“We need to attract a new audience” - Fax managing director Grayson on club’s name change to Halifax Panthers

The rebrand of the club was announced yesterday (Wednesday), and Grayson says it is part of an effort to attract a younger fan base to The Shay.

“For me, it’s about looking at where the club’s at, the demographics of our fan base, and age-wise, you’re looking at a significant chunk are 50-plus in terms of age, and we need to attract a new audience,” he told the Courier.

“I think we’ve probably missed a generation, but what we’re trying to do with the Panthers is attract a whole new generation of people, and even capture some of those lapsed fans who were with us once but have disappeared now, and see if we can get them back.

“The other thing is if you stand still, you go backwards and we need to be more proactive, and we are being.

“This is one of the examples of the board embracing that we need to move forward.”

Grayson accepts not all supporters will embrace the new name.

“That will be the case, we’re going into this as a board with eyes wide open that some people are traditionalists,” he said.

“I absolutely want to look to the future but never forget the past.”We’ve still kept the name Halifax within the re-brand, it’s not as though it’s disappeared.

“The blue and white shirts are part of the kit for next season.

“It’s still Halifax, it’s just a new re-brand.

“We’re in the 21st century now and if you look at the Super League structure and the NRL structure, those associations have done this over a period of time with their members, and we’re probably one of the last ones to get on board.

“If you look at the NRL when they put their fixture lists up, it’s their tag name, and that’s where I see the game going, across the world.

“This project is a classic example of areas of Halifax working together - the Piece Hall, Dean Clough and the council all got behind it, everybody’s helped out which is great to see.

“So I’d like to say a massive thank you to them.”

When asked where the name Panthers originated from, Grayson explained: “We have a guy called Jamie Gray who works in our media team, who’s been around the club for the last couple of years.

“He was instrumental in setting up the supporters club and came up with some really good ideas, one of which was Panthers, which as a board, we quite liked.

“Twelve months ago we set up a few volunteer groups, one of which was for media and marketing which Jamie was part of, and a chap called Richard Durgan, who is a Fax fan and a sponsor, led that group.

“The names were debated on that group but we all came back to Panthers.

“It’s a bit like a cheetah, which is the fastest animal in the world. Panthers are in that same family.

“It has a bit of mystery about it as well. Our most successful periods have been not when we’ve been favourites but when we’ve been the underdogs and sneaked up on people, surprised people. A panther is quite stealth-like and I see that as part and parcel of the synergy.

“Historically Smut the Cat was our first ever mascot over 100 years ago, and there have been alleged cat sightings in Halifax over the years, which is another reason why we ended up with Panthers, we felt it fit because of that.”

Fax recently had to drop out of the application process for the 12th Super League place next season after failing to meet the criteria, and Grayson says a future at the sport’s elite level remains in the club’s sights.

“I had a chat with the RFL about two months ago with regard to franchises and how the process worked because I wanted to be more pro-active in terms of if franchise ever came back round, what did we need to do as a club to be ready for that?” he said.

“That is absolutely an aspiration of the board and the club.

“There’s all sorts of boxes that need to be ticked for that.

“Obviously Toronto were then removed from the league so it came a bit quick for us, but part and parcel of it is your brand, which the Panthers fits in more suitably with Super League. It ticks all those boxes.

“We couldn’t apply to Super League because of the average attendance being too low, which is another reason why we wanted to re-brand, to try and attract new customers.

“We’re still doing that application offline, and we’ll go through it with the RFL and they’ll give us feedback on the areas we’ve done well on and where we need to improve.

“They thought the re-branding was a great idea and a great name.

“That application will be left locked up in a safe and should it ever come along again, Halifax would be able to hit the ground running.”

Grayson said Ken Jones, formerly of Featherstone, Sheffield and the RFL, has joined Fax as an advisor to the board.

“2020 was about survival - tick, done that,” Grayson said.

“2021, consolidation and then 2022, start seriously to have a look at going for it.

“That was our three-year plan, which we’re doing more work on now.”

Grayson added: “I think there’ll be a mixed reaction (to the rebrand), but I hope the positives far outweigh the negatives in terms of the traditionalists.

“My gut feeling with the traditionalists is that they’ll have a moan but ultimately they’ve been going to Halifax for a long, long time and my hope will be that they’ll continue to do that. I’m sure they’ll support the club.

“I’ve read some comments from some hardcore traditionalists who get it, they’re not happy with it but they get and understand we need to attract a new audience.

“For me it’s about reaching out into our community. I don’t think this is just a club thing, I think our highly successful foundation has a role to play in terms of its touch-points out there in the community - so that’s schools, community clubs, some of the over 50s clubs. We need to push the brand through there as well and get some engagement.

“The first hurdle is accepting the change, and then build on that for increasing our brand in the community and Halifax, and hopefully that will manifest itself in increased gates at The Shay so that, if another Super League application does come around, we can meet the average attendance of 2,000.”

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