News NMFC & Tassie (the mass debate re our future there, the academy, attending advice)

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Jun 9, 2001
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145,084
Fogarty Street
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North Melbourne
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Are we getting paid in bitcoin? The price seems to go up every few minutes.

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Tasmania must've sent this guy in to negotiate.

"The price just went up again"
 

big_e

Existential crisis management consultant
Apr 28, 2008
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The idea that we are in a position to have 11 home games in Melb is farcical - we need that revenue and sponsorship.
So unless as a membership base we have 5mil a year laying around, we need those games in Tassie, and for the afl to believe that financially it is not feasible to have a team in Tassie.

People talk about extra revenue streams - we had one, but chose to leave it (pokies) which was a great move socially. Was it financially?

This administration knows how to manage a balance sheet, and if they aren't panicking about how this Tassie ultimatum pans out then they must have something up their sleave. But I would bet they are genuinely concerned about the outcome of this.

Its great for members to romanticise about having 11 games in Melbourne, but we need to understand reality. We need this revenue.
Re Pokies.

I looked at this re St Kilda a year or two back. They got a 10 year licence for pokies at their social club (around 2013-14), which cost them more than a million bucks upfront (which they had to borrow to do), plus an annual commitment of $500k or more. And these are commercial operations, so you need to hire people to run it, the CEO has to spend time thinking about it, you have to dedicate time at board meetings to keep on top of it, etc. And it adds less than a million bucks to their bottom line in a good year. It's so far away from the core business of a footy club that the cultural fit of those managers might be difficult to manage.

Not to mention the opportunity cost is massive (ie the time spent managing a pokies venue could be used to get more sponsors, build the membership base, concentrate on the footy department, etc).

For all the time spent on it, it's actually not that good a business to be in for a footy club.
 
Feb 19, 2016
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There is probably a difference between St. Kilda and, say, Essendon, wherein the Donnies don't have to devote so much time to engaging new supporters while Saints (and us) need to work much harder. Just one example of the sort of adminstrative contrast which might allow pokies to be more profitable for some clubs and not others.
 

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shimaburnsgrieg

Premiership Player
Apr 1, 2017
4,360
10,094
AFL Club
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The idea that we are in a position to have 11 home games in Melb is farcical - we need that revenue and sponsorship.
So unless as a membership base we have 5mil a year laying around, we need those games in Tassie, and for the afl to believe that financially it is not feasible to have a team in Tassie.

People talk about extra revenue streams - we had one, but chose to leave it (pokies) which was a great move socially. Was it financially?

This administration knows how to manage a balance sheet, and if they aren't panicking about how this Tassie ultimatum pans out then they must have something up their sleave. But I would bet they are genuinely concerned about the outcome of this.

Its great for members to romanticise about having 11 games in Melbourne, but we need to understand reality. We need this revenue.
$5m now is it for 4 games? It's doubled in an afternoon.
 
It's not $4m - it's not even $3m but let's assume it is.

The job of the Board/CEO is to find those sponsors and alternative revenue sources and they have 18 months to do so.

However let's say they could only find half of that ($1.5m) via an assortment of sponsors, events, big end of town donations- If 30,000 locally based NFMC supporters put in an extra $50 for a year or 2 that raises $1.5m pa and makes up the difference. In addition we dont claim the maximum we could off the afl distribution and we could add another mill for a couple of years there.

No one wants us to go back to the old days of debt build up but there are ways to raise revenue.

It's hard to do but we need to get off the Hobart teat and start building this club up from within Melbourne - utilising our key advantage of inner city accessibility, family/community club status (no pokies) and an exciting brand of footy.

It will take years/decades to do this but it's a better path forward than this co location nonsense (which has never worked for any professional club across the globe).

Yep. It's not easy, reality is that Tasmania is easy money for us. But that is part of the point - it's easy money.

I hear a lot of talk about us being a boutique club for mine that's what we need to think long and hard about when looking at any move towards 11 home games in Melbourne. There are opportunities there to pump the premium end of the memberships up but they need to provide something unique and valuable to supporters to justify it. Feels to me that there is a huge gap between top level premium memberships (currently around the $5-600 mark) and the extreme memberships (such as the player sponsor ones in the $2-3k realm). I think 11 home games and some creative thinking could attract a decent proportion of the 4 or 5,000 core premium reserved members to a newer higher tier between these levels - has to be worth it though to those type of people. I've written extensively on this stuff before but I'm thinking of premium limited edition merchandise as starting points, premium group raffles (so significantly higher chances to win), opportunities to go to or win genuine unique experiences - almost like a high level North subscription. The fact that Bigfooty supporter catchups at games have been more entertaining events than most of the premium level ones I've been to (outside the Syd which is a pretty schmick show nowadays) is a bit of an indictment on the club given what a bunch of misfits most of us are.

Personally after all this time of so many non Melbourne games I'd prefer to convert my $700 odd per year H&A spend to a $700 premium home spend and let's be honest, I'd still end up throwing the extra couple of hundred into the away games. I'm done supporting other teams and Tasmania's economics though - I'm voting with my $ and still supporting by ensuring that the maximum amount of my spend goes to North Melbourne.

Re Pokies.

I looked at this re St Kilda a year or two back. They got a 10 year licence for pokies at their social club (around 2013-14), which cost them more than a million bucks upfront (which they had to borrow to do), plus an annual commitment of $500k or more. And these are commercial operations, so you need to hire people to run it, the CEO has to spend time thinking about it, you have to dedicate time at board meetings to keep on top of it, etc. And it adds less than a million bucks to their bottom line in a good year. It's so far away from the core business of a footy club that the cultural fit of those managers might be difficult to manage.

Not to mention the opportunity cost is massive (ie the time spent managing a pokies venue could be used to get more sponsors, build the membership base, concentrate on the footy department, etc).

For all the time spent on it, it's actually not that good a business to be in for a footy club.

That ship has sailed and there is risk trying to get back in now. In some businesses you need to have more money to make more money - this is one of them IMO.



To be fair - he's playing games to appeal to his electorate but 100% spot on re: the AFL on this. The AFL is taking the piss with Tasmania and will until it bites them properly on the arse. As Tallahassee would say - they need to nut up or shut up.
Like a lot of these money making exercises in the private and commercial world - the more capital you have the more you can earn. Anyway, that ship has now sailed completely IMO and there is significant risk in trying to get on board now.
 
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barnrokn

Club Legend
Aug 1, 2017
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It definitely helps. No doubt about that whatsoever. We didn't capitalise for various reasons on the 90's but make no mistake - we wouldn't even exist without them. I have zero doubt about that.

You are correct though that there is more to it.

For mine it comes back to being unique. We will never be the biggest. We apparently will never play as many games in Melbourne. We sure as sh*t won't ever get the fixture gifts that other clubs do - we need to find something that we can do to make our experience amazing, unique and powerful. Relying on winning isn't enough because there will always be down times. We have to be smarter, tougher, quicker and a hell of a lot nastier than other teams. That crazy old bat from the pre VFL days who attacked an umpire with a brolly - that should be our mascot internally. If we insist on a Kangaroo we shouldn't be the cute one - we should be one that kicks the living sh*t out of anyone that gets too close.
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barnrokn

Club Legend
Aug 1, 2017
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I appreciate your higher intentions to create game day experiences but your specifics seem a bit... I don't know... ugly? Galvanizing a whole section of the crowd to act like arseholes sledging one particular player can only end one way. The club ends up looking like the a-hole club. Or worse. What if the chosen player is indigenous? Then we look like the racist club. Or if the player reveals that he has been suffering from depression or that there was a death in the family. Then the club looks like utter campaigners.

How about galvanizing a section of the crowd to uplift one of our own? Pick out an unlikely cult figure, a battler or journeyman. Make him feel like a king for a day. Your section of the crowd still gets to feel engaged but without all the negativity.

I don't know about you but I go to the football to cheer on my team, not to scream abuse at the opposition.
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Apr 24, 2013
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7000 Tasmanian members


Jesus H Christ, so when the Tasmanian membership is excluded, membership growth in real terms has only grown by ~1000 since the 2007 fightback?

That is ****ing deplorable.

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Jun 4, 2013
17,388
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It’s easy to say win games of football and the rest will sort itself out. We knocked up winning games in the 90’s and we were on our knees by 2003.

Failure to capitalise off field in the immediate aftermath followed by Carey's shenanigans pretty much ****ed us there IMO.

I think better phrasing would be "win games of football and the rest will be a hell of a lot easier to sort out". But it can ultimately go both ways, you can capitalise off success or you can fumble it. If we did have a good run I think we might struggle to make highly significant membership gains, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if the corporate sponsorship floodgates opened.
 

Passmore

Brownlow Medallist
May 22, 2001
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The Gasometer Wing
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Failure to capitalise off field in the immediate aftermath followed by Carey's shenanigans pretty much f’ed us there IMO.

I think better phrasing would be "win games of football and the rest will be a hell of a lot easier to sort out". But it can ultimately go both ways, you can capitalise off success or you can fumble it. If we did have a good run I think we might struggle to make highly significant membership gains, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if the corporate sponsorship floodgates opened.
Indeed. Our admin at the time was short sighted to put it mildly.

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