GWS Giants’ Journey From Underdogs to Titans

Starting a new AFL team in Western Sydney is a colossal effort. The region is the heartland of rival code NRL, which not only has a century of history in Western Sydney, but sports half a dozen premier teams that represent the area. 

In a traditional retail setting, this would be like opening a tea shop amongst a demographic that has exclusively enjoyed espresso for the last 100 years. 

The GWS Giants entered the AFL as the proverbial underdogs in 2012, the second of two NSW-based clubs and to date the youngest team in the league’s history. Not only do the Giants have a lot to prove on the field, but they have to prove to Western Sydney locals they’re a club worth rooting for. 

However, capturing the hearts of new GWS Giants fans takes more than winning matches. To get more people in Western Sydney wearing the club’s brand of orange, a robust retail program needed to be executed to generate a fandom that could get behind the GWS Giants. 

To grow the fanbase the GWS Giants needed a solid retail program

It may be strange to think that an AFL club needs a retail program, but as Head of Customer Acquisition Mitchell Dale puts it, at the end of the day the GWS Giants are still a business that needs to generate revenue.  

Mitchell comes from a family who spent a long time in the retail business. Between growing up in a retail household and having a background in marketing strategy, Mitchell had the perfect blend of experience to steer the Giants towards their growth goals.  

In his role, Mitchell is focused on the acceleration of growth in the club’s consumer department. That means Mitchell has a huge stake in the growth of the fanbase, because a positive retail experience can pave the way for long term club loyalty. 

The success of his mission came down to a core question – how can the club engage supporters and encourage lifelong loyalty from fans?

“What that means practically is how do we start to grow our first generation and next generation of fans?” muses Mitchell. 

“So how do we start to build stronger connections with our existing fans? How do we start to extract greater connection, greater avidity? And then also how do we then turn that into some business KPIs, like attendance, merchandise and sales?” 

“Where we tend to focus is where’s that next fan coming from; how do we onboard them into the Giants ecosystem? And then ultimately how do we grow it in a way that’s acceptable to the fans?” 

“So whether that is via leveraging digital strategy, whether it’s about working alongside our membership and ticketing team to get bums on seats or get people’s first time attendance, or whether it’s the connections via merchandise.” 

“It’s all about that next fan and growing the club for future stability”.

The journey to digital transformation 

In order to attract and nurture loyal fans, the club needed to embrace a digital and data-first mindset. To that end, Mitchell wants the GWS Giants to have the most data-driven strategy in the AFL. 

With his remit including data and insight, Mitchell looks after the club’s digital transformation. That includes marketing automation, customer experience and design as well as automated journey mapping. 

From customer purchase behaviour to inventory management, Mitchell wanted to ensure that the retail program was driven by data so his team could focus their attention on where it was needed most. Using Lightspeed’s retail POS, Mitchell could take the data-driven approach he wanted. 

“We want to work towards being able to unlock the full richness of our data and the capacity that we’ve got”. Utilising reporting tools in their POS, Mitchell can see what was working on game days and understand where future sales opportunities lay.

Shedding a light on what’s selling and what isn’t selling

Reporting also allows Mitchell to see what items aren’t selling and adjust the marketing plan accordingly. Payments reporting has also given Mitchell data on how people are spending their money so he can plan for the next AFL season. 

“As a sporting club there’s particular products that come in every year aligned with the season or a particular team.”

“Being able to track the product life cycle and the sales compared to previous years has been really strong.” 

“Even for our planning for 2024 we’re looking at what sold previously that hasn’t sold in 2023. I look for what we did during this time to be able to move it more succinctly.”

“At the same time, stock inventory management is huge to make sure that we’re not holding onto things for a long time, trying to make sure that we’re accurate in our orders and that we’re not ordering more than we need to.” 

Facing stiff competition, but not from where you’d expect

With a solid retail strategy in place, the Giants are poised to accelerate their growth. However, competition for fans remains stiff. Not only from the NRL, but from other sports, entertainment and natural attractions that compete for the community’s attention. 

“Sporting organisations are competing for time and experience, everyone’s trying to get that discretionary dollar. So you want people to attend games, but also in Sydney you’re competing with an abundance of natural resources like the beach and other entertainment prospects.”

With a lot of different options vying for people’s attention, time and money, the club had to focus on brand education in order to attract more fans to the club. 

“Our challenge now is not just about telling people ‘We’re the Giants, we’re the team for you’; it’s also the education of the code where we are in Western Sydney, it’s a very non-traditional audience.” 

“So a lot of the time we may be having the conversation where people are firstly learning about the game and the product being AFL, and then off the back of that learning about who the Giants are. So by that we have to do things differently.” 

“Our role is about breaking down those barriers…”

“Trying to ensure people are attending games, buying merchandise, buying memberships, coming along to their first game – whatever it is, making sure that we’re aligning to that customer experience.”

The GWS Giants are positioned for a growth spurt

With a laser-focused strategy on customer journeys and holistic data, Mitchell and his team are setting the GWS Giants up for their next wave of growth. 

Though the GWS Giants may be seen as an outlier when it comes to examples of retail strategy, they’re proving that dedication to brand education, attention to customer purchase behaviours and holistic reporting are the foundations of retail longevity. 

At this rate, Western Sydney will be wearing orange in no time. 

Delve further into how the GWS Giants are winning off the field. Read the case study to learn how GWS Giants are using Lightspeed’s unified POS and Payments platform.