Diversification, innovation and fan support key to Melbourne United's off-season success

COVID-19 has affected virtually every business in Australia, but Melbourne United has continued to adapt throughout the pandemic.

According to Chief Commercial Officer David Moore, for several years now the club has been moving away from focusing solely on revenue from home games. Instead choosing to look toward various other aspects to ensure the organisation continues to thrive.

“COVID-19 has forced a lot of businesses to reassess and evaluate their own processes,” Moore told Melbourne United Media.

“In the last couple of months, we have really been focusing on how we can diversify our operations and be as broad-reaching and innovative as possible.”

“One thing the pandemic has reinforced for us, is building your whole business around a home and away season is pretty limiting as far as how many events you can run. We have always understood this, but we have doubled down in our commitment to diversification.”

Moore outlined three areas where the club has looked to develop amid the current pandemic. Focusing the club’s efforts within three key sectors; education, business to business and the club’s charitable arm.

“There’s been three aspects of the business we have really tried to innovate during this year,” he said.

“The first is we have broadened our partnership with SEDA and launched a diploma in sport and business program. Here we’ll really be able to step into the education space and provide real-life placement opportunities for students so they can get experience while learning the ins and outs (of business and sport).”

“We’ve also had to re-imagine how our United in Business program runs given, at its core, it involves a lot of face to face networking. We were able to take aspects of that experience digital, by running virtual sessions and building an online hub for members to access content and information.”

“We think we’re going to come out of this with a much stronger and much more modern United in Business proposition.”

“The third one which we’re really proud of is that we’re structuring our efforts in the charitable space. We’re essentially rebuilding our community programs around feedback and where we think it’s important for us to play a role (with various charities).”

Despite this push for diversification there is no doubting what makes Melbourne United tick, and that is the fans. The support of the fans has been crucial during the uncertainty of recent months, with Moore stressing just how impressed he is with the resilience of the club’s members throughout the pandemic.

As Melbourne continues to come out of lockdown, Moore said he’s looking forward to seeing both members and fans back at games after a long off-season.

“We were unbelievably impressed and appreciative of the fans support,” he said.

“We had a significant number of members who signed on through June, July and August where in Melbourne it was an incredibly uncertain time.”

“Now that Melbourne is starting to come alive again, we welcome everyone else.”

“It’s never been clearer that it’s the fans and members that keep sporting clubs alive.”

Melbourne United continues to encourage fans to become sign up as a member for the 2021 NBL season.