General enshittification of the club?

[Silver Fox]

You should of said

[RoyalBlue]

Rick Catania tweeted earlier about Reading’s new AI partnership with Stelia, NVIDIA and Lenovo, driven by the club’s Head of AI, Stuart Fenton.

When asked what the partnership actually means, Rick replied:

“Implementing agentic AI on repetitive, time consuming tasks frees up club staff to work on more impactful initiatives. The Centre of Excellence will provide a platform for innovative people/organizations to apply AI expertise in a football context, allowing us do more for less.”

I’m struggling to work out what this means in practical terms.

The first part sounds like using AI to automate administrative and operational tasks, which could potentially save staff time. Fair enough. But what specific tasks? Ticketing? Customer service? Commercial operations? Recruitment analysis? Match analysis?

It could, potentially, also save staff. Personally I think redundancies are the more likely outcome, rather than 'working on more impactful initiatives'.

[RoyalBlue]

I kind of see your point but I do think (and this is crazy to say because of how he basically saved our entire club), he can't win.

He does all the things I mentioned, recruited new and innovative people, tried to engage and speak to fans, and still people will moan about toilets, signage and staff.

Had he started out by fixing the bogs, educating staff and putting signs up, people would say "all he's done is put some signs up"

I agree with another poster that people are expecting too much. Poeple think the club and business revolve around the 90 minutes we spend there but it's obviously far greater than that. From the 100s of staff working from HR to Finance, Legal, etc, to the vehicles they own, youth staff, the training sites, the funds for equipment, the maintance of all aspects from the office space, to Bearwood, to the ground.

Yet fans are focussing on the taps being shit, and the signs being dull/removed.

As I said, I get your point, I really do - but I think fans need to be realistic and also reasonable.

People complaining about taps and toilets or bathrooms as the yanks call them, are relevant.
They are the basics that any customer would expect from a supposedly modern sports stadium.

faucets

Faucets in Restrooms.

[Jackson Corner]

There are basic things which should've been done to improve fan experience, which hasn't been done. Things like cleaning the toilets; fixing the taps; replacing faded/damaged/missing signage; ensuring staff are actually knowledgeable; etc. These things have an impact as to whether people would want to return to the stadium and shouldn't cost very much.

Most of what they've done so far in 'improve fan experience' seems to be based on gimmicks or low priority things: the fireworks; safe standing; the training ground visit.

Arguably the only major thing the current owners are doing is relaying the pitch and I believe that was required to be done due to the subsidence and unevenness. If I'm remembering what I was told by a member of the ground staff a couple of years ago correctly, we were having to get special dispensation from the EFL to keep playing on the pitch and we were only getting that due to our ownership situation.

You never went to Elm Park you used to piss into a drain on the floor. As for a sink l never saw one,

I kind of see your point but I do think (and this is crazy to say because of how he basically saved our entire club), he can't win.

He does all the things I mentioned, recruited new and innovative people, tried to engage and speak to fans, and still people will moan about toilets, signage and staff.

Had he started out by fixing the bogs, educating staff and putting signs up, people would say "all he's done is put some signs up"

I agree with another poster that people are expecting too much. Poeple think the club and business revolve around the 90 minutes we spend there but it's obviously far greater than that. From the 100s of staff working from HR to Finance, Legal, etc, to the vehicles they own, youth staff, the training sites, the funds for equipment, the maintance of all aspects from the office space, to Bearwood, to the ground.

Yet fans are focussing on the taps being shit, and the signs being dull/removed.

As I said, I get your point, I really do - but I think fans need to be realistic and also reasonable.

People complaining about taps and toilets or bathrooms as the yanks call them, are relevant.
They are the basics that any customer would expect from a supposedly modern sports stadium.

[Orion1871]

What a strange announcement, and even stranger that a club director would think it is something that would excite fans.

What a load of old bollocks.
The club must think all their fans a gullible idiots.
The club seems to be run by a bunch of bulls***ing morons

Well yeah, they are American.

[Brogue]

Club looking likely to lose cat 1 status in the next evaluation this year (July/august time)