Hello to all Sydney FC Members and Fans,
Hello to all Sydney FC Members and Fans,
Here we are, wow; one day to go! I am pumped and can-t wait for tomorrow night. What an incredible way for the Hyundai A-League Season to commence – Sydney FC v Melbourne Victory. Welcome home Brett and Harry!
This is instalment fifteen, my final weekly update and 3 months / 17 days in the CEO-s Chair. (In the future I will provide an end of month report on the final Friday of each month). I hope you have enjoyed the communication and there has been at least one piece of information each week you have found interesting. I apologise for the ‘business speak mumbo jumbo- however at the end of the day I am running a business and I have been talking about what is happening in the business.
To close off I thought that it would be a good opportunity to give a summary of some of the things we have been able to accomplish during this period;
The Club
• Development of three (3) year plan including vision and mission
• Development of budget and new general ledger system
• Benchmarking study to other codes
• Workshop with all staff and selection of universally agreed Club Values
Football
• Signing Steve Corica as Assistant Coach for two years
• Signing Zeljko Kalac as Goal Keeping Coach
• Signing Brett Emerton
• Signing Pascal Bosschaart
• Gaining approval for the recruitment of a Football Director
• Building positive relationships with leading player agents
• A very happy, motivated, empowered and informed team
People
• Recruitment of Finance Director – Grant Ingles
• Recruitment of GM, Consumer & Corporate – Andrew Christopher
• Recruitment of Fan Development Manager – Rawya Jammal
• Recruitment of Corporate Partnership Manager – Beau Curtis
• Recruitment of Corporate Partner Executive – Narek Michaelian
• Recruitment of Digital Content Manager – David Warriner
• Movement of Dave Mason to GM, Media & Communications
• Putting in place structured performance management program
Media & Communications
• Completed brand strategy, market segmentation and positioning
• Unprecedented media coverage in the Club-s history
o 174 print articles, 4 negative
o 501 radio mentions, 3 negative
o 185 TV spots, 0 negative
• Facebook growth 23%, Twitter growth 43%
• New website structure
Consumer
• Modification of membership pricing model (predominantly reduction) and increase of benefits
• Launch of membership program and associated collateral with ‘Football Capital-s- slogan
• Strong growth of new members, average renewals which is extremely disappointing. This legacy issue is something we need to get to the bottom of and understand. Online research forms will be coming your way soon!!
• Closure of adidas deal and launch of new strip
• New creative material and signage to make the stadium feel more like our home ground
Corporate
• Valuation and subsequent pricing of sponsor assets
• Development of a fact based professional sponsorship proposal
• Engagement with multiple quality brands of which we are currently in negotiation with 5 for our premium assets
• Creation of a corporate membership / loyalty program and associated collateral which in 3 weeks has already generated 82% of last year-s entire hospitality result
• A very successful season launch that generated quality media coverage
Community
• Development of community strategy surrounding causes, health education, schools and junior football
• Selection by the players of the ‘national cause- with which we will partner. TBA shortly!
• As we are the ‘world game- we can realistically have an international cause. TBA shortly!
• Women-s cause and youth cause pending once the respective teams are back on deck
• An average of 127 player hours per month over the last 3 months. This is 6 hours per player per month which is best practice!
There are a variety of other initiatives that have been successfully implemented however this should give you all a flavour of how hard everyone had been working, especially considering that during this period existing staff departed and we had to recruit 8 critical roles. I am personally very proud of what the admin and football teams have achieved in such a short time. Everyone in the business has embarked upon an incredible journey which I am sure we will reflect on in 3 years time as being a success. It is important to highlight that for the business to improve we need to be patient and stay on strategy for this period. If we allow ourselves to be distracted, the business will fail to reach its full potential. We need to be cognisant of the fact that we will lose games, we will encounter ‘haters-, we will have negative press coverage. That is being real in a tough and competitive industry. Our ability to deal with these obstacles is what builds both character and competence and if you go back to my very first communication it is the combination of character and competence that generates trust. I firmly believe that we can become one of the most trusted sporting brands in Australian sport however at the end of the day we can-t do it without members. For Sydney FC to survive, we need to convert a solid percentage of those 800,000+ people in NSW who love and play the ‘beautiful game- to ‘vote 1- for Sydney FC.
Have a great weekend, best of luck to the lads for tomorrow night. Please hit our facebook page to wish them well and tweet until you can-t type anymore. I look forward to seeing you all at the ‘Welcome Home Brett- game v Brisbane Roar on Saturday October 15.
Cheers
Dirk
