5questions about Strategic Services Marketing

Project Report (Group) on Sydney Swans Football Club

1. Executive summary

This project conducted an in-depth analysis and evaluation of the status of the Sydney Swans Football Club in the Australian market and existing service issues. A description of the Sydney Swans Football Club, situational analysis, diagnosis of critical problems, and recommended strategies for solving marketing problems after the game resumes consist of this report. In order to understand the situation of the Sydney Swans Football Club, the following two main problems were found in event analysis and problem diagnosis.

The first issue is the retention of fans and members. Due to the impact of the COVID-19, the number of club fans and members has decreased. In addition, the second issue is increasing the number of membership and revenue streams for Sydney Swans because of the suspending of games that cause the club to lose revenue from ticket sales, limited member benefits and loss of the broadcast.

In order to understand market situation, the needs of fans and members and the profile of revenue streams, PESTLE Analysis and SWOT Analysis are conducted to identify the opportunities and threats of the target market, the strengths and weaknesses of Sydney Swans. Furthermore, in terms of problem diagnosis, a lot of information was collected to analyse the challenges for Sydney Swans. Based on the situational analysis and problem diagnosis, the strategies, which are the improvement of game performance, increasing engagement of fans and members, attracting more family members, increasing community engagement and the development of watching channels and were developed to deal with issues.

2. Company overview

The Australian Football League (AFL) was initiated in Melbourne in 1858 by Tom Wills, who was a football captain of Rugby School in England. At the same time, the operation and rules of the game are managed by the AFL through the AFL committee. At first, the AFL was called the Victoria Football League (VFL) due to the geographical limitations of the participating clubs. However, because of the size of participating clubs expanded, clubs in other states began to join the game and VFL changed its name to AFL in 1990. Currently, there are eighteen clubs forming the game (AFL 2020). In terms of Sydney Swans, Sydney Swans Football Club was once named South Melbourne Club and was founded in 1874. In addition, due to the decrease in attendance and the number of members, the club moved to Sydney in 1982 and the Sydney Cricket Ground was used as the home stadium (Sydney Swans 2020). At the same time, Sydney Swans not only has a long history but also has good game results, which are five premierships of VFL / AFL, so that Sydney Swans with 1.31 million fans became the number one sporting team in Australia by the number of fans.

In terms of issues that Sydney Swans faced, due to the global outbreak of COVID-19, people's travel, work and life are restricted. Therefore, sports as a number-intensive activity had to choose to suspend the game. In order to retain members and fans, what strategies should be formulated by Sydney Swans. In addition, the suspension caused losses to many clubs, such as ticket income, sponsorship and the loss of members. When the game resumes, how does Sydney Swans increase membership and revenue streams.

3. Stituational analysis

3.1 Environmental analysis

As an external environment analysis tool, PESTLE Analysis can be used to determine the opportunities and threats faced by Sydney Swans in the target market.

3.1.1 Political factors

Due to the influence of COVID-19, the government announced a series of regulations to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus. According to DoH (2020), although some essential activities are allowed, the social distance, which is keeping a distance of 1.5 meters between people, is still required to limit the contact of people. At the same time, social distance also applies when people choose to take public transportation, and people are advised to avoid unnecessary trips. In addition, some suggestions about the sports industry were provided by AIS on the website based on the analysis of the impact of COVID-19. AIS (2020) states that athletes should not participate in group training and federal and state restrictions also apply to athletes and sports organizations. This means that athletes in team sports can only train on individuals and the games of sports advised to cancel due to crowd crowding restrictions. In contrast, the number of newly confirmed cases in Australia is decreasing (Appendix 1). This situation has led to the gradual relaxation of restrictions in some states. Boseley & Knaus (2020) claim that some states such as Queensland, Western Australia, the Northern Territory and New South Wales have relaxed social policies and despite the relaxation of social restrictions, a lot of activities and travel of people are still restricted.

3.1.2 Economic factors

The outbreak of the global epidemic has created a lot of negative effects on the economy so that the purchasing power of customers will be reduced. According to Statista (2020), the unemployment rate in Australia will rise from 5.18% in 2019 to 7.62% in 2020. Meanwhile, the GDP growth rate in Australia is expected to decline from 1.85% in 2019 to -6.67% in 2020 (Statista 2020). This means that the income level and job opportunities of Australian consumers will be affected negatively.

3.1.3 Social factors

Australia ’s social change factors such as income level, per capita disposable income and awareness of sports will be analysed in order to understand Australia’s social change trends. Wage growth and disposable income per capita are expected to slow in 2020. Martin (2020) states that the growth of per capita disposable income is expected to slow to 2.4% in 2020 and people’s real wage growth will remain low level due to negative GDP growth and unemployment. This means that consumers' purchasing power and willingness to consume will decline because changes in purchasing power and willingness to consume are caused by disposable income (Solomon 2018). In addition, Australian consumers have established a preference for sports. According to Wu (2020), consumers have continuously increased their spending on sports-related activities over the past five years so that the sports industry's revenue has maintained a 4.3% annual growth rate as of 2019. At the same time, AFL has been attracting more and more consumers from different market segments such as children and women.

3.1.4 Technological factors

The TV broadcast is one of the main channels used by customers to engage with the games. In order to increase the participation of Australians, the pay-TV network's monopoly on major events is prohibited by the federal government from passing legislation (Wu 2020). In addition, although pay-TV broadcasting is one of the main channels to participate in the games, consumers under the age of 34 tend to choose online channels due to the impact of the development of digital technology. According to Wu (2020), online channels and free services are the preferences of young consumers and online sports betting attracts more young consumers.

3.1.5 Environmental factors

Environmental factors have become one of the social concerns. For the Australian Sports Department, more effort has been put into thinking about the impact on the environment. Richards (2020) notes that the operations of the sports department should provide convenience to customers while also considering environmental impacts such as parking, crowd entry, and lighting pollution and sound pollution.

3.1.6 Legal factors

Australia has established a series of complex laws for the sports industry. As one of the main commercial values of sports clubs, intellectual property rights have been protected by relevant laws. According to NSW GOV (2020), the intellectual property rights of the sports industry include a sports name, sports teams, events, trademarks, copyrights and designs as intangible assets. The development and utilisation of these assets are protected by law so that sponsors or other commercial organisations use these assets to obtain the consent of the club or organisation in order to meet the common interests of both parties. In addition, although the anti-siphoning law stipulates that live sports are traditionally free, but with the changes in the digital age, there are barriers to charging for live sports. Duke & Hunter (2019) point out The anti-siphon list was developed before large companies such as Twitter and Facebook and Telstra purchased the digital rights of the game so that the list does not apply to the digital market. This means that consumers may need to be charged when they watch digital live broadcasts. Regarding betting advertisements, betting is one of the sports projects that are popular with consumers. However, from 2018, betting advertisements were banned from being broadcast during the live broadcast of sports events during the daytime (Hawkins 2018).

3.2 SWOT Aanlysis for Sydney Swans

SWOT analysis is conducted by our group to identify the internal and external factors of Sydney Swans including strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

3.2.1 Strength

In terms of the strengths, customer relationship management is used by Sydney Swans to establish long-term relationships with stakeholders. Sydney Swans has established long-term partnerships with different major partners including QBE, realestate and Volkswagen (Sydney Swans 2020). At the same time, in order to enhance community engagement, Syndey Swans and partners have launched a series of strategies to support young Generation and community development such as QBE Sydney Swans Academy and Volkswagen Swansfit. In addition, the high satisfaction of members is another success factor for customer relationship management. And, Sydney Swan has the largest number of fans reaching 1.31 million across all the Australian sports teams. Large number of fans is another strength for Sydney Swans, the huge number of fan groups proves that Sydney Swans has targeted and engaged them so that the ticket income, the number of broadcast subscriptions and members may be increased. In addition, Sydney, the most populous city in Australia, is the home of Sydney Swans. Consumers' purchasing behaviour and preferences will be affected by geographic area, family members and lifestyle. This means that Sydney Swans may attract more consumers from Sydney due to home advantage.

3.2.2 Weakness

Meeting customer needs is one of the main factors for customers to make purchase decisions. Although Sydney Swans has the largest number of fans, the number of members, which is approximately 62,000, is lower than other clubs. This means that understanding the needs of members is one of the weaknesses of Sydney Swans because precisely understanding customer needs is a key factor in providing products or services to meet customer needs. In addition, how to use social media to establish engagement with consumers is another weakness for Sydney Swans. Sydney Swans, with 1.31 million followers, only has 280,000 followers on Facebook, 130,000 followers on Instagram and 100,000 followers on Twitter. In comparison, Richmond, who only has 450,000 followers, Facebook has 280,000 followers and Collingwood's Instagram has 241,000 followers (Appendix 2). This means that Sydney Swans does not have an inefficient way to establish engagement with fans and members through social media.

3.2.3 Opportunity

Due to the enhancement of health awareness, more and more people prefer to engage with sports, so that stable participation brought opportunities for Sydney Swans. Reeves (2020), shows that industry revenue is expected to grow at an annual rate of 2.2%. According to Reeves (2020), professional sports have been set with a threshold of entry so that the number of participating teams is strictly limited. At the same time, because of a large number of laws and regulations, geographical and age restrictions, the industry maintains a low and stable concentration.

3.2.4 Threat

Based on the PESTLE Analysis, the COVID-19 epidemic has created a series of negative impacts on sports and society, including a decline in GDP, an increase in unemployment, a decrease in disposable income, suspending of games, layoffs, restrictions on the number of participants after the game resumes, and a reduction in the number of games. In addition, the sports industry has not only been subject to strict regulations but also maintained an enhanced trend. Reeves (2020) notes that game arrangements, broadcasting rights, income distribution, players, and clubs must all comply with regulations stipulated by different laws and governing bodies. At the same time, the AFL has been questioned due to scandals discovered by strict regulation. A report by the Australian Crime Commission revealed the universality of drug use for several professional sports leagues throughout Australia in 2013 (Reeves 2020).

3.3 Competitors analysis

3.3.1 Collingwood Magpies

As one of Australia's largest rules football clubs, Collingwood is considered one of Sydney Swans’ competitors. Compared to Sydney Swans’ five Premier League titles, Collingwood, founded in 1892, has won 15 Premier League titles and as of 2019 Collingwood has reached 85,226 members (Reeves 2020). Collingwood’s number of followers for the third place in the AFL reached about 640,000 (Statista 2019). Compared with the six membership packages of Sydney Swans, Collingwood offers 24 membership packages to consumers (Collingwood 2020). In addition, a series of digital communication channels including an official website, App, and social software have been developed by Collingwood to engage with customers.

3.3.2 Richmond Tigers

In terms of team performance, Richmond, founded in 1885, has won 12 Premier League titles and reached the AFL finals for six consecutive years in the past seven years (Reeves 2020). In addition, although Richmond ’s number of fans is only seventh in the AFL, the number of members of Richmond is ranked first. In 2019, Richmond has reached 103,358 members. Regarding membership packages, 9 different membership packages that contain a range of different packages with different benefits for each membership packages that have been provided to customers by Collingwood (Richmond 2020). In addition, Richmond has also established a series of digital communication channels including App, official website social media. At the same time, compared to the official website of Sydney Swans, both Richmond and Collingwood have established fans community on the official website.

4. Problem Diagnosis

4.1 A study on the consumer behaviour of fans/members

The fan service provided by sports events has important reference functions for the management, organization and management of sports events. Regardless of whether fans are motivated to spend time with their favorite players, every fan will spend money on sports for their favorite team. Loyal fans will spend more on attending games, media attention and clothing. Many experts have analyzed fans' consumption decisions, team recognition and other recognition factors. These include the performance of the stars, as well as their contribution to the team's success, fan participation, promotional activities, the team's success, fan loyalty, sports consumption behaviour, etc. (Baade & Tiehan, 1990). After finding out on fans' consumer behaviour, Swans needs to understand what kind of factors attracting fans to join a certain club so that allowing them to retain existing members as well as attract extra fans to join Swans. According to the report (Fu & Xiao, 2015), the factors that have a deep influence on individuals before they join memberships mainly include the influence of family members, peers, and the appeal of football stars.

The financial and emotional aspects of the fans are the main reasons to explain their consumption. When facing the epidemic, the income of fans and members has been influenced. Disposable income for fans and members has declined. The tensions has raised in Australia because of the epidemic. The epidemic has had a negative impact on fans both financially and emotionally. Tajfel & Turner (1985) pointed out that sports allow fans to feel an automatic connection with others in the same stadium, even if they do not know each other, they can also feel a sense of community. Fans can gain a sense of social identity (defined as "the individual recognizes that he belongs to a particular social group, as well as the emotions and values that being a member of the group brings to him") by watching the sports live and becoming a member of the club. In the research on the tournament recognition and basic psychological needs of the sports, the tournament recognition has become an important way for the fans to construct the identity in the modern society, and the tournament is the factor that produces the basic psychological needs of the fans (Wang, 2018). In other words, the basic psychological needs of the fans are correlated with their consumption behavior and tournament recognition. Fans believe that engaging in tournaments can bring physical or mental satisfaction or physical health. As a result, they have the consumption behavior on purchasing tickets and tournament peripheral and finally they have tournament recognition. However, because of the epidemic, fans and members are not able to attend the live tournaments. So, the sense of belonging and consumption experience will greatly be reduced. Also, the fans' demand is also changed at this time.

Taking competitors of other professional sports clubs as a reference, Swans has a large number of fans as the foundation, but it is a challenge for them to transform fans into members. The reason for this is because that the diversity of member packages of Swans is not the same as its competitors, Swans may not take into account the real needs of fans more comprehensively and provide fans with more possibilities. In addition, according to the previous situation analysis, Swans in the past AFL League performance is not as good as its competitors. As mentioned above, a series of psychological factors such as player performance and fans' identification are considered as the reasons for fans and members to join the club. Therefore, Swans needs to analyze what fans really want through fans' consumer behaviour, so that helps them turn fans into members.

4.2 The main source of revenue stream

There are four main sources which professional sports clubs in Australia generate their revenue. Including broadcast deals, sponsorship, membership and match tickets (Reeves 2020).

4.2.1 Broadcasting rights

Broadcasting rights drive revenue for many organizations, providing them a much larger market share than organizations without access to such revenue. The AFL is one of the beneficiaries of broadcasting rights. Surging broadcasting rights values for the AFL have driven growth in this segment’s share of sector revenue over the past years. The sale of broadcasting rights of all kinds of sports events is important and stable revenue source for all of the professional sports clubs. In order to attract the public, there is increasingly fierce competition among broadcasters for broadcasting rights of sports events, leading to a rapid growth costs on broadcasting rights. The broadcasting rights of all kinds of events mainly include the wireless and cable TV, radio and online live broadcast deals.

4.2.2 Membership

The member fans are important supporters of the club. With the increase of fans' collective identity, the number of them who choose to join the sports clubs are also increasing. According to the survey, whether different types of fans join the membership has a great relationship with the fans' collective identity. Loyal fans have all joined the sports clubs. According to the survey results, one of the most important motivations for different types of fans to join a club is to find a sense of community. Individual fans hope to find their own spiritual belonging by joining the club.

4.2.3 Tickets

The revenue from tournament tickets is an important part of the club's total income. Which reflects the consumer’s satisfaction on the tournament and it is also a symbol to measure the club’s operation. The revenue from tournament tickets not only represents how many tickets the club sells, but also determines the influence of tournaments, which further affects the revenue from broadcasting of tournaments, advertising and sponsorship. Therefore, every professional sports clubs attache great importance to the attendance and revenue from tickets.

4.2.4 Sponsorship

Sponsorship plays a important role in the club’s financial resources. Sponsors improve their brand awareness and promote their products through sports events. Professional sports clubs use their popularity in the region and sports events to attract enterprises to invest in sponsorship fees. QBE as the principal partner, have been cooperate with Swans since 1986. The major partners of Swans including Realestate and Volkswagen.

4.3 The analysis of challenges

Based on situation analysis, the challenge that Swans currently facing is the reduction in the number of tournaments due to the epidemic and the limited number of participants resulting in a decreasing revenue from tickets. As the GDP of Australia is reduced due to the epidemic, the unemployment rate rises and the disposable income of the residents decreases. These economic factors have led to a loss of consumer confidence and reduced purchasing power. Coronavirus pandemic delivers the biggest fall in consumer sentiment on record in April. According to the analysis of economic analysis and forecasts, the consumer confidence index fell down from 91.9 in March to 75.6 in April. Thus logging the sharpest month-on-month fall in the survey’s history. Sentiment plunged further below the 100-mark, indicating that there were more pessimists than optimists among Australian consumers. Consumer expectations for the overall economic situation in the next year have fallen further into pessimistic terrain. This likely caused a plunge in the household’s willingness to buy major household items. Sports events are entertainment for consumers to satisfy their spiritual world. With less disposable income, sports events are not a necessity and consumers may delay or cancel spending on entertainment. at the same time, Due to the downward pressure on the economy, sponsors may reduce its funds for the club. Therefore, the club's disposable income will also decrease. As well as affecting the club's spending on players. Such as spending on the equipment.

Due to the epidemic, the number of people attending the game is limited, so the needs of fans and members (such as feeling the intense atmosphere at the tournament) cannot be satisfied, so they can only choose to watch the game through social media or live streaming, which leads to a great loss of the experience of the game. As mentioned in the previous part, Over the anti-siphoning law stipulates that live sports are traditionally free, but with the changes in the digital age, there are barriers to charging for live sports so that consumers would be charged. Consumers cannot watch the tournament live, they may also be charged a fee to watch the event that they should not have been charged. Therefore, limited social media engagement has a negative impact on fans and members. In addition, Online viewing as a favorite channel for customers under the age of 35, becoming an important channel to target young consumers.

4.4 Historical research

Sports can create a lot of positive effects on people such as social psychology, personal development, and physical health (Malm et al. 2019). In contrast, World War II as a global catastrophe event has caused the global economy and culture-negative influence. Sports are also affected by the war so that the world's leagues are committed to contributing to the war when the game is interrupted. The worldwide disaster has forced people to suspend the game to ensure people's safety. Schleppi (1972) claims that for responding to the catastrophic war, a series of policies were introduced Professional Association Football in England including suspension of the game, continued player registration, reduced league expenses to donate to the army, trainers and masseurs will provide services to the army and encourage recruitment to join the army. At the same time, although World War II did not really spread to the United States, the United States as the main participating country still sent huge troops to support the Allies so that different measures have been developed by different leagues to improve the morale of the people. According to Warfare History (2016), the uniforms of the players of the American Professional Baseball League were replaced with khakis similar to military uniforms in order to encourage military soldiers. At the same time, although many American football leagues were suspended due to war, more than 1,000 players and coaches chose to join the army to support the troops. Professional basketball, as a niche sport before World War II in America, still had many players who chose to serve in the troops. Based on the information on sports in World War II, in order to cope with worldwide disasters, leagues in different countries in the world have chosen to support their countries by suspending the game, incentivizing morale, providing human resources, and raising funds so that disasters can be handled efficiently. In terms of dealing with prolonged players’ strikes, the Premier League clubs not only announced a salary extension plan but also approved a donation of £ 125 million to support the fight against the epidemic during the games suspension period (Ogden 2020). In addition, Young (2020) points out that due to the ongoing outbreak of COVID-19 in America, a lot of club executives of the NBA suggested that the 2019-20 season should be canceled. In contrast, the NBA announced a plan that the training facilities will open in order to resume personal training. According to the collecting information, salary reductions, maintaining suspensions of games, donations, and resuming personal training have become the choices of many clubs or leagues during the suspension period.

5. Recommendation

Based on the situational analysis and problem diagnosis, Some strategies are developed to deal with the two issues Swan faced, one is how to retain the number of existing members and fans under the influence of the epidemic, and another issue is how to increase the number of members and revenue when the season resumes the problem.

5.1 Recommendation 1 for retaining the members and customers

5.2 Recommendation 2 for increasing the members and revenue streams

Based on the problem diagnosis, the ticket sale, membership, sponsorship and broadcast consist of the main revenue stream for the sports industry. In terms of increasing ticket sales, the family members as the reference group can be targeted by Sydney Swans to influence the consumption behaviour of customers. Family members play different roles in purchase decisions, advocates, influencers, decision-makers, buyers and users (Miles 2002). The potential customers of Swans may come from members of different family groups. We suggest that Swans should launch more comprehensive family packages or family discount ticket packages to encourage more family members to engage with the games of Sydney Swans. For example, Sydney Swans can offer a child and female ticket packages and membership packages, the package contains different services and product combinations including free souvenirs, free snacks and customised ticket design, special tickets on Mother's Day and Thanksgiving Day. In terms of increasing memberships, according to the above analysis of competitors, Richmond and Collingwood provide a variety of membership packages for members. In contrast, Sydney Swans only offer 6 different types of member packages. Offering more comprehensive member packages can be used to satisfy the needs of the different customer groups in order to attract more customers to participate in the membership. In addition, due to the decrease in GDP and reducing disposal income in Australia, Sydney Swans can develop welfare activities for members' first registration for attracting 1%-3% fans to join the membership. Specifically, when a user signs up for a Swans member for the first time, the user shares it with a friend of his own via email, then both the user and his friend can get 5%-10% discount for the first registration, which can stimulate many potential customers to become Swans members. For attracting more sponsors, increasing community engagement in a crisis situation can be used to improve the brand reputation for the sports industry. we suggest that Sydney Swans can initiate a charitable fundraising event for COIVD-19 through using the reference power of the player star on a range of communication channels such as social media, official app, official websites and online community. All the donations will be used to support the New South Wales Hospital against COVID-19. In addition, Sydney Swans can period engage with the community to enhance brand reputation so that the awareness of sponsors can be created in the target market. Regarding broadcast, due to the list of anti-siphoning law, the live sports broadcast in the major events are traditionally free. a lot of customers have an opportunity to watch the games free in the major events. However, due to the rapid development of digital technology, more and more young generations tend to watch live games through digital channels. In order to target more young generations, Sydney Swans can create cooperation with social media live such as Facebook and YouTube, which are popular social media. In addition, Sydney Swans should negotiate with existing live streaming partners in terms of offering more benefits to fans and members due to negative effects on the economy caused by COVID-19.

6. Conclusion

In order to help the Sydney Swans football team to solve the two issues faced, one is now under the influence of COVID-19, how does Sydney Swans retain existing members and fans. The other is how Swans increases the number of members and income when the season resumes. We have carried out a series of studies and investigations, including PESTEL analysis, SWOT analysis, main competitor analysis and diagnostic analysis of Swans. Through analysis, we provide some suggestions for the Sydney Swans Football Club to retain existing members, attract more members and increase the profits of the club. The first is to improve the internal management of the team and increase the participation of fans, so as to gain the trust of fans and members and establish a good customer relationship with them, in order to improve their loyalty and satisfaction to achieve the purpose of retaining existing members. Second, improve Swans' ticket and membership services and make good use of media channels to attract more potential customers to increase the number of fans and members to increase profits. We believe that by effectively implementing these measures, the Sydney Swans Football Club can solve current challenges and maintain its sustainable development.

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Appendix

Appendix 1

Source: DoH 2020

Appendix 2

Source: Facebook 2020

Source: Instagram 2020

Appendix 3

Source: Statista 2019