WITH a move to a funky new venue just around the corner, and the team firmly entrenched as a perennial finals contender, it’s hard to wipe the smile from Perth Wildcats chief executive Nick Marvin’s face.
WITH a move to a funky new venue just around the corner, and the team firmly entrenched as a perennial finals contender, it’s hard to wipe the smile from Perth Wildcats chief executive Nick Marvin’s face.
That’s because the Wildcats are currently enjoying a purple patch on and off the court, and are receiving a level of community support not seen since the club’s glory days of the late 1990s.
Mr Marvin said the number of corporate hospitality suites sold over the past season was at its highest in his five-year tenure as general manager, and from a membership point of view the team recorded its greatest-ever growth.
While the team experienced a significant growth in season membership, he said, a large group of walk-ins was attending games at Challenge Stadium on a game-by-game basis.
Attendance at Challenge was at 99 per cent of its 4,500 capacity for the team’s home games over NBL season 2010-11.
Despite the team contesting the NBL finals two years in a row, and winning its record-setting fifth NBL championship, Mr Marvin was hesitant to credit the team’s on-court performances of the past two seasons for the off-court results.
“On-court success does give a spike in interest, but it doesn’t last,” he said.
“It comes down to our work in the community. We believe very strongly, especially at primary school level, that if you give a kid a basketball, a signed team poster and run them through a clinic, you’ve got a fan for life.
“That’s something we used to do in the glory days, back in the 1990s when we were most popular.
“Since then we haven’t done it very well, so we’ve gone back to our roots over the last three years and it’s worked well for us.”
The reason the community programs had been so successful, Mr Marvin said, was because of the Wildcats’ unique approach to recruitment.
The Wildcats was the first team in the NBL to introduce morality clauses into the contracts of players, an initiative floated by Mr Marvin in his first year in charge.
“We think it’s a critical area that we find our future in as a club,” Mr Marvin said.
“We hope that over time we can develop a reputation for being good role models.”
Unfortunately, however, being a good role model and enjoying community support does not always translate into corporate dollars.
Mr Marvin said on the sponsorship side of the ledger, the Wildcats still had work to do to ensure a successful future.
“On the sponsorship side of things, we’re going pretty well, broadly speaking, but the areas that we find we need more support are in household and consumer goods and certainly the mining industry,” he said.
“I don’t know why and for what reason, but we have never been able to get support from the mining industry, which we find quite disappointing.”
Mr Marvin said the NBL’s lack of free-to-air broadcast coverage for much of the past decade could well be to blame for the difficulties in attracting sponsorship.
But with more games expected to end up on free-to-air television, and the team to move into the 12,500-capacity Perth Arena for the 2012-13 season, Mr Marvin said there was good reason to be bullish.
