They will play Eredivisie again next season, the stadium will be expanded with 1500 places, the season tickets are all sold out and who knows, maybe DJ Tiësto will be performing there soon. The Breda football club NAC lives like never before. Responsible for that success is director Remco Oversier, who has been employed for a year now: “I love storm at sea and I found it here at NAC.”
After quite a few years of Kommer and Kwel, the NAC supporters do not know what they are experiencing. There were no internal riots at their club last season, no gross scandals, no pislinke fans, not even a startling resignation and the club plays, albeit with the heels over the ditch, again on the highest plan next year.
Where the NAC supporters have been the stable factor for almost 113 years, they are coming in front and adversity, a general director finally seems to take care of it again. “People who don’t know NAC are always talking about that troubled and especially difficult club,” says director Remco Oversier. “A club that everything and everyone is involved in everything. But for me it is the power of NAC that it is so intensely experienced and lived. I can be the turbulent, because that means that many people care about the club.”
“I like a storm at sea,” he continues. “Because when the water starts babbling, I lose my energy. I found that storm at sea here. The club is even more beautiful and intense than I had thought in advance.”
At sea it is allowed to storm, but on land the director of NAC argues for the opposite. “There must be peace internally,” explains Oversier. “Even if we lose a few times in a row. There is now also, because we have become a very clear organization in which fulfilling agreements is important. I work very transparently and like to take people into the things I do. Now that I am there, it is clear that there is another captain on the ship.”
At his appointment, Oversier soon realized the issues at the Pearl of the South had urgency. NAC had to generate more income and reduce costs as quickly as possible in order to separate from a number of loyal, rich supporters who still maintain the club financially.
“A performance by DJ Tiësto or DJ Hardwell in the Rat Verlegh Stadium would be amazing.”
He thought it was Siege of Verlegha plan to buy back the stadium from the municipality of Breda with the supporters. A process that runs and where confidentiality has been agreed, but must be more clarity about before 1 July. “I find it very exciting,” says Oversier. “It is the key to NAC’s financial future.”
This also applies to the current renovation of the Rat Verlegh Stadium. In addition to sustainability, there will be 1500 extra places and the accommodation can now also be used for other large events.
The timing seems fine. “The Chasséveld will close,” says Oversier. “No events will be organized there soon, so in the long term our stadium would be a nice location. For example, the big 538 party with King’s Day. A performance by DJ Tiësto or DJ Hardwell in the Rat Verlegh Stadium would of course be amazing. But you can think of everything.”
In the meantime, NAC was able to raise the price of the season cards by 10 to 15 percent almost silently and the maximum number has since been sold. In fact, there is a still growing waiting list with more than 3000 people now.
“We also had some luck,” says Oversier honestly. “Just before my arrival, NAC was at his ugliest, but then there was a twist in feeling and emotion with the after competition and the promotion. On that flow we went into the Eredivisie and we took everyone. We decided to go in with two stretched legs to make the club Eredivisoorde: the players, the staff, the employees and the employees are the same”.
“If you add everything together, we will pick up between two and three million extra.”
“In nine months we have maintained ourselves and we started renovating and expanding. If you add everything together, we will eventually bring in between two and three million extra. We will, for example,, with a little more media, from a turnover of 16 to 20 million euros,” said the NAC director.
That would be a world performance because the costs and benefits in the NAC housekeeping book are back in balance. The stadium deal is of vital importance and Oversier knows that happiness at a football club is always very brittle.
“The momentum is still there now,” he concludes. “But of course there are always lesser times and the ship is not nearly in a safe haven. I find that quite exciting. But the longer we keep this up together, the stronger we get together.”