It’s great to announce today that Epic Pharmacy is sponsoring the WBBL Brisbane Heat for the next two years after our fantastic initial partnership with the team last season. We enjoyed a brilliant debut summer of cricket with the Heat team as they along with the rest of the WBBL players showed the world what an exciting experience women’s Twenty20 matches delivers up. It was also fantastic to hear that Deandra Dottin, a key member of the ICC WT20 World Cup winning West Indies team, will be joining the team this summer to turn the heat up even higher!
Beyond the excitement of being part of this game changer for women’s cricket, we loved the chance to get to know the girls and hear about the stories behind their on field success and are thrilled to see so many of them re-signing with the Heat for the 2016-17 season. We’ve stayed in touch with the girls throughout the off season as we see the delivery of networking and mentoring opportunities to be just as vital a component of our sponsorship deliverables as the actual dollars, but it was great to have them back in their Epic teal shirts at today’s announcement!
One of those off season interactions involved introducing the Heat girls to the inaugural members of the Brisbane Lions Women’s team earlier this year at an AFL game at the Gabba. Bringing the two groups together in the Epic box was a great opportunity for the Heat players to share their first hand experience of what being a ground breaker in these new national female competitions involves.
The two groups came together again this morning at the Icon Groups office in South Brisbane, not just for the announcement of our partnership renewal but to hear some further insights into our business story. Two of the key contributors to our business success have been the importance we’ve placed on building a really strong culture, and our ability to identify and deliver on the opportunities that new and emerging markets create. There are a lot of strong correlations for these two young teams and the opportunities ahead of them, and we’re looking forward to continuing our involvement and support for them as part of our Epic Women in Sport initiative.