Melbourne Knights FC have announced their latest partnership with one of the world’s leading VPN providers, NordVPN.
Established in 2012, NordVPN is a Lithuanian VPN service that aims to provide secure and private access to the internet. It works by enveloping all of your online activities in a layer of encryption and hiding information about your virtual location.
This enables users to stay invisible to hackers, your internet service provider (ISP), governmental agencies and others from looking while you’re browsing the net. NordVPN also protects data such as bank details from potential attacks.
NordVPN has partnered with many clubs in Europe – such as Rangers, Atlético Madrid and Barnsley – and now they are venturing out to clubs around Australia.
Speaking with Soccerscene, Head of Commercial Operations at Melbourne Knights FC, Ange Hrastov, and NordVPN Country Manager for Australia and New Zealand, Ian Wheller, discuss the early discussions between them, the main outcomes from this partnership and potential collaborations between the pair in the future.
What were the early discussions like between NordVPN and the Melbourne Knights?
Ange Hrastov: NordVPN reached out to us and sent the Club an email, just asking whether we were interested in partnership opportunities with NordVPN.
It was right in the middle of all our other sponsors and at the time we were doing our season launch. We got back to NordVPN and said we’re always open to partnership opportunities as we’ve done with others.
We also asked them for a little bit of clarity on what they wanted and what the opportunity represented.
So that’s when I got a hold of Ian and both of us had a chat and he explained a couple of ways you can go; you can get a percentage of each subscription that they get, or we can get a flat fee. So, we chose the flat fee with them and that’s how it was.
As a Club, we’re just looking for opportunities to expand our network and our business partner base. We also saw it as an opportunity to be able to offer to our members, particularly our younger ones, who are more tech savvy and something that could benefit them in conjunction with being associated with the Club.
Ian Wheller: NordVPN reached out directly to Melbourne Knights. Australia is a relatively mature market for NordVPN, but local sports clubs are an area where we’ve seen great success in European markets that we want to try and replicate here.
We’ve had success with top-tier clubs such as Rangers FC and Barnsley FC, all the way down to the lower leagues, showcasing growth opportunities.
What were the main outcomes for both parties in this partnership?
Ange Hrastov: From our perspective at Melbourne Knights, our sponsor base and our business partner base have been pretty much the same businesses, and that’s been the case for many years now.
I came into it saying that we actually do need to start to expand our business partner network. We were looking for business partners that could also contribute in terms of their business experience, knowledge and acumen towards the future success of our club as much as any financial benefit we obtain from such partnerships.
It’s not just about the dollars, we wanted to see how the two businesses could coexist and work together. One of the things that they did before we made any decisions to partner with NordVPN is they pointed us in the direction of what they’ve been doing in the UK with football clubs.
It was Ipswich Town that they have a partnership with over in the UK in the Championship, and I looked at the website and it appeared a good fit. They seem to have a healthy partnership and relationship with Ipswich Town, and we thought why not give it a crack?
This is an opportunity that takes us into areas that we haven’t worked with before and to partner with someone where we give back to our members, it is a partnership where our members can tangibly gain from it.
Ian Wheller: Due to our successful partnerships in Europe with football teams, we’ve decided to follow a similar trend in Australia due to the closely aligned love for the game. Bringing it back to Melbourne Knights specifically, we purposely targeted the lower leagues to begin with to understand growth appetite and partnering with the Melbourne Knights is a great way for us to support the local community.
We are looking to grow brand awareness and subsequent customer subscriptions off the back of the Melbourne Knights sponsorship and the plan is to roll this out nationally to clubs that we see are a good fit.
Are there any future collaborations being discussed after the agreement of this partnership such as jersey and pitch sponsorships?
Ange Hrastov: At the moment, there have been very limited discussions and we’re at very early stages. We will need to see how it goes for both them and us in terms of what kind of return they get for what they’re doing.
Let’s show them what the outcome can be and how successful it can be and from that point, then we can start talking about further opportunities that we can look at with NordVPN.
Let’s walk first, then once we’ve established a relationship, we’ll start running later.
Ian Wheller: We are starting light when it comes to sponsorships across Australia. Both pitch and jersey sponsorship are positive for the future, our current approach will allow us to test different strategies.
Due to this partnership between the Melbourne Knights and NordVPN, fans have been given an exclusive offer when they sign up with NordVPN. The offer is a 72% discount off monthly plans and a Saily eSim for those who are planning to go overseas.
For more information, visit the article about the partnership on the Melbourne Knights website.
