On a beautifully sunny Autumn Saturday I decided on a whim, after hearing a pre event radio interview to go to the Saracens v Northampton Saints Premiership rugby game at Wembley Stadium, the first club match to be played at Wembley in the modern era. £10 tickets for adults and £5 for kids was too good a bargain to ignore, and getting there was easy on the Chiltern Line.
With number 2 daughter interested neither in a a day out with Dad or the rugby but the pre match entertainment supplied by Britain's Got Talent winners Diversity, off we set.
The daytrip got even better when we met a friend from Beaconsfield Rugby Club who had extra tickets in The Club Wembley seats.
Leave aside the dull first half when two defences cancelled each other out,and this was a fantastic experience for which Nigel Wray, Chairman of Saracens must be congratulated. The club took a serious financial risk, £300k-400k in venue rental, depending on who you believe, and got the result they wanted with a crowd in excess of 44,000. They probably still made a loss but they made a huge statement of intent about the building of the Saracens brand as the London Tribe.
Apart from excellent weather , several factors contributed to a great experience; 44,000 people makes Wembley a great venue, not to busy and everything works so much better, queuing for access, trains, food and beverage, merchandising programme sales, betting etc.
Saracens created a crowd friendly,kid friendly example of experiential marketing where thousands of people of all ages sampled Wembley for the first time and many will have samples a Sarries home game for the first time.Excellent family entertainment with bands, dancers, and 100 kids on pitch side at half time.
The proof will of course be the numbers who become loyal or occasional paying cuatomers at Vicarage Road, on this experience they deserve to succeed.
Congratulations of thinking outside the box, Wasps, Irish and Quins will need to be careful they don't get left behind by the Saracens marketing campaign.
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