In this latest industry Interview, Katie McIntyre chats in-depth with Gareth Roberts, commercial director at Warwickshire county Cricket Club (WCCC) about Edgbaston the business, the power of commercial partnerships, keeping ahead of the curve when it comes to the fan experience, and the stadium’s 20-year Master Plan.

Firstly, can you start off by telling us a little about you, your background, general duties at Edgbaston, etc.?
My current role is commercial director at Warwickshire county Cricket Club, where my main responsibilities are the cricket revenue projects, mainly ticketing, membership and commercial partners. We’re now looking at digital opportunities and how we monetise those areas. I am also responsible for three central teams of marketing, communications and the recently – about 12 months ago – set up content team, which is all about driving and ensuring we have powerful, impactful content that people want to read. obviously from a progression point of view, people want constant access to interesting updates messages but want to see the information delivered in a different way, whether digital format, video, etc. The three central teams cover the requirements for other core areas of the business, that is, conference and events hospitality, the Cricket Board and the catering operations.

My background is very much sales, marketing and brand. I spent 22-years at Carlsberg, the brewer. I started in sales, did that for 6 years before moving into customer Marketing, learning specifically how you market to customers. Camiseta Gremio then into brand, and learned how you maximise a brand, its core assets and attributes into the various target audiences, that taught me a lot of how you talk to people; right message, right target audience, right timing, right product. then the last 12 years at Carlsberg, I looked after the main sponsorship partnerships, such as The FA, The RFU, The RFL and their own unique properties such as the England Team, the FA cup and Wembley Stadium, all the way down to grass roots football; the England Rugby team and the Tetley’s Bitter Cup; the Tetley’s super league and the Tetley’s super league Grand final around 2007  I created the platform for the re-launch of Tuborg in the UK, one of Carlsberg’s brands, by negotiating new partnerships with live Nation, for their music properties of the O2 Academy, Wireless, download Festivals, plus moving the Tuborg brand in to Glastonbury, Leeds and reading festivals, and Latitude. In essence, creating a new foundation for Tuborg as the company’s music brand via sponsorship.  

So, to summarise my experience, it’s a lot of varied roles within sales, marketing and brand, with community and media running alongside. I’m now focused very much on the commercial side, and how we drive and secure the core revenues, across all elements of the Edgbaston stadium business.

Can you give us a brief overview as to Edgbaston, the business?
Edgbaston is owned by and is the ‘home ground’ to Warwickshire county Cricket Club (WCCC); we’re a not-for-profit organisation. We have a membership, stakeholder process, so there are no shareholders and no dividends or anything like that to pay out. everything we create in the way of surplus, we are able to reinvest in the facilities at the stadium, the playing side, staff, new technologies and investing in things from a customer/fan point of view; all aiming to develop the business. It’s a good robust business but we know that more we can create in the way of revenue, hopefully the more we can put back into the business and continue to drive it forward

Back in 2011, we completed a GBP£32m upgrade and redevelopment of the stadium that allowed us to build purpose-built media facilities, which we believe now are in the best in cricket. The playing facilities were also upgraded, for which we receive a lot of very, very positive feedback from visiting teams, including international teams such as Australia and governing bodies such as the ICC but what we’ve developed out of that £32m redevelopment is a strong and successful conference and events business, which is now worth around £2.5m per year revenue to the business. We have a joint venture with Compass; the biggest catering company in Europe, known as  Edgbaston Experience Ltd, which works on the conference and events side of the business, managing and running all of our bars, catering, F&B business, etc. Camiseta Selección de fútbol de Japón WCCC owns 55% of that relationship, with Compass having 45%.

In terms of stakeholders, we have a management board, with member representation, and we have a number of very experienced non-executive directors who now it on the board. We have a very strong stakeholder relationship in Birmingham City Council, who we borrowed a significant Camiseta Club Tijuana amount of money from to complete the stadium redevelopment. They are a key stakeholder, key partnernullnull