Sydney FC is one of the A-League’s foundation clubs. Throughout the league’s short history, the club has achieved material success in the form of trophies and competing at FIFA’s Club World Cup.

Other than that, there’s not much to write home about.

Throughout its existence the club has appeared to be more basket-case than professional. It’s frustrating to see this as personally, I feel that Sydney FC should be the biggest club in the league and run in a fashion that inspires envy and jealousy from others. Unfortunately I, like most, realise that this is nowhere near the case.

Let me first start by saying that I am a fan. I don’t sit here pretending to be an expert on how to run a club or business. But I’d like to think that I have some good ideas that the club can use, aspects that they’re not seeing and so forth.

Once upon a time I wrote something about what a club meant to me. I don’t think much has changed since then and I thought at some point I’d be writing something similar again. But a task of this magnitude isn’t easy.

Joey Crews is a fellow FTSAL blogger and avid Sydney FC fan who is dismayed with the way the club is run. He has an obvious passion for the club and while results annoy him like they do for us all, his concerns go beyond mere results, into the long-term legacy the club is failing to build.

Joey came up with a two-part system that would highlight where Sydney FC is falling short, and outline how the club can start to address the issues it has created. His idea involves how he would revitalise the club in terms of identity, culture, fans and perception. I share the same opinions in my own way as I believe many fans do. So we hatched out a plan to write an article on how we think the club can bounce back from this perception of being perceived as a basket-case with no identity.

We’ve also asked another FTSAL blogger, Chris Gouw to get involved. He’s also a dedicated Sydney FC with ideas of his own.

The point is to get fans talking. I stress the fact that the three of us are by no means experts in running a sporting or business organisation and we absolutely realise the scope of what Tony Pignata and his men are trying to do and the difficulties of doing so. But that doesn’t mean our patience is inexhaustible. We are passionate fans with ideas and it’s always good to discuss ideas, especially when so few are coming out of the club itself. The fact is we think the club is selling itself short as well its fans and we think there’s no better way than to pen a few ideas and put it out there for fans to discuss.

To achieve what we want out of this special piece, we have made sure to agree that the spine of our pieces will be the same but obviously as you read through each one, our opinions will vary. That’s the beauty of discussion.

In this special edition of The Grand Stand, it goes multi-author for the first time in its history. Due to enormity of this piece, it will be split over 2 weeks and in two parts. Part one will address club identity, focus and how it’s not the right approach, while part 2 will focus on building fan liaison, harnessing supporter ideas and creating a club and squad philosophy in order to, finally, build a real identity for Sydney FC.

(Ed’s note – we don’t necessarily agree with their views either. But FTSAL is fans for fans and we support freedom of speech. Everyone is entitled to an opinion.)

Part 1 Today: Joey Crews’ article, Wednesday: Boris Gligorevic’s article, Thursday: Chris Gouw’s article

Part 2 Coming next week!

Introduction

Firstly I’d like to congratulate the club on its recent record-breaking four consecutive wins. No matter which way you look at it, 12 points from a possible 12 is a great result, one which the players and club should be commended for.

However, this article addresses the underlying issues which lie beneath the veneer of these results. If the club’s winning streak ends (which it now has), the pervasive pessimism and cynicism will return as though it never left, because a lot of supporters outside of The Cove have nothing else besides results to connect them with the club; this isn’t a shot at The Cove, this is directed at Sydney FC themselves.

I’ve had this article idea in my head for the last few months, but it wasn’t until I let Boris and Chris in on it that I thought it had a chance of being received positively. Their enthusiasm to discuss real, meaningful change helped make this possible, so I’d like to extend my thanks to Boris and Chris for their contributions!

We’ve discussed this topic over the last few weeks and, while we each have our own ideas on how the club should change, we’ve agreed on a few key points. In the end, we are fans (despite how brutal our critique may be!). Our opinions are just that, opinions. We’re not experts. We would rather nobody agrees with this article and have it lead to productive discussions and meaningful change, rather than everyone agree with us yet nothing happen.

Summary

Part 1 of this article will seek to address what we believe, as Sydney FC fans, to be the core issue at Sydney FC: besides The Cove, the club has no core identity or experience, resulting in a failure to engage with current & prospective fans. The end result is the pigeon-holing of Sydney FC as a purely results-based club, a stance which doesn’t work long-term in a squad size-restricted, salary-capped league.

Part 2, next week, will look at ways to rectify this in the short, medium and long term.

Part 1: Where it’s all gone wrong

Who are Sydney FC?

I have been thinking about this for years, as have many other Sydney FC fans, even those who have invested far more into the club, such as members of The Cove. My FTSAL colleague Boris has written about this very topic already, even managing to have a discussion with Sydney FC CEO Tony Pignata in a follow-up article.

“Tony and I had a great discussion. He sees my point of view. He understands the size of the task he has at hand. I think he appreciates what I wrote and understands that underneath it all, I want to have that connection with the club.

Tony’s got a tough job turning Sydney around. Can’t say I envy him. I can only imagine the changes he needs to make and the things and people he needs to bring in to get Sydney back on top. It won’t be easy and he may not make the right decisions all the time. But I admire him for his willingness to take on the job.”

It’s been eleven months since this article was written and arguably, nothing has changed in this time.

When compared side-by-side with their counterparts, the Western Sydney Wanderers, Sydney FC struggle to emotionally interact with their supporters, and seem to lack a plan to engage with fans on a long-term basis. If there is one, nobody’s coming forward to say what it is and nothing I’ve seen in terms of marketing collateral or club message indicates that there’s any kind of meaningful co-ordinated effort.

I will attempt to prove Sydney FC doesn’t have any meaningful ties to the city of Sydney, and struggles to entice, engage or retain fans by:

-          Carelessly destroying their only real identity, Bling FC, and failing to replace it

-          Incorrectly approaching the way they advertise the club to potential & existing supporters

-          Having colours and crests which do nothing to tie the club into the city’s history or people

What is identity?

Before we go any further, we should firstly define identity in the context of a sports club.

In my opinion, I believe it’s the way a club broadcasts its relationship with the area it represents, the history of that area, the people who live there, how the club engages with those people, what the fans want from the club, and a system of on-field performance consistent with this relationship. It lets a club build a narrative, which helps shape the club’s history.

This narrative is crucial because it’s what sustains a club through the bad times, as supporters will stick around because of what Sydney FC represents. Without it, the club can only attract supporters with its results or players. If those results or player performances suffer, fans have no other reason to come back.

In short, an identity allows fans to complete this sentence “I’ll stick by them because …”

Most importantly, an identity helps football fans – some of the most passionate in the world – be part of an experience which rises above the mere game itself. Rudi A. Meir wrote in Tribalism, team brand loyalty, team brand value and personal / group identity in professional Rugby football that the creation of such an experience is crucial to any sporting organisation.

Richelieu and Boulaire (2005) consider creating value for consumers as one of the challenges of the post-modern era. They state that sport fans want lived experiences that are memorable and that they can co-produce, that develop social links and that transcend the product itself.

To this end sport marketers are constantly on the lookout for strategies that work to create loyalty among fans (Raymond 2001). According to Rein (2006) and co-authors sport organisations “…all have one goal – get fans’ attention; entice them to attend, watch, and buy; and encourage them to do it again with more intensity” (p. 4-5). Yet some sport managers appear to have a limited understanding of who their fans are and their expectations with result being that many fans appear to be dissatisfied. Consequently, the identity and positioning of the team, as well as the marketing activities initiated by some sport marketers, does little to help the team connect emotionally with its fans and leverage the brand equity of the team within its community (Richelieu & Pons 2005).

Sydney FC’s Report Card

Building an experience

In the absence of a significant experience generated by the club, The Cove has created one of their own by developing social links through camaraderie, as well as singing chants and songs. The problem is this experience can only go as far as The Cove itself; in the side bays at Allianz Stadium (I’m in Bay 35, right on half-way) this experience has historically been observed, rather than participated in.

As active supporters, The Cove are looked to as leaders by the other spectators, which the club should be looking at harnessing – the easiest and cheapest way to build an experience is to help others do it for you! While I’ve seen The Cove trying to engage the side bays with their call/response, I’m unsure what the club is doing to assist The Cove in bringing the side bays into the action in a stadium like Allianz.

Goal of sports organisations

Let’s re-visit my first quote from Meir:

“… get fans’ attention; entice them to attend, watch, and buy; and encourage them to do it again with more intensity”’

I feel that the last point, the repetition with increased intensity, is where Sydney FC is falling down. While they’ve been good at generating interest – and ticket sales – by signing players like Alessandro Del Piero, the revolving door of staff and players combined with the lack of an engagement plan off the pitch destroys the ability for budding fans to latch on to something at the club to not only make them come back, but invest more energy – and money!

Building a relationship

I feel Sydney FC has never made a serious attempt to build a relationship with its supporter base. Rather it utilises its supposed links to the city – ‘We are Sydney’ – as well as leveraging the high-profile players it signs in order to generate attention, none of which could constitute a ‘relationship-driven marketing approach’. In fairness, ‘We are Sydney’ would work, if anything about the club’s image was related to Sydney (which I’ll discuss later).

It’s not like it can’t be done; players like Del Piero and Pascal Bosschaart have built their own relationships with supporters, especially The Cove.

 However I don’t feel this has been met by an equal attempt from the club itself to engage in a similar way. We are instead barraged with image after image of players, and promotions focused on features and costs instead of benefits.

In truth, I feel like Sydney FC is treating me like an advertising target instead of someone it wants to satisfy as a fan.

Sydney FC’s Identity

The demise of Bling FC

In 2009, around the time of Bling FC’s downfall, Ian Collinson wrote in the Transforming Cultures eJournal about Sydney FC at length, focusing on fan identity. The problem Sydney FC was always going to have from the beginning was harnessing the disillusioned NSL fanbases, as the creation of the club represented a break with traditional allegiances:

“With the exception of the fans of Perth Glory and Adelaide United, all football supporters who wished to follow elite club soccer had to adopt a new franchise; fans have had to re-draw what Lawrence Grossberg has famously called their ‘mattering maps’ and conjure new collective imaginaries in response to the changes in the political economy of football.”

Mattering maps are an interesting concept. George Loewenstein and Karl Moene provide a good summary:

A mattering map is thus a “projection” … of how different things are valued in different social settings. It highlights the fact that different social groups value different things, and, because people are inherently social and naturally adopt the attitude toward themselves that others adopt toward them, what people value in themselves, and their feelings of personal worth, often undergo radical changes when they shift from one social context to another.

In short, people are different depending on how they are viewed, and how they view you, so do not approach everyone in the same manner. While this sounds obvious, it’s a concept which is grounded in philosophy, something that Sydney FC has also struggled to utilise.

When the club disposed of the Bling FC identity, it was because they fell into the trap of trying to be the same thing for everyone. They allocated the same beliefs, values and desires to all residents of Sydney – everyone had the same ‘mattering map’ – which in such a multicultural city is a huge fallacy. By blindly painting everyone with the same brush, it ruled itself out of the running to try and capture the West, and to this day struggles to keep existing fans connected with the club.

In 2009, Sebastian Hassett wrote about Sydney FC seeking to abandon Bling FC in an effort to expand their influence across the Sydney area.

SYDNEY FC are determined to lose the “Bling FC” image and get back to their roots. Roots, some may say, that never truly existed until now.

Hassett identified why shedding this identity could prove troublesome if not handled correctly, especially with the inevitable arrival of a Western Sydney team and an expanding Central Coast Mariners.

Given that a new western Sydney team is due to be added to the competition in time for the 2010-11 season, and the Central Coast Mariners are actively hunting supporters from the North Shore, some may be cynical about Sydney FC’s sudden urge to be seen with the rank and file.

After all, sausage sizzles, grassy spectator mounds, patchy fields and midweek matches don’t fit well with the notion of Sydney’s self-appointed status as the glamour club, created in 2004 and kept alive by a string of glitzy signings and gala nights.

Sydney FC’s approach to abandoning its tag was purely made up of superficial changes – their existing kit was ‘deliberately made “plain”’ – and corporate speak. Its CEO at the time, Stefan Kamasz, associated Bling FC with a lack of depth, while also claiming the identity was created out of desperation.

“I associate the term bling with superficial, glitzy and no substance. We’re better than that. We’re a quality club who’s putting a lot of time, effort and money into making people understand we’re here for the long run and to establish links with the community.

“At first, there was a desire to establish a brand as quickly as possible and the involvement of Dwight Yorke and the use of the term Bling FC probably did the job at the time, but we’re not glitzy any more. I’m not saying what they did initially was wrong but the new shareholders believe it’s not appropriate for where we want to go.”

He then suggested that his main goal was to grow the consumer base at the expense of any new Sydney team.

“There’s also going to be a second team in Sydney down the track and we want to claim as much territory as possible before they arrive.”

In one conversation, the only identity the club portrayed was casually disposed of, in favour of a Sydney FC that wanted to appeal to everyone in a cynical attempt to bring in more fans so as to stifle the introduction of a new Sydney team.

What’s even more telling was Stefan’s alternative to Bling FC:

“We don’t want them to think of Bling FC but as a team associated with quality, aspiration and as a club that represents everybody, whether you’re talking about the bloke in the local pub or the senior business person.”

Quality, aspiration and a desire to represent everybody; these are not an identity in themselves, they are corporate objectives. They are qualities which you would want an identity to incorporate, but they’re not an identity by themselves. In essence, Sydney FC didn’t want people to associate with its identity, just its objectives.

Present day

I believe not much has changed since 2009. Sydney FC has tried to get out into the community, but it’s not obvious whether those efforts have spread any kind of message besides ‘our players spend time in the community’. Sydney FC has never had trouble signing quality players on paper, but this has not been followed up with a quality football system to extract the best out of them, especially when it comes time to promote its otherwise-successful NYL team to the senior team. It has aspirations – it talks about making the finals – but as a fan, I don’t feel like I am part of the journey with the players to realise them. Instead, I am merely a spectator to a football club’s attempts to win games.

While The Cove has performed admirably since they formed, I don’t believe they’ve been nearly as effective as they – and the passive spectators – would have wished for. When the struggle to unite the remnants of NSL supporter groups under the Sydney FC banner was combined with the Sydney FC’s underwhelming approach to identity, The Cove were left with nothing to work off. They’ve created their own identity but it’s independent of the club’s efforts, so the overall message is schizophrenic.

Ultimately, every time I turn up at Allianz to watch the team, I feel like I’m merely watching a team try to win so it can celebrate its own success.  I don’t feel like those players are an extension of me, which is what identity comes down to. I don’t feel that Sydney FC represents anybody; blokes in pubs, senior business people, or even football fans. Instead, Sydney FC represents itself as a corporate entity, nothing more.

“Join Sydney FC, because Sydney FC”, to put it simply.

‘We are Sydney’ – Dissecting Sydney FC’s image to highlight lack of identity

‘We are Sydney’.

What does this mean?

The club uses this in order to play off its name and location, however there are tinges of cynicism in this approach; barely anything about the club relates to the city of Sydney, yet it wants to broadcast that it represents all of Sydney in an attempt to hoover up a broader fan base. What’s more, the way the club performs does not accurately reflect the people of Sydney; a progressive, loud, exciting city full of people who are used to being the best.

‘We are in Sydney’ would be more appropriate.

Let’s examine this in more detail.

Club Message

Since 2009, there have been multiple articles about Sydney FC needing an identity. The cries for change have gone unheeded as the club’s messaging in the years since has not altered very much. A multitude of coaches, owners and CEOs have come and gone, but the overall message has not changed.

To quote Stefan Kamasz again:

“I’m not saying what they did initially was wrong but the new shareholders believe it’s not appropriate for where we want to go.“

Even though this statement was made nearly five years ago, I don’t believe it to be any less relevant. It makes me believe Sydney FC’s image and identity is treated by those who create and market it like a science project a parent makes for their child. The parent has spent a lot of time on it, and it doesn’t want their child (the fans) stuffing it up by getting involved. So the parent makes the child stand in the corner and watch as the parent enjoys playing with its toy, while the child sits there wondering why it doesn’t just walk away.

Marketing

The marketing Sydney FC has used in recent years is heavily player-centric; almost all pieces of Sydney FC collateral focus on the players in the team, especially since the arrival of Del Piero. While Sydney have signed some great players over the years and is right to market them, they cannot be the only promoted face of the club.

As I’m writing this I’m leafing through the Sydney FC 2013/14 Membership Brochure sent out in a letterbox drop campaign during the off-season (funnily enough, it was originally given to me by my Moorebank-dwelling WSW friend). There are no fans anywhere in the brochure but plenty of shots of posing players all throughout.

Why are there no images of fans on collateral aimed at fans? It’s not like Sydney FC fans get to hang out with the players in the stands every week. Why wouldn’t you try to harness the energy the fans bring to the stands in order, because that’s the real experience that fans are a part of each week!

When you look at advertising from brands like Samsung and Apple, there are lots of product shots, but also a lot of shots of the people using them. The use of players to try and entice new & existing members is fine in moderation, but the complete omission of any fan imagery is typical of what I’m talking about; the experience is being completely ignored for the product.

Making players the focal point of marketing sends a clear message “We are about the players we own, not the city we’re in, the history we represent or the fans that support us.”

But the most telling way to see how those at Sydney FC see the club is in the About Us section on their official website. While I loathe these cookie-cutter websites, the clubs are at least given a space in which to sell themselves to prospective fans, so they need to project the best image possible.

Let’s compare Sydney FC to the Western Sydney Wanderers (extracts).

Sydney FC

Sydney FC was established in 2004 and is known as ‘Football’s Capital’ due to the fact that Sydney boasts the greatest number of football participants than any other city in Australia. The Sky Blues are one of the most successful clubs in the brief history of the Hyundai A-League, participating I         n five of the seven A-League finals series, being crowned Champions twice and Premiers on one occasion.

Sydney FC’s first taste of success came before the start of the Hyundai A-League when it won the 2005 Australian Championship and went on to be crowned Champions of Oceania, gaining a place in the 2005 Club World Championships in Japan where it finished 5th.

Western Sydney Wanderers

The constitution of the club will preserve its founding principles of “for the people of western Sydney, by the people of western Sydney”.

The official club logo incorporates the key elements of the Western Sydney landscape; the mountains, valleys and winding river system that runs throughout the region.

The badge captures the unity and intertwined multicultural community that the Wanderers will represent.

Dubbed as “Australia’s newest, oldest club” in deference to the long history of football in the region, the Western Sydney Wanderers FC have, through their name, a linkage to the first ever game of football played in New South Wales on 14 August 1880 between the King’s School and the Wanderers in North Parramatta.”

The difference couldn’t be starker. If I was an A-League newcomer trying to pick a club to support, I would look at these and think ‘one has a history and ties in with its local area, which it proudly boasts. The other just seems to play football in the middle of Sydney. I don’t think they’d notice if we didn’t turn up’.

Crest & Colours

Sydney FC’s message in terms of its colours, crest and kit has never been consistent with its name.

It’s pretty simple, really. Sydney FC. Sydney Football Club. One would assume that means it’s a football club which claims to represent the city of Sydney, its history and its identity.

However, it’s never done this even a most basic visual level.

From Wikipedia:

The primary club colour of Sydney FC is sky blue, which represents the state colour of New South Wales. The secondary club colour is navy blue, with additional contrasting colours of orange and white.

The Sydney FC badge was created and used since the clubs founding in 2004. It features a football set centrally in a stylised crest shape. Above the ball is the shape of three shells of the Sydney Opera House, an internationally recognisable symbol of the city of Sydney. Below the ball is the Commonwealth Star, a seven-pointed star symbolising the Federation of Australia.

Colours

Going off the colours alone, Sydney FC wants to be ‘NSW FC’. Sydney FC doesn’t – more importantly, shouldn’t – represent NSW. While Sydney is the biggest city in NSW, that doesn’t mean the club needs to adopt its colours, especially as it’s not the only A-League club in NSW.

To use other sports as a comparison, The NSW Waratahs don’t claim to represent Sydney, neither do the NSW Blues in the NRL State of Origin. They are appropriately named & coloured to reflect who they represent. So why should Sydney FC have colours which are more closely associated with NSW than the city it claims to represent?

The only colour which is actually relevant is the use of orange. I wasn’t able to find any websites to explain why orange is a part of Sydney FC’s colours, but I’m going to come up with my own reason:  Sydney’s official flower.

“Officially adopted in 1992 as part of the City’s 150 year anniversary celebrations, the Banksia ericifolia serves as a symbol of Australia’s oldest city.”

Crest Imagery

The images used in the crest itself do contain references to football and Sydney. However, I disagree that the Opera House is a good focal point to tie into Sydney’s history. Again it’s about representing Sydney, a city with a rich maritime and indigenous history that’s been around well before the Opera House. The Opera House is a relative newcomer to Sydney’s history; it’s the same as using an image of the Sydney Light Rail or ANZ Stadium.

I can’t decide if the football is redundant; everyone knows Sydney FC is a football club, but having symbols of the sport itself is not a bad idea.

What I can say with confidence is that it’s wasting huge amounts of useful space due to its size. All it is doing is emphasising the football aspect of the club instead of the ‘Sydney’ aspect, e.g. the Opera House. Any sporting club should always look to emphasise its identity, created by collaboration between club and fans (which Sydney FC doesn’t have) or the identity of the area it represents, rather than the sport it plays.

Look at the logos of high-profile clubs like Manchester United, Real Madrid, PSV Eindhoven. Besides Manchester United – whose use of footballs is merely dressing – the other clubs don’t even use footballs in their logo.

As for the Commonwealth star, you can take it or leave it. On the one hand it ties the club into Australia, a member of the Commonwealth, but I don’t think a majority of fans really care one way or another.

Team Performance

The team has no identity outside of its players, that is, it isn’t known for any kind of structure or style of play. For years, the plethora of new coaches have talked about bringing a certain style of play to Sydney, however in the end, every system we’ve used has either fallen to pieces, or produced dour football not befitting the people of Sydney.

The arrival of Alessandro Del Piero exacerbated this, by reducing Sydney FC to a system which overwhelmingly relies on the playmaker. There are glimpses of signs this season that we’re moving away from that. However I believe that, overwhelmingly, Sydney FC’s team performances have been haphazard and reactionary.

When you talk about teams like Barcelona, you talk about tiki-taka. When you talk about the Wanderers, you talk about their counter-attacks and wing-based play. When you talk about Sydney FC, you never talk about their style of play, or system, you talk about their players.

This all comes down to a lack of an identity. An identity would tie the club into a certain philosophy, which coaches could use to nail down specific systems. Without it, the club has changed playing styles multiple times, none of which have looked very attractive, with very mixed results.

Conclusion to Part 1: What does this all mean?

The above dives deeply into the nuts and bolts of identity, building an experience, colours/crests and why Sydney FC is struggling in these areas. Some will argue that it’s pedantry at its finest. It is, but for a good reason: you cannot go about making changes to a club – in essence, a brand – without having some damn good evidence to back up your claims.

The above argues that Sydney FC, at its heart, doesn’t identify with its city or its citizens, except with a smidge of orange. It represents the bad side of corporate thinking, a cynical attempt to create an identity which completely misses the point, not to mention its audience. It no more represents the city of Sydney than Perth Glory does, which is a damning indictment for a club claiming to represent our city. This was somewhat excusable in Season 1, when the A-League was thrown together amidst a tumultuous environment, but the club has had nearly 10 years to see the writing on the wall. The arrival of the Wanderers made this issue of identity crucial, and so far nothing’s been done to address it.

Something has to change, because what we have isn’t working. I believe Sydney can create a multi-layered identity which has ties to not only Sydney’s past, but represents what’s great about Sydney right now.

In Part 2, I will touch on how this can be achieved.