Saints launch the Halo Effect

David Thomas, Chief Commercial Officer at Southampton FC speaks about the launch of the club’s sustainability strategy, the Halo Effect, a commitment to ensuring a sustainable future for the club, fans and community.

In the midst of a year of uncertainty, Southampton FC have announced a number of new initiatives, partnerships and additions to benefit the club, its fans and the wider community as it strives towards a sustainable future.

The Saints secured promotion for their second stint in the English Premier League in 2012, having first been a founding member of the division in 1992 and since being back in the Premier League, the club has transformed to be a modern, forward thinking organisation, and with that has come the recent formation of a sustainability strategy, dubbed 'The Halo Effect'.

The Halo Effect…

An initiative with a dual meaning, first inspired by the crest and club’s heritage, alongside the combined positive impact that the initiatives will have on people and the planet, The Halo Effect has become the representative of the values that Southampton now hold.

“We have a clear club strategy at Saints that we call ‘The Southampton Way’, which has at its heart our mission ‘For everybody, every day to turn our potential into excellence’,” stated David Thomas, Chief Commercial Officer at Southampton FC.

“This purpose is what makes us unique and what unifies everyone connected to the club. It’s our core ‘Values’ (Respect, Unity, Aspiration, Innovation and Discipline) and ‘Commitments’ (We support our community, We play the right way, We develop talent, We’re forward thinking and We never stop) which form the foundations of The Southampton Way and help guide everything we do each day.

“It's important to us to genuinely live and breathe our strategy and it isn’t just a nice set of words that get confined to the bottom drawer and dusted off once a year for review, but given our focus on the future it became clear that we needed to define the club’s position regarding corporate sustainability.

“This work commenced two years ago, and we wanted to take a holistic approach to how we behave as a club overall and to lead by example in all aspects of corporate behaviour. This involved a lot of initial groundwork that culminated in us evolving our overall club strategy to place sustainability at the heart of our operating model.

“Only after these foundations were in place were we in a position to package all our initiatives together under one banner to define how Saints approach all-things sustainability, which led to The Halo Effect concept that we launched in January 2021.

“We’ve been delighted with the response so far, but for us it is very much the first step in a series of commitments that we will be focusing on over the coming years.”

The Four Key Areas of

Focus…

“As part of our social responsibility to the city which supports us, we’re committed to leading by example to help make Southampton a cleaner, more equal and more sustainable place to live now and for future generations,” David continued.

“We also know that the club operating responsibly is of real importance for our fans, partners, customers, staff and the wider community, so it felt appropriate to ensure these groups were all represented strongly within our overall sustainability model.

“As a result, we have four key areas of focus and responsibility, from our commitments to protect our planet (Environmental Responsibility), to how we operate as a business and ➡

how we treat everyone connected to the club fairly (Corporate Responsibility), to how we contribute, give back and add value to our community (Social Responsibility) and finally the commitments we are making to treat our fans fairly and equally (Fan Responsibility).”

Measuring The Halo Effect’s success…

The club has set a lead target for each strategy, although behind each is a number of detailed initiatives and a variety of different measures and targets that they are aiming to reach over the coming years.

“In order for The Halo Effect to feel truly unique to the club, we wanted to develop one lead project, that we refer to as a ‘Halo Initiative’, for each strategy that becomes the focus of our communications moving forward,” David explained.

“For example, our lead target for our ‘Environmental Responsibility’ pillar is for the club to become carbon neutral by 2030, and we have plans in place to manage waste, control our resources and enhance bio-diversity within our sites to work towards this long-term goal.

“However, our ‘Halo Initiative’ in this space is the ‘Home Grown Scheme’ which combines our commitment to protecting our planet (through carbon offsetting) with our commitment to developing young footballers through our academy.

“For every academy graduate who makes their 1st Team debut, the club will plant 250 trees. Based on an average of 3 academy 1st Team debuts each season,

Encouraging Entrepreneurialism through the Positive Impact Pledge…

Under their ‘Corporate Responsibility’, strategy, Southampton’s ‘Halo Initiative’ saw the creation of the ‘Positive Impact Pledge’, whereby the club welcomed applications from potential challenger brands of the future, where they could potentially be supported by a £20,000 tax free grant and business advice and guidance to help the small business or start-up take the next step on their journey.

“Creating positive impact has long been one of the leading principles behind our successful commercial partnerships, whereby we bring ‘challenger brand’ thinking to everything we do, challenging the norm, punching above our weight and out-think the competition to deliver maximum value back to our partners,” said David. model that is an authentic and highquality programme that can add value to international partners. We’ve created a sustainable model for our partners who can engage with high-quality staff from the famed Staplewood Training Ground, and this is the foundations of our success.

“To date we have partners in; USA, Canada, Bahrain, Australia & Africa with a growing pipeline of interest expanding into new territories.

“The Premier League has a phenomenal global audience and reach so developing new partnerships in new territories is a real positive addition to the club’s strategic model.

“Ultimately, optimising the value of the club’s player development reputation creates new business opportunities and is a real example of what we stand for as a club; to turn Potential into Excellence.”

“This season alone we’ve already had 5 academy graduates make their First-Team debuts, resulting in 1,250 trees being purchased and soon to be planted in Southampton, with a further 1,250 trees being preserved in the Amazon Rain Forest as part of our partnership with Carbon Footprint and their ‘tree buddy’ system.”

over the next 4 years we anticipate planting 3,000 trees which in turn will offset 3,000 tonnes of Southampton FC’s carbon emissions.

“This season alone we’ve already had 5 academy graduates make their First-Team debuts, resulting in 1,250 trees being planted in Southampton, with a further 1,250 trees being preserved in the Amazon Rain Forest as part of our partnership with Carbon Footprint and their ‘tree buddy’ system.

“Following all the work undertaken and the launch of The Halo Effect, we’ve leapt up the Sport Positive Premier League Sustainability rankings to sixth place, up from 18th last season, although our our clear challenge will be to ensure we maintain this position over the coming years."

“We’ve been delighted with the response to the Positive Impact Pledge and received fantastic applications from over 50 businesses. We recently held an online event with all the applicants where we revealed the shortlist of six companies who are through to the final round, which we hope to hold in person in the summer with presentations to our panel of judges before announcing the winner.”

International club partners…

Aside from The Halo Effect, Southampton have been growing their list of international club partners, with the most recent addition being Ghanaian Premier League side Asante Kotoko.

“As a Club with a track record of success in developing footballers, we’ve developed a Commercial Football Development

The new official Southampton FC club app…

A busy 2021 for the Saints continued with the launch of their official club app following the successful transformation of their ecommerce platforms in 2020.

“The launch of the app enables us to provide a truly mobile-first experience for supporters wishing to engage with and consume our content, and we’re already seeing the power that publishing news and interviews married with features such as notifications and alerts can have on enabling us to bypass social algorithms and deliver content directly to our fans.

“Once we’re able to host supporters back at St. Mary’s, the app will also provide a number of opportunities to enhance the in-stadium fan experience, as the app will work as a digital ticket to access the stadium, it will facilitate orders for food and beverage, and receive personalised offers and incentives exclusive to those attending a matchday.”

It is evident that Southampton FC are keen to cement a sustainable future with a refreshing outlook on the goings on off the pitch, in the pursuit of aiding not only the club but its local community and the planet in an effective and forwardthinking manner. ◆