I have just finished a very interesting business article on the business perfomance of the Collingwood Football club. It was inspiring to say the least, having been interviewed a number of times myself (9 years ago) for the position of Collingwood CEO. In those days the temptation was a reasonably modest one given a board made up of the Rose's, Ron Richard's, T Merrett, Jack Kennedy etc. Although i am sure my chances were not enhanced when i shared with them that i was a Blues member.

Today, I run a much larger business than the Collingwood Football club, nontheless find their progress over the last 5 years as nothing but extraordinary - in fact inspiring from a business perspective. Full credit must go to their team and the tough choices they made.

To share a couple of highlights:
1. Five years ago (Eddie's first as President), the Pies finished last on the ladder, had losses of $1.6 million and approximately 30,000 members.
2. In 2006, they have 40,000 members, turnover of $40 million (9 years ago it was $14 million), $2 million in profit and have an impressive array of sponsors etc.
3. Today without doubt they are in charge of the biggest sporting brand in the country (exceptions being Australian rep sides of other sports)

General principles that businesses of all types can learn from the Pies:
1. Hire good people - when Eddie became president the first two people he brought in were G Swann and Malthouse. They shared his vision.
2. You cannot save your way out of trouble. You must grow revenue.
3. Set measurable and achievable goals. They could make more money if they needed to ($2 m on $40 m isn't so flash), however they chose instead to invest in the football department - they built an altitude room and did a pre-season in Arizona.
4. Value add packages for Sponsors - if a company had $400,000 to spend on corporate entertainment, they wanted to secure the entire budget. So they became active in the Spring carnival, the GP and Aussie Open. Instead of offering a package for footy, the offered everything.
5. Get an inspirational leader. Eddie - enough said.

As i said, as a business leader myself i took away a lot of learning's - hopefully the Blues our looking at re-creating themselves as well.

Most interestingly though was Eddie's learning entering his current 9 job - " now i am at Nine, i get the feeling it has to run more like a footy club....a mean, lean fighting machine"

p.s this thread wasn't intended to create another spate on throw 'shit' on our own club, but to share information and invite positive creation into the future.

go blues!

Carlton at the moment do not have the resources to work there way out of the mess like the magpies did. We do not have the flexibility in our organization. I agree that Collingwood provide a blue print for a rags to riches type transformation and that we can at least look at some of the principles they employed.

I think that the club has to do one thing and that is find away to build the business that is completely independent of winning games. I know that sounds impossible, but an astute leader can do that.

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"our guest is dressed by hand-me-downs, hair designed by pillow"

It is a good post london blue and yes they are the envy of alot of clubs. Ultimately Eddie and his club will be measured by premierships and the socialist system the AFL have in place limits the impact of "money in the bank". It will be interesting to see whether the investments into the football department ultimately transpire into premierships. The money certainly can't buy you extra draft choices.
On your general principles in business I see Carlton currently being weak in most of those areas but the impact has somewhat been diminished by the AFL socialist system.

where was the article published, London Blue? I wouldn't mind reading it myself...

so you don't run a publishing company do you LB?

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This type of slight is alien in the more cultured part of the world - Walsh. Its up there with mad dogs, Englishmen and the midday sun!

London Blue, the missing piece to your business points is marketing - and that's where Eddie provided it in spades. He drove the (then) #1 rating show in the country to help promote everything that was Collingwood. In fact, the Footy Show became Hey Hey It's Collingwood...

Millions of dollars of free publicity was handed over to Collingwood to build them into the biggest sporting brand in the country.

Curiously, most other AFL teams seem nervous to use The Footy Show in the same way. Now that there has been a change in hosts probably makes it all the more difficult...the current team would not know where to start...

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"...that's the thing about opinion - you don't have to know anything to have one..." Andre Agassi commenting on Pat Cash 2004
"...the less you know - the more you believe..." - Bono 2006

Steve i'll have it scanned and see whether we can upload it ( I am not an IT person)

Blueslander

In response to your comments, i'd be interested to understand why you suggest we do not have the resources or flexibility?

Without any inside knowledge on our situation, but with a respect to us having cash flow issues, it is was interesting to get a small insight into Collingwood and some of their tough decisions. The article reports that they too went to the AFL for assistance and got knocked back (i.e they couldn't afford to pay wages or make redundancies).

They got creative and sought advances on sponsorships and were the first club to have sponsors for coaches and individual matches.....and slowly the wheel began to turn.

Woof

I accept the socialist system, but Collingwood also took on the big sporting conundrum of separating on field and off field success. They focused on the long term nature of the brand. And remember throughout this same 5 year period they finished in the lower half of the ladder (2004 and 2005) - yet continue to record record highs.

dannyboy i don't run a publishing company..

...just a simple, illlllliterate man - never good enough at reading or writing. If i did i'd be certain to have published some of your poems

stop reading about the @#$%&! pies and hurry up and buy one then!!!!!

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This type of slight is alien in the more cultured part of the world - Walsh. Its up there with mad dogs, Englishmen and the midday sun!

WW

No doubt they had the benefit of the Footy Show, but ultimately they put a business model in place and took the most of there situation.

Tough decisions, good people and created new ways of doing things (while making the most of vehicles like the FS)

dannyboy onto it right now - get back to you real soon o.k!

STRAUCHANIEEE!!!

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Last edited by true_blue3 on Mon Sep 26, 1981 5:07 pm; edited 92 times in total

I think we could have a Strauchanie-like character named "Synbad".....

Think about it... he'd be like a pirate who sails around Australia having adventures and undermining coaches.

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Love Cricket? Love me

Thanks for that post, LB.

McGuire did a great job when he took over that place - and as you point out, putting the right people in place under and around him was a key to their off-field (and, to a degree, on-field) success to date.

I also agree in principle that you can't save your way out of trouble - although it certainly doesn't hurt to stop the bleeding first.

In many respects, Collingwood was a relatively 'easy' organisation to turn around, given the latent support it has, coupled with the unprofessional nature of previous administrations. Loads of upside for the right operators.

I also admire what Campbell Rose is doing out at the Bulldogs. I've met a couple of his administrators, and they're on the ball. A much, much tougher assignment than the pies, but they're doing nearly everything right. Just don't have the support base to really capitalise on their hard and smart work.

I hope if one or more Victorian teams are relocated, the doggies aren't one of them. Admire their work ethic, their smarts and their optimistic/realistic attitude.

Hey - any chance you want to ditch miserable old London and come on home to Melbourne? Perhaps get into football administration running a certain club near a uni, just down the road from a cemetary?

Abso - bloody - lutely!!!


Unfortunately - due to the belting handed to us by the AFL at Black Friday - the new Board "myopically" responded with a slash and burn philosophy.

Not saying that the fines handed to us at Black Friday was the root cause of the problem - but it really helped to generate a siege mentality at the club rather than what we needed at the time which was strategies for growth.

Great Post London Blue.

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"Hence you will not say that Greeks fight like heroes but that heroes fight like Greeks"?

Winston Churchill

Nice post London Blue and you seem to have a good handle on what has happened at Collingwood...one of the keys seems to be this advanced sponsorship which was also a key to Geelongs financial revival...

As Agro highlighted...saving your way out of trouble doesnt work like you said..you need to generate revenue and invest some of that advanced sponsorship money into schemes that do create a regular source of income...
As was pointed out Eddie and crew used the marketing aspects of eddies media outlets to further their cause which in dollar terms would have been expensive if you did the numbers and something we dont have access to..I also think our president is happy to go plead poor to the AFL and beg because thats the easy way out...

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"When you have the attitude of a champion, you see adversity as your
training partner."
- Conor Gillen

I can't comment on the quality of the Carlton folk we have managing or leading the business (no exposure). But the future of the business does start there. Great leadership and the right management talent to do it.

Off field success can and should be measured separately to the on field. I believe that we as a Carlton football club have always had a similiar level of support around the country - signed up memebership and latent followers.

Similar to a statistic shared by Collingwood 9 years ago (sorry to look back but it interesting to reflect).........they had a data base of 400,000 supporters country wide.

I wonder what our Australian supporter base really is? It may not have grown terribly of recent times, but it will not have dropped off radically in absolute terms.

Good luck to the folks in charge and to them maintaining the fire in their belly.

Great post LB

...I remember you...the Carlton bloke interviewed for the CEO post at the Colliwobbles...tall fella, handsome with cool glasses and always smiling, and you may have been coaching at the time, played in a string of premierships in the amateurs....oh you were soooo close too....gutsy effort.

One thing that is clear to me is the virtue of having a positive attitude, and that will be closely related to a credible and achievable business plan moving forward.

Despite the fact that all the off field success at Wobblesland hasn't translated to premierships, what the off field success has done though is position the club to give it the possible chance to win one. Winning one is a delicate recipe, and usually won by a club with a good list that is nurtured with good conditioning and a load of luck falling its way. There are no guarantees.

All the off field success has made Wobblesland an attractive place for players and corporates. They are lining up...remember Stevens fell into our hands, as broking a deal between Port & Wobbles fell over...because he wanted to part of Wobbleland. In the old days, Carlton was the team to be in...that's why we attracted Perovic, Wells, Williams... and even blokes off the street wanted to play for us, such as Paul 'Molly' Meldrum.

Win flags or not you must make a Club an attractive place to be, and Eddie's plan surely achieved this.

No doubt Carlton can too. We just need an achievable and credible plan.

LB wrote



A positive start for us would be to understand what we have got rather than what we haven't, then we can embrace and appreciate what we have got, and work through the process to capture what we haven't got.

We have a huge supporter base that doesn't translate to memberships, but the brand is fixed in their hearts and minds...what we have to do is embrace the members we have and hold onto them, and win over the ones we haven't, and that includes those who have been burnt in the past...it's time to heal those wounds. The question is how? Well find out why they were burnt, and find a way to mend our ways.

We have a recognisable brand, albeit tarnished by Black Friday, and obviously by some mistakes made in house, but you can't escape the fact that there is a history and a track record that is the envy of the competition, Collingwood included.

Now we can add to that the renaissance of Carlton (after a 5 year sentence) with the baby blues. We should focus and ramp up this message from now and throughout 2007, because when it arrives in 2008, the public, the cponsors, the members, the ex members and the supporters will know this time the message is for real. This same message will permeate through the spirit of the team, and they will believe and walk the walk.

I agree with you LB, the business plan/ model will do a great deal to help lift the spirit of the playing group, and hence our performance on the field; and it starts there. Investment in facilities and player development initiatives are not decided by and paid by the MC and on field group, they are decided by those that hold the purse strings and the business model.

The player list is better than it has been for 5 years, and looks very promising, it's just a bit young to expect miracles in 2005-7. But I expect 2007 to be the unveiling of this potential, and will help build the excitement.

It's about time we got our vision cleared.

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Everyone looks good in Navy Blue

bondi,
tall by comparison