Unreal - Roger Drapers salary!!

korriban · Challenger level

Unreal - Roger Drapers salary!!

indiana · Tennis legend

philwrig wrote:
He's probably done better than the previous incumbent in terms of number of players inside the top 100 and potential top 100 players who are lurking in the juniors. We also don't know how many hours he works a week, but having said all that it seems like a big amount.

Then again where do you start with the LTA, a huge organisation which would definitely be overhauled if it existed in the private sector.

3 singles players, men or women, in the top 100, Phil, hmm. As has also been said before, we have seen the LTA come out with targets that don't seem to distinguish much between singles and doubles, whereas most folk know which is the much more important.

They are failing to increase numbers playing the game ( indeed that number has gone down about 10% in four years ), and have received damning criticism for this and lost funding. and are also failing to particularly increase top players. As has been said, if Andy's Slam and Olympic success has had much bearing on that £201,000 bonus that would be ridiculous, but who knows what on earth has produced such a ludicrous figure.

I know little at all of what goes on inside the LTA. I do know that that salary, and more particularly bonus, are an outrage. Before any further public money is shoved in their direction a little more insight into how folk like himself earn their bonuses might be welcome. It would be really interesting to know what has been achieved in a year to earn an additional £201,000 on top of a basic salary of nearly £400.000.

Maybe some matrix assessment basis that is not fit for purpose furious

As for a "huge organisation", compared to many lower paid chief executives in the business world, I'd say it's not really that big an organisation at all. From that LTA themselves : "The LTA has a turnover in excess of £40 million, currently has 450 employees and more than 215,000 individual members across the UK, as well as hundreeds of volunteers who work for the Association periodically."

-- Edited by indiana on Wednesday 19th of December 2012 08:02:09 PM

Bob · Social player

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/tennis/20773530

No wonder the comments are so bad. What would our top players, not funded at all, make of this?

indiana · Tennis legend

Includes a £201,000 bonus disbelief

philwrig · Hall of fame

He's probably done better than the previous incumbent in terms of number of players inside the top 100 and potential top 100 players who are lurking in the juniors. We also don't know how many hours he works a week, but having said all that it seems like a big amount.

Then again where do you start with the LTA, a huge organisation which would definitely be overhauled if it existed in the private sector.

Armchair · County player

It includes a bonus ?

What on earth for, tying his own shoelaces or something.....

philwrig · Hall of fame

You can't argue though that elite Ladies tennis performances haven't greatly improved under his watch. 6 different players have had a top 100 ranking in the last few years, before that I believe the situation was much worse.

How much of the credit should go to Roger I'm not sure but certainly a much better performance than when the previous regime were in charge.

Personally though I'm not a big advocate of bonuses for top ranking employees as it is too easy to manipulate i.e they have too much of an influence in the decision/target making process.

indiana · Tennis legend

At the absolute elite end Heather and Laura certainly make things good. Go further down and Steven could soon struggle to find 25 women for his top 25 table. There are currently only 22 with more than the absolute mimimum 3 points from 3 counting tournaments.

philwrig · Hall of fame

I agree I'd love strength in depth as well, but if I'm Roger I do think he can point to those top 100 statistics added to the performance of the doubles players and say progress has been made in terms of ranking performances at the top end compared to his predecessor.

Ratty · County player

There are some advantages to working in financial services. Knowing your way around a set of accounts, for example.

So, page 21 of the 2012 accounts shows that Draper got £640,000, and the other three paid directors got a total of £357,000 between them - ie an average of £119,000 each. And that "Variable pay [ie - his bonus of £201,000] is based upon personal objectives, agreed targets and performance measures which were all met this year".

Page 8 has a note about the Remuneration Committee, which states that the "organisation's remuneration strategy is to pay executives the appropriate market remuneration packages to attract and retain high calibre individuals ..."

The LTA - along with most sports governing bodies - confuses me. What are they for?

Is it getting more people to play tennis? And if so, why is it better to persuade people to play tennis as opposed to persuading them to read books, or drink beer with their friends?

Is it getting more successful British players, with the payback in the form of national pride? Again, why? Wouldn't it be better to target rowing and cycling, where it costs far less to buy national success?

So bearing in mind the confusion about what the LTA is actually supposed to do, I guess it's hardly surprising that the targets agreed with one's chums on the Remuneration Committee may may not have much to do with what the general populace regards as success. But the not many people would want their pay governed by popular prejudice.

Bob · Social player

Includes a £201,000 bonus

Makes you wonder what bonus he would get if we had another male player ranked above 240 in the world.

I actually dont blame him for taking an income of £640K, I blame the committee for deciding and approving it. He must though be a tad embarressed.

Anyone can spin around statistics to focus on areas where there has been improvement and pay less attention or ignore more important areas where, Andy aside, there hasnt been any significant improvement. This probably earns him a bonus purely for the audacity of it all!! To have the second best male singles player in GB ranked below 240 in the world, and pay the Governor a performance bonus of + £200K is such a poor error of judgement by the committe.

The trouble is no one is held to task and yet again the mentallity of "we can do as we please" is at the expense of achieving genuine sustained success in GB tennis. It is so much a case of "jobs for the boys".

philwrig · Hall of fame

But then again Roger will probably point to a large group of very promising young male juniors who will be able to produce jam tomorrow.

korriban · Challenger level

I am fascinated to speculate on what Mr Draper's performance criteria might be to determine his bonus. Clearly there will be a number of aspects including grassroots player numbers, particularly at the junior end; senior and junior elite performance; feedback from clubs and other key bodies; financial performance of the LTA itself; and no doubt some more organisational or "soft" targets. In my experience if there are multiple targets, they would tend to be weighted heavily towards the most important 2 or 3 areas, especially those which Mr Draper can control/influence most heavily.

On player numbers at grassroots level, even with a large dose of goalpost moving, smoke and mirrors, and selective statistics, it would be hard to conclude that there was anything other than a spectacular failure. Certainly external stakeholders and interest groups have not been shy in lambasting this aspect of performance in the strongest terms, so I would be gobsmacked if he had managed to "nuance" a qualified success out of this criterion.

On elite juniors, there are certainly grounds for optimism, and there have been some pleasing results, including the Junior Davis Cup, Broady Final at the US Open. However that's one Grand Slam singles Finalist out of 8 (were there any other semi finalists at all this year), with nothing to shout about in girls. Broady made top 10 at year end, but that's about it. Edmund appears to be a potential contender in the making (I hope), but with players of that calibre there's always the argument that he will make it in whatever system. In my opinion the crop of juniors is very up and down, with good years and average years (eg 98 girls look good, but 97 not so much), and the crucial point is that we aren't producing a conveyor belt of contenders via the system, its 1s, 2s or 3s each year. There needs to be a step change in the QUANTITY of performance players succeeding at juniors to mirror Spain, France, US and others (Korea, China, Japan and Taiwan I would argue are making much bigger strides to do so than us). Nonetheless, you can spin a decent story on elite juniors if you are selective with statistics.

On elite seniors, it's still very patchy. Let's be clear - Mr Draper CANNOT take any credit for Andy's performances, and let us all hope none of his targets are influenced in any way by Andy's ranking or tournament wins. To some extent the same is true for Laura and Heather, but I can't argue that they have not utilised LTA resources and back up when required in the past, and to deny this would be disingenuous on my behalf. However, as with the juniors, there are huge holes in the pipeline of seniors by year, and particularly in the women's game a very long tail of average players in the top 25. We need to remember that in France and Spain top 25 probably means being in the worlds top 250 - now THAT's a pipeline and strength in depth. In the men, the "next" player is around 250 and in women, our 23rd ranked woman has 3 ranking points!!!!!

Putting it in clearer language, we only have 1 man playing regular ATP tennis (Andy), who is and has been outside the core LTA firmament. And only 3 or 4 who play the Challenger Tour with any regularity (Josh G wouldn't qualify here. ATP and (maybe) Challenger players are ultimately what success is about in the men's singles game, anything less is NOT a success. Similarly on the women's tour, we only have 4 players who regularly play the WTA tour, if which 2 are in the latter stages of their careers and outside the top 100. JoKo will probably join this list in 2013. Below this there are some talents for sure, but no proven REGULAR winners at ITF $25k level or above, and outside the GB top 10, there is noone with regular success on the ITF circuit at any level, with the women's rankings tailing off alarmingly outside the top 10. Success isn't about 1s or 2s, its about a system which produces lots of top 250 players, some of whom can go much higher.

I'm struggling to understand how a bonus could have been justified here!!! Anyone else got ideas on what criteria would have helped Mr Draper to get one of this level?!!

-- Edited by korriban on Friday 21st of December 2012 12:57:34 PM

indiana · Tennis legend

Bob wrote:
So why not give him a bonus when the jam is produced, and not before.

Roger Draper appears to get his jam before, afterwards, all the time, he's landed very very lucky, very jammy indeed.

It is questionable how much he should be rewarded in advance for promise, and anyway there is not really "a large group of very promising young male juniors". Liam, Kyle, Luke, then ?? and we don't really know that they "will be able to produce jam tomorrow".

korribans latest detailed post poses questions to which I nave no real answers. I guess there will be some internal organisational related sort of targets that he maybe does meet, and one can argue a bit maybe re some of the player performances, but as he says it is basically ones and twos and no sign of any conveyor belt. However, a £201,000 bonus is taking the ****, particularly when also receiving huge criticism from well established independant bodies regarding the drop in grassroot player numbers, resulting in funding cuts and indeed some funding withheld for now, and also more general real questions from them about the leadership within the LTA. What might his bonus have been if things had been going really well ?!

Of course not really Draper's fault that he is given such a huge bonus, though he seems to have some front, but those that have sanctioned any sort of bonus system that can produce that reward.

-- Edited by indiana on Friday 21st of December 2012 01:45:21 PM

Bob · Social player

So why not give him a bonus when the jam is produced, and not before.