Phoenix Ownership - Rob says FTFFA (Part 2)

There's a couple of universities in Wellington with alot of students, I believe there is a lack of interest from the student population. If the Phoenix can get in on the millennial student culture then the Yellow Fever could have a large vocal young voice amongst the ranks, season tickets for students are cheap enough, just need to be able to sell it to them. Winning will help.

Yeah and they could start serving Vegan friendly food and drinks at the stadium to accommodate them!

Leaflets in all the bacpackers with discounted tickets or something. Must be a few thousand bacpackers in Wellington at any moment, many would be football fans. Just need to sell them on the YF experience.

Nah seriously, check out what the Highlanders do with the Otago Uni population with deals at the start of the season....

Yep that's another good idea.

That would certainly help as part of the mix. We can but hope.....  Not the whole answer though. Declining live sport crowds are pretty much universal really. Some new ideas are needed as well.

You all know about the canary in the coal mind I guess. The bird is there to warn the miners of gas leaks and such.

I am not a wordsmith and sometimes may come across harsh, added to a degree of sensitivity on this site, when combined with a difficult hand you have been dealt, it makes this post difficult.

Its difficult because I don't want to offend or annoy or lecture so sorries in advance if I do. Hopefully at the end there is some good advise, with a little lead in first.

Roughly 12 months into the current ownership I sounded a warning bell, that Football had made huge strides in Australia and suggested NZ as a nation and from the outside the Nixs needed to lift there game otherwise many would ask questions as to why you should stay. I also said your father protector in Frank Lowy was leaving so be aware without him your life is going to be far more difficult. It was not well received.

I only raise this again because when you had TS in charge, he seemed to not only understand Football, be a Football tragic and excellent at marketing, he was so understanding in Football matters he could see the changes occurring in the Australia sporting landscape. His reactions and understanding had the Nix's most people second team and many calling for an Auckland side.

Things have changed Frank left, and the knives came out.

Also Football continued to expand in leaps and bounds in Australia. 

Then about two and a bit years ago FFA & the clubs and the PFA started to argue, things started to stall, and the media dealt was not what was expected. On the surface A-League crowds and ratings stalled and fell, equally NPL rating and crowds expanded massively.

An article on the bids and the strength of the bids is light years more than expected so much so they suggest the expansion could go to 16 teams quickly and some other well researched folk are indicating maybe two 12 team divisions. https://www.google.com.au/amp/s/amp.smh.com.au/sport/soccer/volume-and-quality-of-a-league-bids-could-prompt-ffa-to-think-bigger-20180525-p4zhlb.html

So whats all this mean. It means Football is expanding very quickly in Australia away from the A-League and when [not if] after FIFA leave all sides come together for the common good Football will grow at A-League level quickly. A good read on this is by Tony Tannous https://footballtoday.news/features/enter-the-npl

The ownership group from afar appointed excellent business folk to manage the NIX.  You don't seem at club at management level to have a Football soul where management for pure pleasure would look to whats happening in the world of Football and at what is happening in Australian Football. 

Further your management and I could be totally wrong, does not seem hhhhmmmm eerrrr to have Football passion and to drag others along, you had one once and he is in Perth, after he turned SFC around. 

Maybe your leadership group should look to getting maybe even TS back or getting or someone who is so by passion simply connected to whats happening. 

I honestly believe you can turn it around, but you need people who not only have business skills but have a passion for Football so much so they can be ahead of the game... Because from afar you management seems never to have grasped how fast things are moving Football wise in Australia. 

Said with the best of intentions... 

Move the Nix to the Hutt Wreck, at Least a crowd consistently of 9,000 showed up in a ground that looked full and not full of yellow empty seats. I endorse this as a redevelopment idea too.

"What appears certain already is that this expansion process will already be looking at three entrants for the immediate future given the precarious tenure of Wellington Phoenix. The New Zealand club has two more seasons to run on its licence but, at this stage, appears unlikely to be granted an extension given its poor off-field performances. In the event the Phoenix fold and leave the league, it's likely they will be replaced by one of the bids from the current expansion process."

FFA has no mandate to expand the league or negotiate the future beyond the SGM after CRWG ,OFC and FIFA lead changes to the games management.  This is what the media should be chasing and publishing views on the biggest change in Australian Football since Lowy took over and then moved you to Asia.  We have 2 years we will be there

Yeah nah your assumption is crap, how about we just cater families and old timers.. Seriously though there is a decent market in our city that isn't interested, these business savvy owners don't know how to capture that market.  You have young people from the regions and overseas move to Wellington to study each year. Create the culture to sell and make it spread. The best league and clubs to look at for utilising millennial engagement is in the MLS.

It's nowhere near as simple as saying "lets do what the Highlanders do" unfortunately.

And University of Otago actually have a sponsorship deal (shirt naming rights etc) with the Highlanders, so it is natural the Highlanders are expected to do their bit for that money.

Thought over the years there gave been various attempts by some to engage the student population. There hasn't been much evidence that those have been successful.
As has been stated many times before unless the performance on the field improves there really isn't any point in wasting money on promotions as it's only going to be us tragics  who turn up.

I'm not sure if above has been tried by Nix, or even YF themselves before?

Lots of tourists go to a Super Rugby or ABs game, because they hear rugby is NZ's national game, and kiwis are "passionate" about the sport.

So off they go to watch a game, maybe in their brand new $150 ABs jersey. But the whole experience is a bit disappointing. The crowd is a bunch of mutes, the rules of rugby are very complicated, the endless reset scrums means not much can happen for minutes on end & if mid winter it can be freezing cold. So the highlight is doing a few Mexican waves, to cure the boredom. $50 + ABs jersey for that.

Alternatively the YF in summer offer a fun time (more similar to their football fans back home), and mostly warmer weather. And because the backpacker/tourist is only in town for one game, sort of irrelevant if the Nix are winning or not. Let them take in their Mexican drum, Argentinian flag, Preston North End football banner or whatever - and give them a good fun afternoon/night out.

Offer them free transport (with ticket to the game), via a Nix blazoned mini van which runs around all the hostels/hotels, doing door to door pick ups & drop offs.

I don't think they have tried every trick in the book or even the most simplistic ones that millennials value such as the use of social media. Needs to be used more than just a link to a wiki, news or Huawei advert. Shouldn't be too hard to do some random student engagement at the universities every week on video, share it using the Huawei phone on snap chat and Facebook, crack some bad memes and try and hook students up on dates with tickets or merchandise. Make the club be part of the student culture by understanding it first then engaging.

I always raise an eyebrow at a thread suggesting that some yokels on a forum have sure-fire and cost-effective means of marketing the Nix that the WPFC boffins haven't even thought of. Like, some dude at Welnix is now slapping his forehead and going "Of course! Marketing to students! Why didn't we think of that?"

May work may not. Not targeting long term fans no. Just want them to come once. But A League is a summer comp, and that is when most tourists visit Wellington.  Sell them a fun cheap experience. Next week they are in Kaikoura meet some other backpackers, tell them had a fun time in ROF, and recommend it. 

That’s how lots of these backpackers type tourist attractions work - word of mouth.

Phoenix a tourist attraction that's really stretching it. Afraid I'm with NP not an area that needs much time wasted on it.

Ha best post you’ve ever made

Ive done at least 5 trips to welly due to the Nix. 

You've got to watch it with assumptions.  I've seen situations where somebody pretty down to earth has had a ridiculously simple insight from left field that has made a very big difference. So simple and obvious that in hindsight everyone wondered why someone hadnt thought of it before. But the fact was they hadnt. If the person who made it had assumed it must have been thought of already, or had been to afraid to suggest it, then it would have been lose-lose (and none the wiser).

In a situation where the nix has to achieve such a big turnaround to survive then they've got to be open to anything, and people can't be afraid of raising ideas. It really is a situation where if you do what you've always done then you'll get what you've always got. There is no magic bullet here. Maybe what will give the best shot is a multi-pronged approach using a combination of whatever initiatives might make an incremental difference that cumulatively might turn the tide. Winning more games is part of that, as is achieving better media outcomes, as is getting more adults through making it easier with their kids, as might also be some of the other quite interesting ideas raised lately that might be fit from more investigation. None is a game changer on its own, but could be as part of larger tidal shift where they all contribute in the right direction. I wonder what the WELNIX crowd/support plan is for the next year is? Is there one? Right now I'm just wondering.

Thing is most backpackers come from places like Germany, UK, South America and the football they see there may be a tad better than what we can offer!

https://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/football/a-league/10...

So Dura asked Tim Brown, whether he would fancy investing in the Nix.

Durante must read YF forums, as know someone (can't find the post), half jokingly suggested that a few weeks ago.

If every Nix fan, bought a pair of All Birds, Brown may have the cash he needs to invest in his old club!

Exactly this. I read once where Bob Jones and one of his experienced staff were debating a problem, with a property he owned. In walks Mrs Jones, said why don’t you just do blah blah blah, and walked straight out the room again.

Apparently Jones was astounded that he hadn’t seen the bleeding obvious. You never know where lightbulb ideas can come from. 

Yes of course. But NZers as a whole can be a bit boringly reserved, esp at sporting events. So a Nix game with YF, can be a bit of a unique experience, at least in a NZ context.

I'll just leave this here...

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-44259849

Wait, what, they wana move the Crew for a more hipster crowd?

They should turn The concourse into a freedom camping zone, on condition of buying Nix tickets.

Metrics would be slammed immediately.  And they would "show up for the game" by swiping in to use the toilets.

You overestimate humans. Go to an airport, look at all the little wheels on peoples heavy luggage. I'm pretty sure we walked on the moon before we someone came up and produced suitcases with integrated wheels.

I'm not saying marketing students is the ways to go, but just maybe, there is marketing crack at the Phoenix headquarter about to invent some kind of wheel to motivate 10 thousends students to go to Nix games.

Have you seen our crowds/metrics recently? 

over the last decade they have dissected and had a crack at every niche market there is 

I'm a 30 something student myself and I see so many potential fever recruits on the campus, Wellington is loaded full of students within walking distance of the city and they all grab coffee in the mornings, vape, drink beer etc. Not only that but the student membership is dirt cheap for what you get. I remember some of the phoenix team visiting the Vic student bar one night at the start of last season but close to no-one came. 

You can't just rock up to a campus and expect to get a reception like your the PM or something, you gotta put some yards into it. 

Understanding the student culture for what they have in common with each other and engaging with them on things that matter to them will give you a chance to get them on board. These students have come from all over the place and they might not even know a thing about football, the least we can do is try to find the right bait to put on the hook. Perfect bait = Metric$

I can understand the beer and vape but coffee?

Do students these days have enough money to buy anything but Nescafé?

Has he got any silicon valley mates who might want a bit?

You'll be surprised, the bus stop by milk crate and the queues at Vic books or else they are on energy drinks or waters. I cringe at price of a cup of coffee so i buy ground beans for the stovetop and use the milk frother if I have any milk.

Nice to see my tax payers dollar is going to good use!