Essendon has developed significant links with the Japanese community on a number of levels in recent years and the website service is designed to further engage that community with the Essendon Football Club and Australian Rules Football.
""Clearly there are opportunities to engage with the Japanese corporate market but more broadly I think we have the opportunity to develop a supporter base and who knows what might flow from that from a game development point of view,"" Essendon managing director Peter Jackson said.
""Despite limited exposure to the game to date, the Japanese enjoy the physical nature of Australian Rules Football. If we can help grow that audience and knowledge base, we may be able to develop a TV audience in Japan that in turn opens up new revenue streams.""
Since 2004 Essendon has conducted two player leadership tours of Japan and held football clinics in Tokyo and Osaka. The Club has also hosted four Japanese players as part of its pre-season over the past two years.
In the 2006 pre-season, Michito Sakaki became the first Japanese player to play in AFL sanctioned match when he played in an exhibition match against the Sydney Swans last year. Last year Essendon also hosted an international match between Japan and Vietnam at Windy Hill.
""We have developed a number of corporate partners that are Japanese-based and we want to engage them in the football club as much as possible. Yakult, Toyota and JAL are valued business partners and we see the provision of this website service and an important step in enhancing the relationship,"" Jackson said.
""Given our commitment to our multicultural community program this may be the first step towards establishing an expanded foreign language service on-line.""
Next month Essendon will head to Japan along with the AFL and the City of Melbourne to explore the possibility of an exhibition game being played in that country in 2008.
""A suitable venue will be something that we will need to spend some time on but we think a game in Japan would be an important step in legitimising the work that we have put into that market thus far,"" Jackson said.
""It will be important that we think hard about the outcomes we want to achieve from such a game. Tactically we need to be smart about the investments we make into foreign markets.""
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