As a fan of a League Two club for over 16 years, I have experienced many different emotions and experiences that our great game provides.

Attending all home and away games for three consecutive seasons and being a season ticket holder has enabled me to visit many different clubs and stadiums up and down the country, and the pace at which some have evolved has been nothing short of startling.

The one that sticks out the most for me I guess would be the rise of Wigan Athletic, from the days of the old Springfield Park ground, stood on an open terrace exposed to the elements of Lancashire - to the splendour of the JJB Stadium and all its modern comforts. Vision and investment can be a great partnership, and the investment doesn’t always have to be on a massive scale to make an impact.

I noticed as a supporter the need for the lower league teams especially to transform themselves as a collective – the club / the supporters / the local community. When I saw an opportunity for my club to earn some extra revenue, I sent my various ideas to the Commercial Manager.

When some of my ideas were used, this gave me the opportunity I had been waiting for. Taking confidence from the skills I had learned from my experience of sports journalism, retail management and from business in general, I started planning and researching my first business.

The hardest thing to come up with was a name, numerous ideas came and went. I couldn’t settle for second best, so I continued thinking until one night I thought of Work The Channels. The analogy of getting the ball into the wide areas of the pitch, creating a spark, a piece of skill and magic leading to a far post cross and a goal could be likened in a business sense: - Explore additional ways of achieving success which were not route one, one ball over the top and an easy finish in the 6 yard box, with no theatre or craft.

And here we are today, via a recent successful completion of Nottingham Trent University’s HeadStart Venture Creation Programme at The Hive (Fast Track entrepreneur programme.)

Approaching a wide spectrum of clubs from the Barclays Premiership to the Conference South, here are the key findings we discovered when we undertook our market research:

58% feel their commercial teams are not delivering the results they require

57% of clubs we talked to would consider using an external business to help improve their commercial revenue streams

72% of our respondents had over £30,000 of outstanding revenue yet to recoup as of December 2006