Matthew Turner

Brumbies Rugby Sponsorship Manager Matthew Turner has been at Brumbies Rugby for almost five years in a number of different roles. Brumby Jack caught up with Matthew to ask him about his role as Sponsorship Manager, the Brumbies Rugby internship program and what it’s like behind the scenes of a professional sporting team.

Brumby Jack: You have been the Sponsorship Manager for two years now, what led you to this role within the organisation?

Matthew Turner: I started with Brumbies Rugby as the Competition Manager which I did for three years, I then took a twelve months away in New Zealand with the Kings Country Football Union, which is one of the Unions that run the Chiefs. I returned home after that to take up my current position.

 BJ: We’ve all seen the team out on the paddock or in the news pages on a daily basis, tell us a little bit about the work you do behind all the glitz and glamour that is professional sports.

MT: My role directly involves negotiating and servicing all of the partnership agreements between our sponsors and the Union. This means making sure that we deliver on the benefits that we promise, this is not just a game day task as a lot of the sponsorship benefits we provide are out of season. So it’s a year round job.
Benefits can range from branding, hospitality, networking opportunities and community engagement.

Match day itself starts around 8 am and that involves putting up signage and making sure that everything is in order for the game whether that be the precinct or corporate hospitality. After the game we pack down and have other engagements that must be met so there’s more to game day for us than just having the team play. It’s quite a long day but is very rewarding, especially if the team wins.

BJ: How important is sponsorship in terms of general day to day running of the organisation?

MT: Sponsorship provides for approximately 20 percent of our overall revenue. Our commercial revenue streams run from our television rights, membership, corporate hospitality, merchandise, and game day takings.

Whilst we do have a high performance team there is also a lot of other aspects to the organisation that are very much dependent on sponsorship revenue. School and junior development, the Brumbies Academy, referee and coach education, and other community activities are all under this banner, it’s vital that we can maintain that level of investment so we can continue to provide the community with the services that they expect from us.

Canberra business very much look after their own, companies such as Canberra Milk, ActewAGL and FM104.7 are very involved in community events, it’s very important to them to put money back into the community that gives them money and we’re very much the same.

BJ: You also run another initiative within Brumbies Rugby which is an internship program, can you tell us a little bit about how it started and what it seeks to achieve in the long run?

MT: We’ve built a good relationship with the University of Canberra, a lot of the employees and the players have been involved with the university at one time or another.

Formalising an agreement between Brumbies Rugby and the University of Canberra gives the chance for the new breed of managers to come in and share some new and fresh ideas with us.

It’s a great way to give younger people the opportunity to come in and see what it is like in the professional world, hopefully by giving these people some invaluable experience it will set them apart from other graduates and inspire them go on and succeed in their chosen field, whether that be in the sports or any other career they might chose.

BJ: Finally, your oldest son, he’s two years old now, being a bit of a regular on the rugby field yourself, do you have any dreams of seeing a Turner donning a CA Brumbies jersey one day?

MT: Well he’s still a bit young to go to the games at the moment, however whenever he sees any sport being played he automatically thinks it’s the Brumbies so he already knows the name quite well. I guess only time will tell.