Cruzados-Universidad Católica Soccer club

Crusados Presentation 1/17/18

            All bulldogs reported to Sarah by 8:15am and were filing onto the bus by about 9am, excited to be received by the Cruzados-Universidad Católica club. We arrived 10 minutes early and took advantage of the time to take a quick peek around before entering into the meeting room. After the fact, Colby Sturgis remarked, "It was nice to be able to stretch our legs and get the blood flowing before the meeting. I think being early really helped me focus and ultimately retain more from the presentation."

After our brief walk the group was led by Valentina, our wonderful guide, into the presentation room.

            Upon arriving into the presentation room we were greeted by Sebastian Soria, the Commercial Manager who can be seen in the picture below. 

He began by explaining a bit of the club's history, some of its most notable players, and showcased some of the club's awards. The club was founded in 1937 and has been constantly improving ever since. Its most successful year to date was 2016 in which it housed the winners of the Campeonato Nacional Apertura, the Supercopa, and the Campeonato Nacional.

            After covering this brief bit of history, Sebastian moved on to discuss who the club is today, their business model, and their plans for the future. When describing the club's values, what stood out to me was the five pillars that Sebastian was clearly passionate about, and that the club sits atop. Those pillars are: passion, commitment, integrity, belief, and fair play. I thought that these values reflected well on the culture at crusados. The good culture of the company is also reflected in several charities that are supported by the club, such as a charity to help breast cancer victims.

            Further, Cruzados is working to improve the safety of their fans at each match. Comparatively, Cruzados is already safer than most according to Sebastian and intends to continue to improve security as a measure to attract more women and children to matches. The club's research found that only 33% of the club's fans are women and it wants to increase that number. Seeking to accomplish the same goal, Crusados has an amateur women's team. Though currently made up of students, one day it could eventually evolve into a professional team if a Chilean league for women is established.

            Moving forward to the business structure of the club, Sebastian explained well the management structure with this graphic,

(I apologize if it is difficult to read in this format but the coherence of their managment was the most important take away from the imimge Beyond management, he explained the four main revenue streams of the club which included commercial, TV rights, matches, and player transfers. The club has plans to expand their stadium's capacity to try and increase revenue from ticket sales. Currently, the two clubs with the most market share of the soccer industry (Crusados ranks third) have stadiums that house over 50,000 people. Crusados is looking to nearly double their current capacity and build a stadium to house 20,000 people. While that may sound underwhelming in comparison, Crusados is shy of filling their stadium on match days now, and so the club is strategically going to build their new stadium to a size that can nearly be filled on match days so as to maintain a good environment for fans at matches. With the new stadium, Crusados intends to add VIP seating as an option at games so as to increase revenues from tickets.

            Truthfully, it would take a novel to cover all the ideas and figures that Sebastian presented to us. However, what stuck out most to me was how focused the club is on innovation and how successfully it has been implementing new strategies. For example, to date the selling of naming rights is not widely done in Chile. Crusados intends to use the sale of naming rights as a main funder of their new stadium which sets it apart from the other clubs in Chile. In fact, Cruzados has managed to capture 10% of the Chilean soccer market in spite of the 2 largest clubs because their being more innovative on the commercial side than they are. As explained by Sebastian, the top two clubs tend to just rely on their existing fan base while Cruzados is constantly trying to expand their clientele and maximize all of their revenue streams. Interestingly, because Cruzados's marketing research found that children are not as interested in soccer as they used to be, Cruzados has proactively reacted to this by starting professional esports teams in FIFA and League of Legends.

            That is not to say that Cruzados has diverted any focus from producing amazing soccer players. Cruzados has an academy which trains players from the age of 8 all the way through professional level players. Arnav Vaid commented on the academy saying, "I was really impressed by the club's stature. Being a soccer fan who follows the Chilean national team, it was fascinating to find out that 7 of the Chilean national league players had cultivated their skills in the club's academy."
           The only question I was left with after the presentation was, how many years will it take for the business to turn out a reliable profit each year? How many years are the owners willing to wait? Because after all of the incredible initiatives shared by Sebastian he admitted towards the end that the club has been in the red for almost all of its history, with only two years ever in the black (nonconsecutive at that). Angie Perrone spoke to this saying, "It was concerning for the longevity of the organization becasue you obviously cannot operate a business in the red consistently." 

            After the presentation Sebastian was kind enough to bring us on a tour of the facilities. Of course the group took plenty of photos so you can come along on the tour as well!

            Saying goodbye to the beautiful complex and our new friend Sebastian was difficult, but we were all hungry and ready to go try out some authentic Chilean food at our next stop!