The Washington Nationals have created a new networking group for their corporate partners, marking the latest attempt to extract additional value in a business relationship with the club.
Branded the Nationals Partner Alliance, the initiative plans a series of conferences, guest speakers and special events accessible only by the club’s sponsors and drawing in part on the club’s immediate access to government and military leaders in Washington.
The first such Alliance event will be in April, when Nationals manager Matt Williams is scheduled to speak to the group on the principles of leadership. Other events under development will delve into other areas of business success and management. Nationals Partner Alliance functions will occur both at Nationals Park and off site.
“We’ve seen a variety of iterations on the concept of a sponsor summit and how to elevate the sharing of best practices,” said Valerie Camillo, Nationals chief revenue and marketing officer. “We have a great advantage of being here in the nation’s capital and next door to so many impressive leaders. But what will make this work is how much we put into it to create compelling content.”
The exact frequency of Nationals Partner Alliance events has not been decided, but Camillo said she is targeting at least one a month.
Camillo, who was an executive with the NBA’s team marketing and business operations group before taking the Nationals job a year ago, had direct access to how basketball teams conducted their sponsor summits. She then last season formed a precursor to this latest group, the First Ladies, that involved networking among accomplished women in the Washington area.
The Nationals have six women in senior-level front office roles.
“Once we started down the path with the First Ladies, it was a huge success and immediately told us that we needed to do this on a much bigger scale,” Camillo said. “But we will still do special-interest groups, such as the First Ladies, that will reside within the Nationals Partner Alliance.”
The Nationals Partner Alliance also bears similarity to other client networking efforts around the sports industry, such as the TD Garden Business Network in Boston.
