Behind the Canberra Raiders’ high-performance partnership with Huawei
While some sponsors are content merely to have their logo plastered across team jerseys, Chinese telecoms giant Huawei has been forging a high-tech partnership with the Canberra Raiders. Mumbrella’s Alex Hayes reveals how the tie-up is working.
On the face of it, a sprawling and slightly rundown prefab building in the quiet Canberra suburb of Bruce seems an unlikely place for any marketer to look for lessons in data and partnerships.
But it soon becomes apparent the home of the Canberra Raiders has been slowly transformed into a high-tech, high performance centre, where player and fan data is harnessed and sponsor partnerships leveraged to create an environment which has seen the perennial also-rans turned into NRL heavyweights.
“On any given day, anyone in this league could beat anyone, and it’s those small innovations that give you the advantage,” says Jason Mathie, commercial and marketing manager for the Raiders.
“To remain successful you’ve got to stay ahead of the game. It’s a simple game, 26 blokes on a field. They’re all trained the same, they’re all built fairly similarly, they’re all analysed to the nth degree during the course of the week.
