’s good or bad they’re talking about; it’s not slating and its wanting the experience to be better. I feel that’s evolved from when I first came here, it felt very toxic but not now. I know we digressed a little from the pandemic with that answer.
TK: Was that a case then it felt weird during that time where The Hive was a thriving site and was stripped back right to the bare minimum?.
DM: I think globally everyone could say the same thing, it literally was as you remember one day at a time, I stayed on and worked on some projects with Tony, we were the first football club to open our doors as a vaccination centre, we did Football Food Aid to help support the community and between ourselves, Aldershot FC and Dagenham & Redbridge FC we helped around 800 vulnerable families at the time.
I have to say as well this is one of those times where Tony is just bang on it, brilliant. We came in with the plan on the Monday, by Friday there was a website, a charity involved and the two other clubs on board, it was amazing, the following Monday we were rolling it out.
The next challenge was streaming once we were allowed to play football again and that’s where my background really came to the boil. We had some teething problems as you know and then in came the guys who did Notts County, five camera set up and now they are the broadcast partners along with BT for National League TV.
As we came out the other side I recruited someone to take over the The Hive Foundation side of the business and we began our schools programme looking towards our future fanbase whilst also laying down the plans for the grassroots affiliates programme with smaller clubs where youth clubs can join with us and receive benefits or even upgrade and have ‘Bees’ within their title so we’re trying to make the club more accessible.
Within that particular programme we saw a 16% uplift in the home attendance figure and that included Tuesday night games where pretty much none of them turned up being a school night, it’s making inroads on a long journey.
TK: So when you arrived it was more of a Marketing Manager, what is Dan Martin’s title today?
DM: Commercial Manager.
TK Just Commercial Manager or a bit more?
DM: Well, this is one of those places where you can immerse yourself in more than one thing, there’s no point at my age coasting along, I mean what’s the point? Everything you do here you see a reaction to it, for example I jumped in on the tea hut situation when it arose.
I made it a personal project to ensure we had someone come in and be an ongoing concern, it’s not as easy as just getting a company in, it’s understanding our business, the sacrifice on their part, the financial breakdown and it’s getting the right people in, not just in the huts but across the site.
We’re actively recruiting constantly, we still are. Easy to get people in but getting the longer term buy in is much harder, they have to get what we’re about. We’ve had some fantastic people join us this season but for every one nine don’t last a week, you have to work where you’re happy however but in a football club you do have to get it.