An enhanced match day experience was at the core of a summit held between the AFL, 18 clubs, ticket agencies and stadium operators at Etihad Stadium on Monday.
The two-day summit will see the stakeholders work through key issues on how to ensure the match day experience is improved for fans in the 2015 season.
Essendon Chief Marketing Officer Justin Rodski said the collaborative approach to the issues facing the industry were very productive.
“It is important that the industry is working together to provide our fans with the best possible match day experience" Rodski said.
"We have the best game in the world but if we don't maintain affordability, improve accessibility and provide a greater experience, it is going to be very difficult to maximise attendances at our games.
“Ultimately it is about engaging with our fans to build a stronger brand identity at Essendon home games. It's about providing entertainment value for all of our members and supporters when they attend the footy.
We also need to cater for everyone and that includes a better customer experience at all of our games throughout the season and better customer service at every touch point with the club."
“Our promise to our fans is to make them proud to be Essendon and a big part of that is going to be our game day ritual.
"We have the best supporters in the country and we look forward to unveiling a number of exciting plans over the summer months."
A number of intaitves were raised in regards to improving the experience for families in particular surrounding the traditional Saturday and Sunday afternoon time slots.
“We have a lot more afternoon games next season and aim to make those games really family friendly with lots of kids activities and pre-match entertainment so that families, kids and supporters travelling from rural areas can come to the football early and make a full day of it,” Rodski said.
“Kick to kick on the ground after the game is something we are keenly pushing with both the MCG and Etihad Stadium.
“There are a lot of really fan friendly initiatives being discussed and I think now with everybody working together we are going to see a much better outcome for the fans next season.”
The club has also requested to play a number of VFL curtain raisers ahead of their AFL fixtures in 2015.
“We have put in an application to the AFL to hold a couple of VFL curtain raisers at our games,” Rodski said.
“The VFL fixture, AFL fixture and venues all need to align for the curtain raisers to be able to happen and the way that it could work is between two AFL sides with a stand alone VFL team.”
“As an example we have put in a request to play Geelong ahead of our Saturday night Geelong game at Etihad Stadium.”
