While much of the focus has been on Penrith’s on-field revolution for next season with the recruitment of players like Jamie Soward, Elijah Taylor, Brent Kite and Tyrone Peachey, the real story at the Panthers is happening behind closed doors.
The club has completely overhauled its back-office operations with a stronger focus on its commercial operations, as the Panthers attempt to position themselves as an NRL benchmark in sponsorship, membership, merchandise and game day experiences.
“One of the biggest challenges within any organisational structure is culture and whether it’s on field or off field I think developing a winning culture is important,” said Panthers Head of Business Development, Justin Pascoe.
With a mindset framed around the words “commitment, trust and accountability” Mr Pascoe has set out to create behavioural change to the way of thinking at Panthers in an attempt to rescue it from what has at times been a precarious financial and unmarketable position.
“The biggest challenge that I found when I first came here is that there was little strategy when it came to our commercial operations. We’ve now spent time developing a whole line of strategies encompassing everything from game day to membership, merchandise and sponsorship – now the challenge is to execute,” he said.
“We are now all about identifying the goals we need to focus on, and minimising them to two or three so we can actually achieve them.”
One of the biggest overhauls has come in membership, where the club has completely changed its structure and delivered more attractive opportunities for fans.
“Membership is a vital component to the overall financial sustainability of the rugby league club but that ethos probably wasn’t around for the last two or three years and that has been well acknowledged,” Mr Pascoe said.
“If we can create a membership that gives members a sense of belonging and a sense of being a part of the bigger picture then we have moved a step closer to creating true engagement with our fans.”
Mr Pascoe revealed further membership plans to be unveiled in the next few weeks include exclusive access to a special members only website and a ‘Born a Panther’ program.
He praised Panthers head coach Ivan Cleary for the role he has played in bringing the on field and off field teams closer together.
“He has an understanding of the commerciality of football in today’s world and how significant it plays into the longer term financial sustainability of the football club,” Mr Pascoe said.
“We are very respectful of his job and his objectives but he is also considerate of our job and understands the importance of what we’re trying to do and how that influences positively the football club.”
The Panthers go into 2014 with OAK as their major sponsor and negotiations will begin early in the new year about an extension of that deal.
“Their objectives were to increase branding and increase sales and certainly the feedback from them proves it has been successful with a 38 or 39 per cent increase in sales in greater western Sydney,” Mr Pascoe said.
On game day, fans expect a changing experience in the years to come as the club tries to better engage supporters.
“Kids might come up with $5 and we’ve got products that start at $30 – we need to fix that,” Mr Pascoe said.
“We’re being more aware of our consumer, more aware of what our offering is going to be.
“Our biggest challenge at the moment is to get the right business model that facilitates a day long event that entertains the crowd outside of just the game itself.”
Mr Pascoe and the team at Panthers, however, know there’s a hard road still ahead and are desperate to increase home crowd numbers next year.
“We have average crowds of 10,000 but we have a capacity of 21,500 – why we’re not filling it is a concern to us,” he said.
“We’ve got a whole list of factors but more importantly, having the consumer turn up five minutes before the game and leave five minutes after the game is problematic for us – we’ve got a huge amount of entertainment facilities around here. We should be able to utilise those assets to engage fans better all day.”
