A premium suburban cricket league in sports-mad Melbourne
The Diamond Valley Cricket Association (DVCA) operates across the north-east of Melbourne, with 31 clubs and nearly 4,500 playing members.
In April 2024, the DVCA faced a number of challenges that required addressing. That’s when they got in touch with us at Whitewall Sport.
After working through a timeline set by the DVCA Board of Directors, in early November 2024 the Loans Sorted Summer Smash was launched, with the first game being played between rivals Hurstbridge CC and Laurimar CC in Hurstbridge.
THE PROBLEM
The current non-mandatory T20 competition that the 30 top tier Shield grade teams would compete in had become tired, with the majority of teams withdrawing from it during the 2023/24 season.
The DVCA were seeing a drop off in participation from the ages of 16-23 where this age bracket appeared to be choosing to play and train for AFL all year around as opposed to cricket in their off-season as they have traditionally done.
Clubs needed to find additional revenue, and there were no obvious solutions to making this happen. The current, tired T20 competition wasn’t driving this, and as such the DVCA needed to think laterally to provide for a structure that may help clubs drive further revenue
The DVCA needed to stimulate further commercial revenue by creating a competition that captured the imagination of not only the cricket and sporting community, but also the business community.
THE SOLUTION
Prior to the Loans Sorted Summer Smash being launched, Whitewall Sport secured a naming rights partnership with Loans Sorted which allowed investment into the start up of the new competition.
Whitewall Sport developed the full creative suite of logos, brand guidelines, social tiles, narrative and other key marketing components to ensure a unique competition and commercial property is created.
We developed a number of sponsor leveraging initiatives that engaged the DVCA social community and provided sponsors with a connection point.
Created a competition structure that allowed clubs to engage their own cricket and broader sporting community.
Developed a best practice protocol to allow volunteers across the DVCA to optimise the opportunity through the competition
Whitewall Sport and their sponsorship based service, The Sportmaker Sponsorship Sprint, has been a game changer for the DVCA.
From creating structure to our sponsorship assets right through to connecting our sponsorship manager to a large number of local and regional businesses, we have been able to secure sponsorship revenue levels not seen before in our association.
It is safe to say that we have already seen a 15x return on our investment and we hope that this is just the beginning”
Grant Flack,
President DVCA