Leicestershire Monthly Report - December 2020
Tue 22 Dec 2020
Welcome to my last edition of the CEO updates for 2020.
Firstly, Myself, the Chair, the Board and all the staff at Leicestershire County Cricket Club would like to take this opportunity to wish you a very merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year.
As we know 2020 has been an incredibly challenging year for all of us but, we remain hopeful that we can get back to near normality as soon as possible. I would continue to urge you to follow the guidelines and please stay safe over the winter period.
Since the last report, it has been an incredibly busy month as the pillars of the business drive forwards. For this month’s report, I’ll begin with Cricket.
Firstly it’s great to see the Championship fixtures released. We are in a very challenging group but, are extremely excited about this competition and pitting our wits versus some strong teams. The players have returned to training and I know are fired up for the season ahead. Having watched the players return and undertake the dreaded bleep test, I have to say I was impressed by their fitness and I understand a couple of personal bests were achieved. Furthermore, I am convinced Nat Bowley is a machine as he came out the overall winner of the test (closely followed by Callum Parkinson).
Hopefully, over the past few weeks, you have also seen our players re-sign their contracts and commit their futures to the Running Foxes. There’s no doubt we are in a stronger position than we have been for a number of years with our squad. The squad is young, but are extremely hungry and have a real desire to achieve.
Over the coming weeks, we are also looking into developing our systems/processes behind the scenes too. In particular, ones that can help our players continue to improve and assist us in creating a ‘Leicestershire Way’.
One simple but major change for cricket has been moving offices. When I arrived some six months ago, our cricket team (inc Academy, Operations, Coaching etc) were in different parts of the ground and it was clearly difficult for them to communicate. Consequently, we have recently moved the offices and now the cricket staff are located in the Pavilion. This means there is far better communication between Academy, Operations and Coaches than ever before and I think this gives us a real ‘heart’ at Grace Road.
Our Community Department has been equally busy on a number of activities. Last month we held a couple of meetings with the LCCDO, and the South Asian Action Group. I would state here that there is clear evidence of real desire from everyone in the meetings to develop cricket in our area. It’s great to see such appetite for the game. However, we have so much work to do to build links.
One of the major projects we are involved in is the development of St Oswalds Road Cricket Ground. Last week, I took the opportunity to go up and have a look at the ground in its development stage. Having seen it first hand, this is a great opportunity for a local club to get a new home and really develop this cricket site. As I understand, the site will be ready for recreational use in Summer 2021.
Our Foundation goes from strength-to-strength and having completed the Century a Day challenge, we are now working on our next fundraising event. As always I would urge you to keep your eyes peeled on the website and our social media channels for the latest news and updates.
Finally, our community department remains active - as best as they can during these times - delivering the Chance to Shine Programme to seven schools and recently held a Women’s and Girls Development evening engaging with 15 Clubs.
From a Company perspective, the big change during the month has been the moving offices. This proved to be a bigger challenge than first anticipated but, the staff have embraced the need for us to change how we operate and we are now beginning to see the green shoots of improved ways of working.
I am also pleased to report that we have now appointed a new Admin and Governance Manager, who will join us in the New Year. Jacqui will be responsible for a lot of administration and legal requirements over the coming years. There are a number of requirements we need to meet in terms of ECB guidelines and we can now approach those tasks with confidence and meet the standards that are required of us.
As we know Grace Road is an ageing stadium and it requires updating in many areas. Sadly we don’t have big budgets that mean we can change the ground overnight but through Sandra Clark (Stadium Manager) and her team, we will look to implement some changes that we hope will improve the customer journey. As mentioned we won't be able to make changes overnight but slowly and surely we will look to improve the experience of members, fans, supporters and partners alike when attending matches or events at Grace Road.
Commercially we continue to grow. In simple December has been an excellent month for the Club and we have witnessed some real positives. At the time of writing, we had secured 23 Official Partners for the Club and we welcome many new ones including, Marks Electrical, Waistline and Fresh Start Properties Solutions, as well as 2021 renewals from Made By Cooper, Yorkshire Payments and Marstons Brewery. It is also pleasing to see our players being sponsored and we are now at 41 out of 49 boards sold for the Boundary Club.
Additionally, at the time of writing my report, we had also secured a couple more partners which are due to be announced soon.
During December we also held our first ‘corporate webinar’. The webinar titled 'Brighouse to Barcelona', was delivered by our Official Partner, Fan Experience Company, it gave the ‘virtual attendants’ insight on the importance of customer experiences and engagement, especially during the changing times we now live in. To be honest, it was a real insight and hopefully gave the viewers some good business tips. We are certainly now looking to hold more Official Partner webinars in the future.
Finally onto Cash. December has begun to demonstrate to us the real green shoots of what we are capable of here at Leicestershire County Cricket Club. In the first couple of months of sales, following the close of the season and taking into consideration the pandemic economy, I have been impressed with supporters and businesses who are willing to back us. From a Club Partner and Sponsorship perspective, we are currently 44.6% ahead of our budget. Regarding Membership, we are 18.3% ahead and on Ground Advertising we are 10.1% ahead. I will stress these are very early figures and there is still a lot of work to do, but if we can keep the support coming into the Club, we will definitely be a much stronger team when the new season arrives.
To that effect, I would urge you to continue to spread the message and keep Leicestershire CCC a topic in every household this Christmas.
Thanks for your support and keep backing the Running Foxes.
Sean
