From Corporate to Sports, how it can be done – Andrew Mikhail, Parramatta Eels

This transcript has been transcribed by Riverside.fm, no edits (please excuse any errors)

Sean Callanan (00:01.353)
Very happy to welcome Andrew Mikhail. He's the Chief Commercial Officer at the Parramatta Eels in the NRL. Andrew, welcome to the podcast.

Andrew Mikhail (00:09.64)
That was great to some time with you. Thanks for having me on.

Sean Callanan (00:13.063)
Not a problem at all. I always start them podcasts trying to find out people's sports business origin story. You are someone that was late to the world of sports. What were some of the things that one, how did you get into sports? And what were some of the, I guess, key steps for you to get into the world of sports?

Andrew Mikhail (00:29.614)
It was definitely a of a sliding doors moment for me. It probably started in a bit of an unusual place. In the November of 2018, my wife dragged me along to her goddaughter's first birthday and went to grab a beer out of the Esky. And there was a guy just sitting next to the Esky on his own. So thought I'd sit down and keep him company. he was a guy by the name of Grant Lawler.

We got talking as you do pretty quickly when you meet someone new. What do you do for work? Tends to come up pretty quickly. And Grant was working in a strategy role that actually still is at the NRL under Graham Annesley. And being a mad rugby leg fan as I was, I kind of sat down. And I think for the rest of the party, we just talked footy for a couple of hours and that was it. But ultimately, one of the stories Grant did share with me when we were chatting was his own journey into the sports industry.

He was a corporate lawyer who just went home one day and thought, you know what, I'm a bit fed up with law and practicing law and really love sport. And basically threw in the towel with respect to his law degree and sort of took me through his journey, which was he got a contract role at Rugby Australia, which transitioned to a permanent role at the NRL. as I said, that conversation happened in the November of 2018. And it was one of those conversations that just keeps ticking away in your brain for a little while. I think it got to the January of 2019. I said to my wife, you know what, I love sport. I'd never really considered a career in sport. I always thought that having spent close to 20 years in financial services and telecommunications and insurance, all these other industries, that that transition might be a bit too hard. But he really inspired me to give it some thoughts.

With the role of the Parramatta Reels, I was literally scrolling LinkedIn one day and this job popped up. It was the head of commercial partnerships role that the Parramatta Reels and I applied and after a fairly rigorous process was, you know, I was really excited to to jade that role. But yeah, I don't think if I'd been at that at that party and met Grant that the seed probably wouldn't have been planted.

Sean Callanan (02:48.041)
mean, it is interesting. There is a lot of people in that same sort of space where they don't think that they can make that transition. But looking back now, some of your previous roles like at Optus or American Express and, you know, in different verticals, how did you sort of, transferable were some of those skills?

Andrew Mikhail (03:06.914)
Look, a lot of the core skills in managing large teams and managing commercial functions and setting strategy and driving high performance and high performance cultures, a lot of those are really transferable. And if I think about the journey I went through with Parramatta, there were probably three things that were really important during that interview process that I had to really hone in on. And the first was that, Sean, it was that…

ability to articulate how those skills that I've acquired in those other industries were transferable to the parameters at the time. you know, negotiation and negotiation strategy, setting a business strategy, partnership fundamentals, winning accounts, all of those, I guess, core competencies and skills, they translate across a whole multitude of industries. being really clear and demonstrating some real examples around how I could transfer those skills into

into sport was really important. And the other two were probably one, I guess, a real appreciation and understanding of rugby league. I grew up in a mad sports household. Rugby league and soccer were probably the two sports at home that as a family we really immersed ourselves in. And, you know, for years, as long as I can remember, I'd be watching close to eight games of rugby league every weekend. I was able to demonstrate a real understanding of

the sport and the product. And then the second, I'd grown up in Western Sydney. I grew up in a suburb called Minchinbury for those that don't know, really close to Mount Druitt and rugby league and sport is real focal point of that area and went to school in Penrith at St Dominic's College there, a real rugby league sort of school as well. But my whole life I've been brought up in Western Sydney and could, you know, really sort of talk to and understanding of the area and the geography that the club is from and.

I think being able to do those things, talk to an understanding of the geography, talk to an understanding of the game and the product, but also really highlight the transferable skills that could pass over were really important. I think the other is you kind of need to be in the right place at the right time a lot of the times as well. And Paramata were probably not performing as well as they would have liked at that time.

Andrew Mikhail (05:26.702)
They were probably a lot more open and receptive to someone outside the industry coming in and really shaking up that commercial function at the club. And I'd worked across a number of turnaround agendas before, whether it be at American Express or Optus. And I think having had a look at probably the last half a dozen roles I'd been in, I'd say all of them bar one, I'd come in to an underperforming team and someone may have been exited from the role previously. And I was able to demonstrate that, you know, I kind of have.

demonstrated skills and abilities in turning those things around. And these are the principles and the foundations with which I drive those changes. And they're at an organizational point where they're looking for something like that. So was definitely a little bit of right place, right time as well.

Sean Callanan (06:08.595)
I mean, you talked about that, that that you being a change advocate, and you know, some people seek out those environments, the change, you know, managing changes is hard. And especially, like you said, outsider coming in, you are both bringing in different knowledge, but also learning, you know, how sports does it like is that you come into the scene? Are this how we do it in sports? And you sort of had, you know, a corporate view and different, different markets? How do you go about, you know, entering, entering somewhere, you know, entering environment that does require change and

I guess helping people accept that change.

Andrew Mikhail (06:42.374)
Yeah, look, change is hard. People don't like it. And I think I was reading some stats a little while ago, might have been Gallup coming out and they said, 80 % of change initiatives fail. And it's because it's really hard and again, because people don't like change. And yeah, ultimately when I'm looking at driving change in an organization, there's probably three things that I focus on. And when I joined Paramata, that's effectively kind of how we approached it. The first was,

I think it's really important to create some dissatisfaction and status quo. You kind of need everyone within the organisation to kind of go, hey, you know what? How we're going at the moment isn't awesome. And doing it in a really empathetic way that isn't you coming in and being the person that knows everything and effectively saying everything you guys have been doing is wrong, but sort of coming out, this is kind of where it's at at the moment and being really, really clear about what that position is.

The NRL do benchmark reporting every year and provide that information to the clubs. And one of the things I had at my disposal to create that dissatisfaction and status quo was they report on how all the clubs were performing commercially. And there was a leaderboard like there is with respect to wins and losses on the football field. we were sitting bottom of that ladder. So I effectively put that up and said, guys, you know, this is where we're at. you know, is anyone in this group comfortable with that? And to everyone's credit, they weren't, you know, everyone.

working in a sports club, they do it because they love the clubs that they work with and they love the industry that they work with and they want to be successful and bring success to those clubs. So putting that up there and creating that dissatisfaction where everyone went, yeah, we're probably not where we want to be or should be. It was probably starting point number one. The next sort of phase for me is just creating a really compelling vision of what the future could look like and getting really excited about that. But more importantly,

getting everyone else really excited about that. And, you know, I talked to some of the stats. We were at the center of the third largest economy in the country in Western Sydney, largest supporter base of any rugby league club in Sydney and New South Wales, third largest in the game and playing out of an incredible stadium. you kind of look at those things and you go, we should really be here and creating a really compelling vision that we could be and should be a real premier organization in sport from a commercial.

Andrew Mikhail (09:06.521)
perspective and getting everyone really excited about that compelling vision. And then the third part is just creating some really clean next steps. And for me, that was creating clarity around the direction that we were going in strategically. And then most importantly, once you set that really clear direction, it's being really clear with everyone that they play a really important role in getting there and being really clear around what their roles and responsibilities are. But, you know, we did that through

the strategy formulation processes and rolling that down to roles and responsibilities. But you're always going to get resistance to change. That's natural. That's normal. And a lot of time it's not personal. But creating that dissatisfaction and the status quo, being really clear around what that future vision could look like and making sure it's compelling, something that people want to be a part of. And then a third kind of telling people what you want from them and linking that back to strategy and role.

That's kind of the way that we went about it at the Ails.

Sean Callanan (10:07.037)
And was it a case of sometimes when you go to that spot, you do have a bunch of people that are yearning for that change or yearning for that absolute direction. Was it a case of there'll be there's people that get super fired up, get a slight adjustment of their role and that super charges their performance. And then there's others that get a slight change their role. And it really, it really makes them stick in the mud. How do you manage those sort of two different people that embrace the change and it really fits for them and the others that are still sort of

I guess stuck in the old way or following those same habits.

Andrew Mikhail (10:41.945)
Yeah, look, I think once you've sort of gone through those steps, I think it's really important that you have a fair degree of conviction around what you're going after. And, you know, ultimately, there are going to be people that really jump on board and want to be part of that change. And there are always people that fit in their bucket. They're really excited about the opportunity and having someone who approaches things differently, people really warm and sort of respond to that really well. But, you know, you do get the other group, Sean, who

are really resistant to the change and might push back on that change. And there's probably two things I tend to do in that scenario. One is you're trying to enlist people that have got some influence within the organisation that you can really shine a light on to support driving that change. think that's really important. And identifying who those change agents are and having them on board and endorsing a lot of those changes is really important.

Ultimately, this is really hard if you've explored that option as well and people aren't on board. It's making necessary structural changes to the organization as well to ensure that you've got the right people that are ultimately aligned and on board with the direction that you're going. And we have to make some decisions like that at the club. And ultimately, it's part of parcel of running any organization.

Sean Callanan (12:05.397)
Strategy and planning and you having that North Star and vision is great, but you know, all businesses with sports, especially one, there's always obstacles. And sometimes they present challenges and opportunity. How do you adjust, you know, your hand on the tiller or adjust that strategy to take on some of those opportunities or overcome some of those challenges?

Andrew Mikhail (12:27.077)
It's really tough. mean, it's tough in all industries, but particularly in sport where a lot of the organizations, know, we're really running off the smell of an oil rake sometimes. You know, speak to most people in sporting organizations, irrespective of how big the club is, they tend to feel like they could always do with more people. There's always more things to be done than people to do them. And that's why.

that strategy formulation process becomes really, really critical and how we approach that at the club. And we've gone through a couple of different iterations of the strategy formulation process. We kind of start with that, that North Star, what's that desired future state? And then there's a fair bit of work we're doing it around and we call it of call it context setting. So we're kind of looking at what's happening external to the organisation from an economic perspective, technology, what are we saying socially, what are our competitors doing?

then kind of taking more of an internal lens around, okay, well, what products are performing really well? What channels are performing really well? Do we have the capability required to execute on the things that are really, really important? And then we kind of look at part of that context setting as well. What are some of the options that exist out there? We're always trying to drive growth. it a product development strategy we want to go down? Is there a market opportunity that we haven't tapped into yet? Should we be diversifying what we do completely?

We do a fair bit of work in and around identifying what those priorities are by virtue of key things that come out of that context setting process. And then once we've got those priorities, well, what are the deliverables that underpin that? And I guess where that comes into that disciplined approach around continuing to go after those areas of focus and not derailing yourself is you want to make sure that you've done the work.

to identify what's important so you're not distracted by every single shiny ball that comes up because shiny balls come up all the time. it's, I guess, important to be in a position where you can clearly identify which of those things are important and which aren't. And step one is making sure that there's a lot of rigor around that strategy development process. And then the second part of it is everyone

Andrew Mikhail (14:41.591)
understanding that a big part of strategy, and we talk about it lot, people can do anything, but they can't do everything. And a big part of that strategy process is you're deciding what to do, but by virtue of that, you're deciding what not to do. And any new shiny ball that pops up in the air, it's understanding and appreciating that focusing your effort and energy on that is going to pull you away from something else and making a determination, well, is that new thing that's come up important enough to

deviate our focus off something we're currently doing onto that. And sometimes there are those things and you need to be agile and respond really quickly. But sometimes there can be a lot of distractions as well. So disciplined approach to the strategy setting process and equally everyone being aligned that as you pick things up, other things need to drop and are those things that you're dropping more important.

Sean Callanan (15:30.709)
I mean what?

One of the examples of the things that would be growing on your agenda is the growing audience and appreciation for NRLW and everything that you're doing with the women's program. Is that something that, in your time at the club, you have seen your strategy adjust to put more focus with what the NRLW are doing?

Andrew Mikhail (15:54.235)
Yeah, we've had a pretty significant shift in strategy commercially in a couple of different areas. From a sponsorship perspective, it's really shifted our approach to monetizing and commercializing our programs. And we're pretty disciplined strategically when it comes to how we go to market and how we price. We've done a lot of work with the Turnstyle crew, which is part of the Gamba group around how we

price assets from a go-to-market perspective. And our approach is largely your monetizing IP, your monetizing exposure, and your monetizing benefits. They're the three buckets that we work within. And when we work with partners, we're pretty transparent around the pricing across all those three buckets. And at the moment, when you kind of look at our NREL program versus our NRELW program, the exposure in the women's game isn't quite there with respect to

some of the TV viewership numbers in our men's program, but where the real value is, in that IP. It's using the name, player, image likeness of those female stars who really resonate with brands. And I think from that perspective, we've really shifted that go-to-market pricing strategy where we've dialed up the IP component whilst acknowledging that the exposure of benefits are probably going to need to dial down and

on the men's side of things, absolutely a significant failure in the IP, the exposure to benefits, but the exposure makes up a greater percentage of the overall investment, whereas in the women's game, it's that IP probably makes up a greater share of that investment. But being really disciplined around your approach is really important. And the other thing that we've done is, it's really important, particularly for clubs that have had men's programs, who are adding women's program to the mix that

you put a value on that women's program. You know, you don't want to end up in a scenario where, and then thankfully we had a lot of our existing partners appreciate the position that we were coming from. And that is if you're making an investment in our men's team and our women's program comes in, which it did, that requires an additional investment. That's not part of your overall offering and ensuring that you're appropriately value that program is really important. And we did a great job in

Andrew Mikhail (18:14.199)
in making our partners see the value in that. And ultimately where we had a couple of scenarios where partners weren't prepared to make additional investments above and beyond the investment they were making that time, we found new partners for those particular assets.

Sean Callanan (18:29.469)
And so what in the partnership space is exciting you with what you're doing with the EELS?

Andrew Mikhail (18:38.363)
I think what we're doing largely from a digital perspective is still really, really critical. We're seeing a significant percentage of the investment that partners are making as part of their overall investment in the club being allocated towards digital. And now we talk quite a lot internally at the club and with partners. Ultimately, we play 80 minutes of rugby league a week in an eight month season. It's now in a 10,000 and 80 minute week.

know, 0.79 % of the week, the guys are actually playing football and making sure that your front of mind all the time is really, really important. And equally digital and content enables you to tell really great stories about the attributes in your brand that you might not necessarily get by virtue of other assets within the asset portfolio. So that is really, really important. And one of the things that we've also done as a club, and this probably sits outside partnerships.

And it's something that we probably look at a little bit more broadly. We've invested quite significantly in our entire digital ecosystem. And that goes from what we do from a data analytics perspective through the investment in a customer data platform to what we're doing from a marketing automation perspective and how we personalize and communicate to fans. But equally what we're doing from a conversion perspective as well. But those kind of firsts to everything we're doing from a data and martech perspective.

personalisation communication perspective, it's how do you monetise the audiences that you're building and the investments you're making in that technology and infrastructure. And as you're able to deliver really strong outcomes in that space, partners are more receptive to investing more and more of their investment into, into marketing and digital. that's, that's probably the part that's, that's been really exciting to me. It's translating that investment in infrastructure that enables us to better understand and know our fans and having partners see the value in that so they can

form really direct and relevant relationships with those people that matter.

Sean Callanan (20:39.593)
And you're finding that partners, you came from that background of corporate, are being more sophisticated in what they are asking from you as a club. They're wanting that deeper knowledge of your fan base and the deeper knowledge of their potential customers that might be in the para fan base.

Andrew Mikhail (20:59.522)
I think the word that comes up a lot when we're speaking to prospective partners is relevance. They want to be speaking to people that are relevant to them and their brands. And we've got 800,000 fans across Australia and we've done a great job in trying to collect a really large breadth of information about as many as possible. But relevance is really important and relevance doesn't mean speaking to 800,000.

I speaking to people that are relevant and fans that are relevant and yeah, the more information we have on our fans and the ability for our brands and partners to be able to form really strong relationships with those that are relevant is something that comes up a lot.

Sean Callanan (21:43.625)
And yeah, and the same from an objective. I I talk about the Spice Girls strategy of asking the partner what they really, really want. Like, is that something that you're always drilling into? Because like, yes, they might be coming for, you know, the front of Jersey and exposure, but like really understanding what your partners want helps you from a deliverable point of view.

Andrew Mikhail (22:02.106)
Yeah, look, absolutely. We undertake a piece of work with every partner every year, as we do with our prospective partners as well, where we sit down and we build a partnership framework that ultimately guides all of the activity in season. And that's the opportunity to ask why, why, why multiple times and just to ensure that we're getting really clear on what those requirements are. And, you know, it starts with a workshop that ultimately ends with an output of

This is the vision of the partnership. These are the three priority areas. These are the assets that align those priority areas. This is how we're going to measure success. And we always point everything back to that. And it also requires you, if you're going to have those conversations on an annual basis, to make sure that the contract has within it a fair degree of flexibility to dial up and dial down things as the partnership evolves as well. And we've been able to get partners on board that look,

Here's your IP component, that's almost a ticket to the show and this is how we can use that IP. From an exposure perspective, yep, you've got your high exposure assets, but almost everything else that sits in that benefits bucket, whether it be digital, whether it be tickets, whether it be hospitality, whether it be merchandise, whatever that is, we tend to package that up in a benefits package, provide a rate card and we kind of say, hey, every year we're gonna sit down and we're gonna get a really, really clear assessment of what's important for you this year.

you know, the next six months, the next month, because those things, you know, absolutely change year on year and they might even change more frequent than that. And, you know, we're obviously open to sitting down and sort of working through that, but having that flexibility built into the agreement that we can dial up and dial down based on the objectives to your point and the priorities of the brand really are important, particularly when you're entering into large partnerships. we've had six-year contracts executed. Our most recent major partnership was a four and

You know, being really prescriptive around what you're going to do in year four, you know, quite often five, five and a half years out is a real challenge. So building that flex in and then building that system and rigor that you're workshopping to understand what is important and aligning all your activities around that is something that the guys spend a lot of time on.

Sean Callanan (24:18.611)
And was that a key execution piece of that early strategy work? Cause like, I imagine you came in and you might've had, you know, contracts that were quite rigid and prescriptive and didn't allow for that flexibility and that partnership relationship. Like it's really hard to go, Hey, we want to the top of the top of the table commercially when we're locked in and you're not having, you know, you're not getting that flexibility. So like sometimes it does get into the brass tacks of what does legal, you know, what does it the contract, but

that having that flexibility both internally but also with your partners must have been something that really like started to really open some things up with your partners.

Andrew Mikhail (24:56.752)
Yeah, one of the key components of that broader commercial strategy was around what are our acquisition disciplines going to be and what our retention disciplines going to be and strategy and strategic targeting and ultimately collaborative process of building our partnerships was a key component of that. We were pretty fortunate at the time. We were sort of coming in and we probably weren't performing as well as we could be and there were a lot of partners coming off contract, a of open assets. So there was one of the benefits of

the day in a situation like that is you've got a blank canvas to work with as well. And we were fortunate that we were working also with some fairly sophisticated brands that were coming into the program that we hadn't partnered with before, but they'd had experience in sport before. And I think they appreciated that both transparent and flexible approach it will bring to the table. yeah, it's probably more internally when you're of budgeting the year and planning out your year, you're kind of not

quite sure at any point in time for the upcoming season. Well, how much merch is that partner going to need? they going to dive more into tickets or are they more playing to that B2B space? Are they going to use corporate hospitality to entertain some of key clients or is employee engagement a really big driver this year? And they see merch as being a really key enabler to that. So from a planning perspective, it just means you've got to create some flex and you're dialing up and dialing down certain elements of.

Sean Callanan (26:12.692)
Yeah.

Andrew Mikhail (26:23.73)
how you're planning about the year ahead. That flexibility for partners and delivering outcomes is certainly more important than simplifying the planning process internally.

Sean Callanan (26:34.995)
Yeah, it's very much like a live game of Tetris in some instances where the requirements keep dropping, you've just got to get them back into the right slots.

Andrew Mikhail (26:44.808)
Yeah, and it's important to always take yourself back to your point before around the objectives and you're delivering objectives to partners. And, you know, we talk strategically around there being three really key themes as well. We talk a lot about retain, delight, acquire, retain, delight, acquire. And that goes through every function in our organization. If you're in the membership team, it's how do we delight the members we've got, retain the members we've got, acquire new members. If you're in the content social team, how do you…

Delight our fans that are engaging with us via social, retain the fans that we've got that are to acquire more. Partners, it's the same delight, retain, acquire. And, you know, a really critical element of that delight pillar that we talk about quite a lot is we're giving our fans, giving our partners, giving our members what they want when they want it. And again, that Tetris game is a really good metaphor for how things play out. But ultimately, if we're not delivering outcomes for our customers in the way they want them, you know, we're not performing our roles.

Sean Callanan (27:42.697)
I mean, and also you touched on there that balance, you know, when you're in the commercial, you are chasing the partner, their objectives, the dollars, but you know, a key part of that is the fans and your fans. And do you have that? Do you have that, you know, one, one always looking at that as how's this going to work for our fans? You know, what, what's it going to be for the, for them?

Andrew Mikhail (28:03.687)
Yeah, we do. And I think it comes back to always having a club first approach to everything we do at the club. we're sort of thinking about everything quite broadly. And I think that's one of the reasons why structurally, I oversee our partnerships function, our consumer functions, everything we do from a membership, ticketing, hospitality perspective, and our marketing and digital function, which incorporates sort of fan and content and social. So I can look at it in a balanced

perspective and with a balanced view and I'm always thinking about if we do this really important for the commercial partner, but you know, is that going to resonate with the fan base and bringing the marketing content teams to the table really early? we appreciate understanding the objective partnership team partner thinking about delivering that objective in this way. If we actually delivered in this way, we think it could deliver a better outcome for the partner, but also the club and you know that that workshopping and not being shy to put those

internal teams in inverted commas like marketing, like digital, like content in front of the clients, they can ideate and workshop together. And I find when you bring those sort of key people across both partnerships, fan and partner together, you generally land on something that works for everyone. It's just making sure that you've got the processes in place that facilitate that collaboration, which is really, really important.

Sean Callanan (29:29.011)
And that structure of having membership and digital and commercial and partnerships reporting into you, is that part of the initial changes? Because a lot of the times we see some of those as real silos and not sort of either connecting up at the top or having that by-play that can sometimes cause some friction.

Andrew Mikhail (29:51.079)
Yeah, a big part of it was, you know, taking a singular view around how we go to market and wanting there to be a really consistent go to market strategy. And equally what we've been focused on as a club as well is, you know, thinking through the role that our, I guess our web facing channels play in building that really strong fan relationship and connection.

the role that marketing, digital and content play even in conversion as well. And we've made some decisions over the last couple of years to divest out of what you'd probably call traditional consumer roles where I remember when I took on leadership at the consumer function, we had eight people on the phone speaking to members all the time. We've now got two, but we built out a really strong capability set from both eight people and infrastructure perspective in what we do from a digital perspective.

I think being able to take a holistic lens of the fan and the club and the member just enables you to make decisions that you probably wouldn't make if those decisions sat with people who were quite siloed and thinking about their own remit and, you know, really hard to get the head of consumer to, you know, transition resources out of their function over time and invest them in the marketing and digital function. Not a lot in it for that person, but when you've got someone who oversees both who can.

to take both of those groups on the journey around where we're going. It certainly makes to the point we made before around change that that change program a lot more straightforward.

Sean Callanan (31:30.259)
And you talked about the investment into that martech space. mean, that has sort of like opened up some of those opportunities. Are you excited about some of the things that are in that space from a martech point of view, the fact that AI agents and those kinds of things are coming to the fore now?

Andrew Mikhail (31:50.331)
Yeah, we've kind of looked at our digital transformation program in probably three different chunks. And we're onto the third part of that project at the moment. And this third part's for me, easily the most exciting. think, know, phase one was just getting the data right. What are all the first-party data points, second-party data points? How are we consolidating that information? And then how are we using that to understand the fan? That was kind of phase one. And we invested in a…

in the CDP to enable us to do that, is outstanding. The second phase was working through what's the communication mechanism and that sort of talks to the Martech stack and the investment we've made in that area and having people that are really equipped in optimizing the way we communicate with our fans and making sure we're speaking to fans via the right channel, right platform, right message, right time.

And the part that we're on at the moment, is really cool, it kind of feels as though in conversations I'm having with people as being a bit of a first in sport is we've kind of looked at the way that fans engage with products that clubs take to market. And it's a really fragmented process at the moment where if you want to buy a jersey, that's awesome. You go onto the merchandise store and you buy a jersey. And if you want to buy a membership,

awesome, go to the membership site, go buy a membership. If you want a ticket, you go off the ticket tick. You want to, you know, access to a hospitality event, you go to a hospitality event and you kind of think about that customer experience and you compare that to the customer experience that fans are having across other different industries. it just doesn't work like that. You don't land on the iconic and, you know, if you want to buy a pair of shoes, you go to that part of the website, transact, come off and then you want to buy a hoodie. go to the

and come off and then if you want to buy a pair of sunnies and go there, it's one consistent uniform purchasing program that integrates every single product into one integrated experience. And one of the things that we've been looking at is that conversion strategy and conversion approach. we're kind of midway through that sort of third part of our project at the moment.

Andrew Mikhail (34:11.039)
I guess the catalyst for that third part as well was the work we did in that strategy formulation process where we kind of went like, well, what are we seeing externally in the market? we kind of go, okay, well, know, COVID has increased the rate by which people feel comfortable transacting online and making big transactions online. That's really cool. That's really interesting. Sort of parked out and kind of looking at smartphone adoption and Australia, the second largest smartphone adopters in the world after the US. And that's really interesting as well.

kind of looked at some of the data internally and went well, year on year we're seeing a greater percentage of our sales happening via online. So that's a really interesting data point as well. then kind of thinking about, well, we're a footy club. We play 11 games at a CommBank Stadium every year. So for all intents and purposes, we are a bricks and mortar store 11 days of the year. The other 350 odd days of the year, we are an online e-commerce business.

And we've been working with a really great partner in this space and we've built out a solution in the program where you can buy a membership and a ticket, a membership and merchandise in one transaction today. It'll automatically apply to discount when you bundle a merchandise in with a membership. And we're a couple of weeks away from having hospitality built into that process as well and hoping in the new year that there'll be a ticketing component too. that sort of third layer for us once we sort of ticked off the data.

the market information and personalization and now transitioning into conversion has been really, really exciting. Just reframing that thinking that, we are an e-commerce business from a go-to-market perspective that just happens to operate in the sports industry. And taking people on that journey has been really fun.

Sean Callanan (35:58.141)
Yeah, it is the it is again, big opportunity in sports is that it's an entertainment business, but has all these different, different fields that you get from a technology point of view, you got to try to pull them all together. Andrew, I really do appreciate you coming on the podcast. Yeah, I really appreciate coming on the podcast. I want to get to the sports gate closing five. You said you've been a big sports fan for your life. Do you remember the first sports event you ever attended?

Andrew Mikhail (36:10.739)
Yeah, absolutely.

Andrew Mikhail (36:23.423)
I remember spending a lot of time at the Hill on Leichhardt Overwood (Leichhardt Oval) as a kid. I probably can't remember a lot of the games. The game that actually stands out to me most is my mum and dad were big Penrith Panthers fans. So I remember going to the 1990 Preliminary Final against North Sydney, which Penrith won. was probably eight years old, I think it was. So that was probably the game that stands out the most. I remember the next week they were in the grand final and

We went to Panthers to watch the game and they lost that game that year. the next year when they made the grand final again, Mum and Dad were like, no, we're not going to Panthers. They lost last year when we went there. But at full time when they won, we jumped in the car and being there when they all came off the bus and held up the trophy. And while I wasn't a Panthers fan, was really, really cool, really cool to be part of.

Sean Callanan (37:17.394)
Awesome. Do you have a favorite food memory or a go-to food at a sports event?

Andrew Mikhail (37:23.657)
Yeah, I've got a food memory. We were a big, as I touched on before, big soccer family, a big rugby league family. We were pretty invested in the NSL when that was the competition. in my younger days, and I remember watching Marconi play a lot out at Fairfield. And there was this gelato van that had rum and raisin, authentic Italian gelato. And every time we'd go to Marconi, would…

I would run to the gelato van and get my couple of scoops of rum and raisin. And every time to this day, I've walked past the gelato shop. It's the first thing that comes to mind. And if I sneak a scoop or two in, it's more often than not a rum and raisin.

Sean Callanan (38:04.373)
Terrific, terrific. What's the first app you open in the morning?

Andrew Mikhail (38:10.195)
Yeah, probably, probably depends on on how things are tracking in the season. I think if we're if we're in the news as a club, it's probably the Telegraph and the Herald getting a bit of an update in terms of what's what's trending, what's tracking and then often jump over to either Power BI or Shopify just to see how we're performing commercially. If it's pretty quiet in the papers, I'll generally jump on Power BI and Shopify just to see how things went in the evening and then get my get my footy news after that. So

It's probably a combination of those four, Power BI, Daily Telegraph and the Herald, but the order is normally predicated on what's happening in the news cycle.

Sean Callanan (38:51.401)
Yeah. Is there someone that you follow, it might be for inspiration or news and the like, that the podcast listeners should give a follow to?

Andrew Mikhail (39:01.683)
Yeah, probably. I'm a big fan of Tim Ferriss. Not sure if people listen to him or read some of his books like Tools of Titans. He gets a real great cross section of people on his podcast and very rarely do you get to the end of a podcast and there aren't a few tips in there that you can implement in your everyday life. Michael Gervais is another one. He's a sports performance psychologist who most weeks when NFSA comes out of…

of his podcast, Finding Mastery, I'll generally go out with that on in the drive, so drive to Kellyville.

Sean Callanan (39:34.995)
Okay, we'll check that out. Lastly, I always ask people what social media platform is your MVP? And you can answer that both from a personal point of view and potentially what's the one that is performing the best for the Eels.

Andrew Mikhail (39:50.047)
Yeah, from an EELS performance perspective, we're probably seeing the most amount of growth year on year with TikTok at the moment. It's been a real focus for us as a platform. I probably spend a bit more time on Instagram in assessing sort of how we're tracking from a social and content perspective and keeping up to date with what some of the other clubs are doing. But TikTok's probably where we're seeing the most growth. Instagram is probably where I'll do most of my stalking.

And LinkedIn is probably the platform that I do most of the engaging.

Sean Callanan (40:20.725)
Yeah, terrific. Thank you very much for coming on the podcast, Andrew. If I always suggest that people who listen to the podcast reach out and say thank you. If they were to do that, what's the best way for them to reach out to you?

Andrew Mikhail (40:33.704)
I generally jumped on LinkedIn at least once or twice a day, so that's probably the best platform to touch base. Happy to take any questions and connect with anyone.

Sean Callanan (40:42.537)
Well, thank you very much for coming on. I really appreciate it and all the best for the EELS in 2025.

Andrew Mikhail (40:49.91)
Thanks, Sean. Cheers.