Sunderland are looking to grow their revenues following their return to the Premier League
Sunderland's Chief Business Officer has outlined the club's plans to grow the fanbase following promotion back to the Premier League.
David Bruce was recently a guest on the 'leaders worth knowing' podcast to discuss a busy summer both on and off the pitch at the club as it returns to the top tier eight years on from relegation. Sunderland are determined to maximise their commercial revenues in the years ahead to ensure they can compete on the pitch, and part of that is in bringing in new fans to the club.
Asked about Sunderland's strategy to make that happen, Bruce stressed the importance of winning new fans both close to home and far further afield.
"Firstly, we look at the opportunities across three areas," Bruce said.
"One is regionally, how we capture the regional opportunity within Sunderland and the broader north east area. We're a one-club city like Newcastle, but around us in the north east there are areas where it can ebb and flow between ourselves and Newcastle. Because we're in the Premier League and we've got a young, exciting team and because of the way we got promoted.. we've got more and more young people turning onto Sunderland now. They might be in a family where there's choice or an area where it can go either way. For us, there's that opportunity which we want to try and capitalise on. We want to try and win those hearts and minds.
“Nationally there's an opportunity because we have as many league titles as Chelsea, so there is that history. We talk about, 'how can we become everyone's second favourite team?' Modern fans will have a second, third, fourth team [that they follow]. There's no shame in that, they might from time to time buy a shirt or check us out on social media, come to a game. The fact that we have a young, exciting team... I think we're doing things in a proper fashion so it's about how we talk about the club and execute on gameday. More people are finding us and giving us a follow, which is important.
How Sunderland plan to grow their brand abroad
"Then there's the international opportunity, which is capitalising on the notoriety that came with Netflix. There are big pockets of the world who watched that show and have a predisposition to Sunderland but haven't been able to do anything about it because it's been hard to find our product. America is a good example of that, it's not as easy to find us in the Championship or League One but now we're on NBC and their affiliates. We're front and centre in that market and we have partners like Fanatics who can help us deliver on that. For example, over the weekend there was a conversation on social media where fans in Mexico have decided to adopt Sunderland as their team for the year.. so we've suddenly been communicating to that market! I spoke to fanatics and said, let's direct some marketing spend to that market and see what happens. You have to be incredibly nimble in this market we operate in."
Continue Reading