Mate, after your reply, I feel like our only option now is to relocate the mighty bulldogs to another market, your comments are certainly the best advertisement for this.
Oh the barriers of entry now are so constricted in the Sydney market, be it for sponsorship,or merchandising or increasing members, what about the bulldogs brand awareness.( the media take good care of this for us)
You are forgetting one thing.
We are the mighty bulldogs, our supporter base is second to none, we are passionate, a little crazy ( suffer from a bit of madness as deano puts it) and certainly possess a " siege mentality".
No other supporter, supports like we do, celebrate and party like we do, in fact there is no other fan in the Sydney that will spend as much money on merchandising like we do.
The existing client base is there already,you need to get them engaged again, to go to the games, to buy memberships, the merchandising and get them back to the league's club.
What is missing Is a winning footy team, and a winning culture.
So spend the frickin money on latrell, spend the frickin money on fafita and JWz , thompson radradra, milford whomever get some of these marquees here as soon as we can with our " dud" chest ( war chest)
It will create excitement, anticipation, the dogs are back and you will wake the long suffering sleeping giant ....the dogs supporter!!!
The money you spend on these guys the marqees is a pittance compared to the millions the club will make from them.
I can promise you the rest will take care of itself.
You will get your bums on seats, increase members to 30k at least , you will get sponsors, and certainly the merchandising will go through the roof
The league's club will start thriving again like the good old days..
What have we got to lose?
As the old saying goes you got to spend money to make money..
Fairdinkum the current board are looking at our dud chest like it's a super fund, using the minimal risk option....someone wake them up
Spend the farkin money !!
In respect to some movers and shakers, on the board, john ribot, David Smith , Gerry Harvey , Phil gould
That’s all great in theory.
Pity executing that is harder than typing it.
They are competing against not only other RL clubs, but local soccer and AFL teams (Wanderers/Giants) who didn’t exist 10 years ago, who have strong following and fight equally for a share of the purse. Add to that a changing population in diversity and younger people that don’t have RL as their highest priority. Same as cricket. Remember 20 years ago every one-day match was a sell-out. Watching the T20’s earlier this week was embarrassing - an entertaining format, some of the best players in the world (eg: Steve Smith) - and the Gabba was empty. People do different things these days - including Netflix, which is a competitor believe it or not.
Western Sydney is growing massively - the new airport and growth around Parramatta/Westmead are but two opportunities to get young families to want to settle in the area and that means young players, supporters, members, merch sales and sponsors - with brand awareness. This is all being worked on - but it doesn’t happen overnight.
Why do you think KIA moved on? Not because the club is a ‘laughing stock’ - but because their data tells them where they need to target sales and their mission was complete in Western Sydney, so Brisbane is their next target market - voila - sponsor the Ponies. Long gone are the days where sponsorships were just brand awareness paid for by the marketing department. It’s data driven - and if they achieve early or don’t achieve the results they move on. That’s not the clubs fault.
I’ve served on 2 boards before (not in sport - different industries) - and I think you’ll find it’s a lot more complex than just creating a deck that says ‘We’ll do this’.
Fee free to suggest the ‘movers and shakers’ you think could make a difference. I’m all about continuous improvement - my business would eventually flounder if I wasn’t - but it’s not easy and you can’t win overnight.
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