Table Tennis in 2017

National Council

I first attended in 2008. I remember looking around the room and wondering whether anybody was fewer than 20 years older than me. I caused a bit of a stir shortly into the meeting by questioning why a massive wodge of papers was sent out to everybody rather than by email. This was met with a groan as this issue had obviously been suggested previously and rejected by all those people who did not want to print out their own copies. Silly newbie!  

This largely set the tone of my attendance over the years. Invariably being a nuisance with modern ideas. I noticed fairly early on that very few people ever stood up to ask questions. It was always the same few people. The rest seemed to be a murmuring or silent majority. This still bugs me that people turn up every 3 months simply to listen, mutter and vote. Thus recently, since I was elected to chair the meetings, I have tried to move the meetings into smaller focussed groups to discuss topics to try to wring out some opinions from a wider range of people.

The National Council has been the place where all the power within the ETTA has rested. The chairman of the ETTA would chair the meeting and all the decisions for the running of table tennis in England. The staff of the ETTA would report to elected officers who were volunteers and part of the administrative regime of the Chairman.

The upshot of this was a constant stream of different ideas that often involved dismantling structures set up by the previous regime. New initiatives that would be put in place, often without much planning and then shelved because they did not work or somebody else had a new idea. 

The Board

This changed following the Portas Report, which recommended the setting up of a Board of TTE to be the decision-making body taking the power from the National Council. The board was constituted of 3 elected directors – the Chair (Sandra Deaton), Deputy Chair (Susie Hughes) and Treasurer (Keith Thomas) and 8 appointed directors including the Chief Executive Officer, Sara Sutcliffe. 

The board is a unitary body with all the directors having a similar standing. Therefore, theoretically the Chair or CEO could simply be outvoted by the other directors, if they cannot achieve agreement on their own opinion on any planned actions.  

However, I understand that some of the board members are only interested in certain subjects eg. Children and safeguarding, regulations, officials, veterans and therefore express little or no opinion on many of the wider range of subjects that need to be discussed and decided upon at board meetings. 

The fact that there is encouragement that some of the board members are independent stems from the current political distrust of “experts”. Whilst this should give a wider view on subjects, not being drawn to the narrow view of self-interest, it also means that some decisions are being made by people who are unlikely to understand the consequences of the decision on the members.

This was accepted by National Council as it was presented as a fait accompli because TTE would lose its funding from Sport England. So the articles of association were changed to enable this, although some power was still left with National Council to ratify any further changes to the structure of the running of the sport. Any further changes need 75% support from National Council. 

The most recent Code of Governance produced by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport and distributed by Sport England has brought out some changes that are designed to bring any entities receiving public funding into line with any corporate structure to ensure the continued running of sports in this country.

Council Tenure

The recent Code of Governance has a mandatory requirement that council members can only serve a maximum of 9 years (3 x 3 year terms) or 8 years (2 x 4 year terms). This is the requirement for Tier 3 organisations that receive more than £1 million of public money.  

The requirement for Tier 1 (receiving less than £250,000) is that the 8/9-year term is ideal, but not mandatory. Councillors simply need to be up for election regularly. This is currently the case within TTE as Councillors are theoretically re-elected each year. 

The FA has run into criticism regarding it being run by a lot of “old white men in grey suits” who were set in their ways and not moving with the times. The investigation is still ongoing in this respect.

If this is to be accepted with TTE, it would mean that a high number of councillors would no longer be allowed to attend in future as the term is being counted retrospectively.  

TTE is fully aware that there are many councillors who offer useful feedback and guidance and therefore would be missed if they were no longer attending. It is able to keep their services by offering roles on various committees according to their special interests and expertise. 

Obviously, many councillors have already served many years. They are re-selected by their counties year after year, possibly because they agree to continue or in some cases their counties would have difficulty replacing them. 

There is anecdotal evidence of at least one National Councillor how found that he could not get onto National Council for his own county as there was an incumbent National Councillor, who wanted to continue in the role. So he went to the next county and now represents that county at National Council. Interestingly, he is strongly in favour of allowing Councillors to remain in office beyond 9 years. The irony of this stance is obviously lost on him.  

Financial 

Financially, it is arguable whether TTE is any better off than the ETTA used to be. Figures get bandied about and can be used to prove either side of this argument. The main issue is that TTE is no longer independent as it is heavily reliant upon Sport England funding to continue with its projects. But either way, over the years, investment in sustainable projects and assets within table tennis has not taken place, except in little spots where the local volunteers have had the wherewithal to arrange it. 

Buying into TTE

If I were looking at buying TTE as a commercial venture or trying to ascertain its value as a potential sponsor, my due diligence would include a detailed study of the assets of the company.

• Premises – currently renting in Milton Keynes. No value. 
• Equipment – TTE does not own anything other than a residual amount of table tennis equipment
• Database – currently being assembled with a recently implemented Customer Relationship Management system (CRM). There are issues regarding the ownership of the database that is currently held within TT365 and for TTE to get full access to the data. 
• Intellectual Property – possibly rights as National Governing Body
• TT365 – not owned by TTE. No value
• Ranking lists – held within TT365 – not owned by TTE
• Clubs – no clubs owned by TTE 
• Club database – not yet fully collected by TTE – potential value if and when complete. 
• Membership – collected by TT365 – marketing potential, but information within TT365
• Tournaments – grand prix events – run by TTE – profitability uncertain. 
• County championships – run by volunteers – may be profitable – but minimal value 
• British League – run by volunteers – anecdotally profitable – not owned by TTE 
• VETTS – runs its own events – profitable – independent of TTE, even runs its own ranking lists. 
• National Closed Tournament – run at a loss, could be marketing potential, but not at the moment 
• World championship of Ping Pong (WCPP) – popular event, lots of television coverage, nothing to do with TTE and likely to be held in China in 2018.

World championship of Ping Pong

On the other hand, the WCPP would be described as a novelty event with people using sandpaper bats to make it more interesting. However, over the years it has gained in popularity with the field getting stronger each year. International players have been coming to London for this event each year. The event is professionally marketed, well-staged with capacity noisy crowds and is televised professionally and broadcast for around 12 hours on Sky Sports 2. A lot of people watch it on Sky and there is always a capacity crowd at the event. Because it is on Sky, non-table tennis people get the opportunity to watch it. 

The standard of play is fantastic with great rallies because the bats force the players to play strokes and the lack of spin means that players are not making errors against tricks. It is not everybody’s cup of tea as many people prefer “proper” table tennis, but it is much more watchable for the general public and accessible because it is on television rather than streamed on the internet and only watched by people who know that it is on – ie the table tennis community only. This is really the only televised table tennis event in England at this time.

Customer Relationship Management system (CRM)

This is a matter close to my heart as I was on the project for selection and implementation of the system. This was a slow process over several meetings and even then the staff seemed uncertain about how to go about setting the parameters for it. This was notwithstanding several scoping meetings and asking what information the staff needed to obtain from the system. 

The CRM is still in the process of being built up. Much of the old information about clubs, coaching and membership was incomplete or inaccessible. Up to the time of the installation of the CRM, most information was on disparate systems or simply on Excel spreadsheets. Most often, it was simply out of date. It seems to be a slow process to bring all the information up to a quality that it could be considered useful.

The CRM is used to contact the membership with regular emails produced. In March, I got a birthday greeting, which was nice. It would seem that the individual membership information is starting to become useful for marketing.

The coaching database is still being built up. Most recently, Sussex has been looking for an up to date list of coaches and the list available for TTE appears to be inaccurate – coaches that are not coaches or coaches that are coaching who are not on the list.