Everton’s chief marketing and digital officer Andy Duckmanton joined BBC Radio Merseyside to discuss how a variety of events hosted over the summer at Hill Dickinson are funding transfers for the Toffees.
“We wanted to build a world-class venue and with a world-class venue comes the ability to programme it for 365 days of the year,” he explained.
“What we do in the summer is secondary to what we do on the football pitch but there is a huge importance as to how we programme events. We’re really pleased with the line-up that we have got this summer. When we look at what we have been able to put into the stadium both from a sport and an event point of view, everyone is really proud of it.”
On England’s Lionesses playing at Hill Dickinson Stadium, on Tuesday, 9 June Duckmanton said: “There is a commitment from the FA to bring the national teams outside of London. The Lionesses look to play 50% of their games away from Wembley, they have played at the Etihad and the City Ground recently so it was a very open conversation.
“With the commitment and the investment that we have made into Everton Women and the move to Goodison Park and the success that we have had, when we discussed around bringing a fixture here, we both pinpointed the Ukraine game. We wanted to make it a statement, we wanted a qualifier, the last qualifier for the Lionesses before they head to the tournament [World Cup in Brazil next year].
“It was actually a really nice marriage between the FA and the stadium to bring this game here. We’re all really excited about it, we know the players are excited about it. We’ve got over 100 ex-Everton and England national players attending the game. The actual spectacle we’re going to put together for the stadium, for the FA and for women’s football is something really special.”
Duckmanton also spoke about hosting England World Cup watch parties at Hill Dickinson: “It’s a massive summer for international football, the World Cup is the biggest event that we all look forward to and when we looked at what we could do, we’ve got amazing spaces and amazing bars. We know people like to congregate and that the World Cup is a social activity.
“The timings are quite unique this year with it being in the US in the evenings. We thought the best thing to do would be to open a space and let people have a good time and experience it together.
“We hope that we will have 400 plus Evertonians each night watching [England number one] Jordan [Pickford]. We’ve got three watch parties booked in but we have all the plans to go all the way to the final should England get there so we are hoping that that is the case.”
With so many different events being hosted at the new stadium, there could be concern that Everton are in danger of losing their identity and the challenges of ensuring it remains their home: “It’s always the balance. We are learning in every event that we have done, how to incorporate Everton, the club and the values that we want into these events. The promoters or the rightsholders and federations who are coming here embrace what Everton is.
“The rugby league teams came up here and you will see the content that they put out celebrated the badge and the crest and how important it was to be playing at Everton’s stadium, not just Hill Dickinson as a venue. The same team and the same people who operate our matchdays are working to operate our event days so you know that the same themes, values and consistency that Everton has and the staff has are coming through into the event.
“We don’t want to lose our identity by being a venue for hire, that’s not what we are. We are Everton Football Club sharing our stadium and sharing what the city of Liverpool is with the rest of the world.”
Finally, Duckmanton spoke about whether any of the revenue generated by these events goes directly into buying new players: “It sure does. We are now governed by stringent rules in terms of SER [Sustainability and Systemic Resilience] and what we can spend on players based on the revenue that we can bring in so the job of me and the team is to support what the playing staff do.
“That means by bringing in third party events, any advantage that we can deliver by programming the stadium and by bringing in new events and new revenue lines, it’s all recognised so we can have a competitive advantage against clubs in our set by being able to programme our stadium. West Ham, Tottenham, Arsenal, they have all been able to increase their revenues by adding non-football events and that was always the plan for this. World class stadium, world class events which bring in world class revenues.”
Hear the full interview with Duckmanton on BBC Sounds
