What the Millwall brand means in 2026 with Chief Commercial Officer, Luke Wilson.

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The Football Co Business Podcast, the most creative minds and innovative thinkers in football Welcome to the Football Co Business Podcast, the show where we speak to leaders across football media and marketing. On this show, I guess it'll look Wilson, Chief Commercial Officer for Championship Club, Millwall FC. Luke joins us to discuss the club's brand today and what it means to be a Millwall in 2026, compared to the club's reputation in the 70s and 80s. We'll also get into the club's underdog mentality and how it impacts the club both on and off the pitch. Luke, welcome to the show. Thanks for the meal. You're welcome for more reasons than one usually. We're always welcome to have guests on but I know we discussed this kind of off camera, Millwall holds a special place in my own football history. When I was growing up, before I went to football myself, my granddad was a lifelong Will Wall fam. I lived close to the area when every home game. I used to tell me and my brother and my mum and dad about stories like Tony Cascarine and Teddy Shereyam, my brother being a spurs fan, that was always quite apt for him. But at the same time, when I was growing up, I was giving those stories, even before I got into football myself, I was still aware of the reputation the club had for who would have given his murder time. Before we kick off, how would you just write Millwall today, especially with the club celebrating its 140th anniversary? I think it's a good place to start. I suppose we get asked that quite a lot, but I would say the Millwall today is probably very different of perhaps what your experience is where growing up. I think the clubs are a very positive trajectory. Probably quite upon and off the pitch, you can see that really. That reputation at the time wasn't just Millwall as much as I've seen it. It was around the club. I think who legalism was quite right in the 70s and 80s for many a club. I think by and large football and the clubs themselves have done some really good work over the last 20 or 30 years to hopefully leave the majority of that in the past. The club today, as I say, is in a really positive space. The den today itself is sold out crowds. We've just announced that 10 to 10 to start out of the season for the next half of the day. It was a really exciting place to be for us, obviously doing really well on the pitch at the moment, sitting there as we speak at the moment. And looking to continue that going into the back end of the season and hopefully making a playoffs. And really, so that investment into the club, I think, on and off the pitch. We've broken our transfer record a couple of times in the last two or three transfer windows. We've seen some really good backing from the Burstman family. We've been with us from long term owners of the club, but also putting that investment into the areas off the pitch as well. And I think commercially, that's then translating into a more partner's wanting to be part of that journey and just a real positivity around the club. So that's been really a really good kind of time to be part of the football club, I would say. And then, yeah, on top of that, we then sort of celebrate. Now, those fans from the local area that are coming to the ground and being part of that local community, but also trying to broaden their international reach as well. I'm looking at how we can kind of continue to kind of engage with international fans and seeing that real demand from people from abroad to come, who want to come to London and see a game of football at the end. So, you know, there's a lot of positivity out there. Just pick up that point there about the international fans. How does that work? This is going to be the whole kind of like theme of what we're talking about. But if you're an international fan coming over, you're not sure if you're in London of clubs with a global reputation who are doing work in many of these countries. Where is the alert that Mill will has kind of bring those fans to the den as opposed to other clubs in the vicinity? I think some mix of things. I think our location helps. I mean, when the closest club to the city of London, so, you know, we won't stop from London bridge. If you're coming to London for a holiday and you want to go and pick up a ticket to a traditional English game of football, the championship is very much that it's very competitive strongly. It feels perhaps less sanitised than maybe the Premier League might be, but in the view of some international fans and probably domestic fans, it feels like you're going to go and see a game where anyone could pick up a result on any day of the week. I think that all helps and plays into our favour. I think probably historically it's easy to get a ticket to, although probably let's say now where it's selling out, but historically it's been easy for some of the perhaps you know, rock up the day or two before a game and come to a game here or auto plan a trip around it. And we do often see a lot of fans also come over for Champions League fixtures. I remember we had a load of Zagreb fans came once to an arson fixture and then came to us today before. So also can kind of depend on where the fixtures fall, but yeah, certainly I think a mixture of all of those together really. So looking outside the confines of the den, the club itself sits in, well, six, but two a few miles away from both Tallahama some Hackney, which are two of the private areas in London. Now you've got a community trust in more in Mill, like all football clubs do in the championship and above. So I'm the rest of the year. Well, does being in your position as well as having to perform on the pitch and get to the first position and hopefully make the player, as you mentioned. Is there an extra pressure for a club like Mill Walter also be shown up in the community as well? Yeah, certainly. I mean, I wouldn't say pressure. I think it's something that we. It's ingrained in the fabric of the football club. As you say many football clubs have started that way and have had that kind of place in the community. But certainly from our community trust perspective, you know, that is vital to the work we do as a club across both the club and the trusting out in my role. I sit as the CTO for the club, but I'm also on the board of trustees for the community trust. So I have very much. I would say a split kind of loyalty to it to kind of what we're doing with the club and kind of responsibility is probably a better word actually, but a better kind of responsibility for the work we do. And you know, if you look at the work out trust done over the last year, I mean, on employability alone, I think we've worked at over 200 different events in 2025. So that's helped over 250 people into work. You know, we've had the DWP job center based in our community trust. I think we're one of the first clubs in the country to have that, you know, then on top of that. And that's just the employability work right. So then on top of that, we've delivered over 500 community sessions for free that tackle, you know, a number of topics, but anti social behaviour, youth violence, things like that, which are really sort of prevalent topics. Yeah, for the people that living in around their club and our community. And that's obviously playing a really big role in creating safer neighbourhoods and opportunities for those particularly young people locally. And then at the lower end of that spectrum as well, we've continued free school meals for those local school children that have that provision during turn time. Obviously they get to the summer holidays or to half term. And you know, schools close, they don't have access to a free meal. We've provided over 9,500 meals for local children in those school holidays. So everything we do is kind of very much around supporting our local community. And I think, you know, that's through the work of the trust. Obviously, then that links to the weekend, then being an outlet for people to come and kind of get away from, you know, the day-to-day weekend and kind of support their football club and immersed themselves in something different. So I think the club and the trust are intrinsically linked. We provide really, really kind of, I'd say, vital service to the local boroughs, really in terms of what we do as a club. And that's the power of football, isn't it? Right. So this is a fantastic thing. And we talk about it all the time. It's a massive cliche, but it's also really true. I mean, a really good example. Another to give you is probably the diverse scheme that we work with through the middle community trust as well, which is, you know, we have guys that are sat in full community trust sort of track suit. So branded up and sitting in custody suites in in police stations in Lewish and they're there primarily to stop people from reoffending and trying to sort of intercept people as there's the picked up by the police and kind of put them in the office. So in the work that we do as a club and a trust, I think is vital in the local community, for sure. So those people you mentioned there who are sitting in the police station, so we've got the real world branded kids community trust kits on Bushes, their tracksies, they don't like four kids or anything like that. Those guys and girls, do they notice? It's an easier way to engage with somebody if they've got the real world crest on their shirt as opposed to just being like, you know, any old Joe San station. Yeah, 100%. I mean, it's the whole basis of that program is that those people are people that don't want to engage with police officers that have, you know, trust issues with people in in authority. So actually going in in a in a middle track suit can stimulate conversation and it can be a real good icebreaker. So either they're a fan and it's a great conversation from that perspective or, you know, there might be a West Ham fan and actually it's then like, well, why are you coming in here wearing that and that just breaks the ice and allows them to have a conversation that. Yeah, they just wouldn't be able to have with it with a police officer or a social work or someone else. So yeah, 100% definitely helps. So those as other people who may have like a slightly dated impression of me or like my own invention before my own history might be surprised to know that. You not only have a an OG BTQ plus team the club, but it's also one of the best in the country as well. So tell us more about that and why and how they're part of Millwell. Yeah, I think there'd be an element of surprise from those who don't know us as the club, right? And I think it goes back to the point I was making before. You know, those who are kind of closely connected to the club kind of celebrate that and understand really what it is that makes this club, you know, a fantastic club to work for and talk. So yeah, it's a to follow in the community, you know, we are a community club at our hearts and that's about representing. in the communities that we're in and around and catering for anyone in those communities. It doesn't matter which part of that community you're from. It is about celebrating those differences, but also ensuring that everyone has access to a sort of safe space to play football and to enjoy the game that we all love really. So that's the main part of that, again, without speaking in clichés, but as we talked about before, football is a really positive tool for a lot of things and it's not restricted to anyone. It's a game for everyone, right? So that having a team really, for us as a club, is about providing that safe space for people to be themselves and play football without fear. And really, I think that was kind of how it came about when our community trust and CEO was approached a few years ago by the team and they were looking for some way to play. His view on that at the time was, well, we represent a community in which we're based. So actually, why would we not have an LGBTQ+ team? Why would we not have that kind of representation within our community trust and within our club and allow that kind of to be part of our engagement with the community around us? So they're a really competitive team, as you said. They've won, I think, Stonewall World Cup. They've played in loads of tournaments. They're really great ambassadors for everything we do at the club and for all the good things that we do in the community. Where, as you say, sometimes, perhaps in it, if from a data perspective, people might kind of oversee and overlook that. They actually pay subs and cells which they collect in and then they give back to community trust initiatives locally. So they're really invested in the local community. They are really grateful for the support that we've given them. But ultimately, as I say before, it's just a normal part of what we do as a club in the local community. It's about creating so spaces for people to come and enjoy the game that we all love and see the benefit from that. So compared, we don't go as far back as my granddad stays, but what is it like now at the den compared to maybe what it was like at the old den when he used to go? I never got to go to the old den on fortune. I would have loved to have gone down there. But ultimately, it's a foresighted English stadium. It was one of the, I think it was the first stadium built off the Taylor report. Fantastic place to come and watch football. I really like the design of the stadium. I really like the sort of intenseness of it. It's close to the pitch. You're a visiting player. You probably don't want to come and be taking a throw in as close to the crowd as they are. But I think that atmosphere is what makes it a hard place for teams to come and get a result. And that's what we want to call today. That's why people love coming to football as well as coming from the atmosphere and being part of that. So that's a great part of it. But it's also modern stadium. So it is now sub 30 years old, but we're trying to invest in that infrastructure to ensure that it's brought up to modern day, primarily standards, wherever we can, because that's the bar we need to be a aspiring for. And it's tricky because stadiums are ongoing beasts. You have to put money into them all the time. So wherever we can, we're trying to work with commercial partners or trying to work with suppliers that we might have relationships with to have access to different bits of capex. So if we can, do a deal and then reinvest that into different parts of the ground. So we did a deal last year where we renegotiated a deal without pouring rights partnership with Nene. And as part of that deal, we renovated an old club shop on the back of the stadium and made that into a new bar called Spitfire Bar. So again, you're able to take a commercial partnership and create a new bar for the fans out of that. We did a deal last year in terms of floodlights as well. So we had a floodlight sponsorship, which are now just to upgrade our floodlights because they were halogen bulbs been around for hundreds of years, I think. And they're all gone. And now we've got modern modern sort of fit for purpose LED system, which you can turn on and off from an app. And it is far more energy efficient. So all of these things are little projects that take money, take time, and hopefully if we can work with commercial partners, we can kind of offset some of the impact on the ownership of that. But yeah, it's an expensive kind of facility to maintain. But you know, we're looking now at the future and what we do over the summer, we upgrade our hospitality lounges. And this coming summer, we're looking at upgrading our fans own. I think the fans own, we've got here is that it is as a space one of the best I've seen. You know, we get a couple of thousand people in that when the weather's good. But ultimately, it needs more weather proofing. We want to kind of maintain that throughout the season. And then looking again at what we do, the hospitality boxes. So there's lots of little projects across the stadium and we want to make sure that the fan experience is kind of, you know, improved wherever we can because it is an old stadium and it needs renovating in certain areas. But ultimately, that's that's kind of part of the journey we're on, I suppose. Is there anything that needs to change if this season goes hopefully as good as you hope? Other things that need to change when you go to the Premier League or is everything kind of Premier League ready? Yeah, I mean, I think if you look at sort of recent examples like Luton and Ipswitch and you see that there's a number of changes that need to be made. So yeah, then we'll be obviously, hope we hope that that comes around. But you know, that's that's part of the longer term plan as well. If that doesn't happen this season, it that's fine. But you know, we're in a great position now. So hopefully we can kind of continue to the end of the year. One thing I don't think you're mind me saying is that the team has a bit of a, I mean, a literally a no one likes. There's a crowd chant here. I'm ill, kind of a no one likes this mentality, a bit of an underdog spirit. Is this something and this is something that we should also see on the pitch right through Alex Neal's been doing. How on purpose is that what he's been doing with the team to kind of like kind of foster that spirit, especially when despite being kind of an underdog mentality as I mentioned, you are sitting third. So you know, kind of going into games probably a little bit more favourite than you were a bit at the start of the season. And how's that working out? And we'll say was that on purpose through him? Was that something which kind of he wanted to kind of instill with the team? Yeah, I mean, it's interesting one because I think it's it goes back to a point that space around Ultras and how they kind of develop Brown football clubs. But in most certainly, there's always been an underdog mentality, I think, to mill walls of club. It's definitely something that off the pitch have tried to embrace in terms of how we position ourselves commercially. And I think, you know, if we work with challenger brands, I think that's a really good kind of narrative for us to kind of work together with them and say, look, actually, we have the underdog spirit that translates to you guys off the pitch as well. But I mean, from Alex's perspective, I think when first and foremost Alex is a fantastic coach, right? And I think he's what what he's done with his team is to buy into what the club is about on. And I think then the fans have kind of recognised that and have got on board with that because that then drives that positivity from the stands, which the players feed on to. And so it's kind of a virtuous circle in that respect, I think. And I would say that that's probably helped. But I think again, yeah, comes down to his ability as a coach for his ability to bring together a group and drive an output from them, which obviously, you know, we're not starting to see on the pitch. And as you say, translating into us being in a in a great league position. So, yeah, I think he's he's very much about the power of the collective. And I think you, you know, hopefully we can get this going to the end of the season. But I think the performances we've seen and the communication and the understanding that he brings from the football side of the club is something that the fans definitely respond to and appreciate. And I think when you've got that sort of the two sides off the pitch and on the pitch working in in harmony, that's when, you know, some good things can happen. So yeah, no, it's a great time to be kind of part of the club. Do you think what's going to sound very close to not saying when you go up or anything like this, and as a very big challenge and the playoff is a brutal way to be, if that words are happening, we'll wind up in the Premier League, which I've done a recess, but that's never happened before, no? We're not been in Premier League. We've been in the top flight with two seasons in the first division. Yeah, but not in the Premier League. When was that? That was fair while ago. It's in the late 80s. I believe 88. I think. So, perhaps do you think that will affect the identity of the club to actually be kind of up there to be a Premier League team? Would be a stranger identity for a meal or to have? What do you think it's one which then again, get back to what you mentioned just now? That's the true undertook story, right? You're going to be fighting it, I'm going to Premier League up against the clubs that have, you know, established Premier League Champions League teams. Yeah, I don't think it will change the identity of the club. I think, you know, the identity of the club is something that's been there for a long time, and that says, as I sort of mentioned before, the culture of the club is something that develops over a long time, right? We want to stay true to that. We don't want to move away from that. Yeah, being part of the area we're from, the community we're in, all of these things are kind of tenets that make up, you know, that identity. So, I certainly don't think it would change that. I think it would be a nice place to be, and I think it would be refreshing for the Premier League to see see us come up, and I think there are definitely some big results down at the then. I think, you know, some of the big clubs will come down here, and they'll definitely be a great atmosphere for that. But I think the main thing really is just fantastic for the fans. I think, you know, for a lot of these the fans that have been with the club for a long time, you know, it'll be a lifelong ambition, just to see us play at some of the grounds we'd end up playing that for once in a season. So, if you put anything financial to one side, I think it's that's the main sort of story from it, and that we'd love to see is to have those big teams coming down to the den and kind of having those away trips. But as I say, we're a long way from that yet, so we're not getting ahead of ourselves. We're on a long-term plan for how we can kind of, as I say, invest in the club on and off the pitch, and that's the focus. So, yeah, let's see how we go. So, it's fair to say that it's going to matter more than just kind of the money that comes with the turn styles if you were to go up. There's much more much more to than that. Any teams that you'd have to see at the den next year, if that were to happen? Oh, I mean, anyone, right? Anyone you're playing in the Premier League is top quality opponent to play. I think, you know, obviously there's been some big London darbys in there, which I think the fans would love. But, you know, if you had the teams from United Liverpool, the big names that are coming down, you know, to kind of see them play at the den, I think a lot of the fans would love to have that as something that experienced at least once in their lives. So, yeah, look, anyone in the Premier League is a great fixture and again, competitive league right, it's going to be, you go again if you go up and then you have to kind of start all over again. So, I think it would be a, it would be an interesting challenge to have. But, yeah, not one. We're getting too ahead of ourselves at this point. It's a, but as a footballing cliche, but you've fed us there be a hard place to go. Is that kind of what you're expecting? Yeah, I'd hope so. I mean, I think like any ground you want to create an atmosphere, right? That's not going to mean one that the opposition are going to thrive in. You want to have your home ground, your home games to be a ones in which, you know, you're difficult to be. And I think we've seen that this season, we've had a pretty good record at home. So, you know, we'd want to continue that and whatever league we're in. So, before we go, then, without kind of looking too much of the crystal ball and into next season, looking at this season, what would be the message to fans who've not been to Millwall before about why they should come to Millwall? Why should they go to see a game? Now, maybe they're traveling European fans, something like that, and they've got the plethora of London teams to go What should they go to Mill when I suppose to some of those? I think just to come down and experience the atmosphere, right? I think when the then is rocking and when it's a full house and the fans are behind the team, there's not many better football atmospheres I think in the country to come and be part of. So just really for that, come down is a great experience. We've got a team that are playing really well at the moment that are really linked to the stands and that energy flows between between the two. So I think that would really be it, come down and experience it and be part of it. Can't think we're a place to end it. Look, cheers for time. Pleasure having you and hopefully see you at the den sometimes thing. Yeah, great. Thanks a lot Paul.