Eveybody get he email from Link about Growing Rugby (pasted below). He sounds really committed to the reds and he plan he put in place 3 years ago.
Grow or go home
In any business faced with difficult times, the common response is to batten down the hatches, consolidate your position, cut and trim your discretionary spending, and then ride out the wave.
This is the blueprint many organisations choose to adopt but the reality is that once those business tricks have been exhausted, you are left with only one way to go - and that’s to grow.
Employing a growth mindset in tough times is difficult and is certainly not the norm, but then again, the business of sport is not exactly normal.
Across the board, sport never produces great profit margins. While there are some astronomical revenues generated in our industry, profit lines remain minimal. So it’s safe to say if you were an investor you wouldn’t be running into the sporting industry with a view to huge profits, instead you would be chasing your 20-30% returns elsewhere.
But, as tough as the business of sport is in Queensland - where mistakes on and off the field can cost you dearly - we at Queensland Rugby continue to ensure growth remains at the forefront of our thinking and strategic planning.
As a starting point, accumulating enough funds and being able to deliver strong economics is paramount, as this at least gives you the opportunity to implement growth. Without enough funds, you won’t be able to compete.
Once you have enough capital behind you, then comes the hard part. You can talk growth, which is cheap, or you can action it, and that has been our mindset over the last three seasons.
Queensland Rugby has grown its way out of trouble and has put the organisation in a strong position to compete with the major sports on every level. Had I written this three years ago when we were formulating our strategy, everyone would have laughed. But, we have been living and breathing our business philosophies and the outcomes have translated into record results.
We often talk about the evolution of our membership base which has grown from 5,000 in 2010 to over 32,000 in 2012. We’ve now set the ambitious target of 40,000 for 2013.
The impact of memberships for a business is massive as it allows the fans to be connected to the game, not just on the nights we play at Suncorp Stadium, but throughout the entire year with our regular communications and engaging campaigns.
It also allows Queensland Rugby to be connected with one of its key stakeholders and develop a relationship that will hopefully prove mutually beneficial. But growth in membership is just one example. The organisation has also grown its representation in the Wallabies ranks by having 14 new players rise to this level since 2010 and we have grown our internal experience levels in parallel.
For the Reds, our playing group had a total of 804 Super Rugby caps in 2010. This number grew to 1098 in 2011 and now sits at 1,454 appearances. At the same time, the average age of the squad has remained at just over 23-years-old, so there is plenty more to come.
Away from the Reds, Rugby participation numbers in Queensland also continue to grow. In 2012, we are heading towards a record 180,000 participants, which is a significant rise from the 137,000 in 2011 and 103,000 from 2010.
These figures haven’t occurred by accident. They have risen on the back of the introduction of new programs like Rookies2Reds, the inaugural Queensland Schoolgirl Sevens Championships and Try Sevens.
Queensland Rugby has also seen a fourfold increase to its community funding through the corporate support, relationships and structures it is developing. Through these various Game Development strategies, we are funding the community game to the tune of $4million above that from which traditional grass-roots funding was generated.
My point is, you don’t get growth if you don’t have the right mindset. None of the above would have been achieved without calculated risk, which is a direct function of strategic and adaptive thinking, along with a willingness and determination to be bold.
This is the business philosophy of Rugby in Queensland and it is reflected both on and off the field. Doing things the way they were always done would not have captured the hearts and minds of the players, fans, media or our increasing stakeholder base. Being bold to ensure growth and taking it up to the sport’s big boys hasn’t always been easy, but doing more of the same would have been a disaster.
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