My thoughts are increasingly that the aim of the game is to create lifelong fans. To do that you’ve got to get them in the door then you’ve got to keep them. You can do the latter with winning football, the question is can you do it with match day experience alone, maybe. You need to make the game almost ancillary to the experience and you need to look at the different experiences people get from football: family, mates, drinking, arguing on the internet, all create bonds stronger than the latest form.
The modern entertainment economy has a million ways to attract and monetise fans that football is loathe to tap into.
Seems to me like airline tickets. Each empty seat is lost money, so you want to fill them at whatever price. People take the piss out of Wasps giving away thousands of tickets but it’s better than empty seats. Those people will buy food and drinks and programmes and hopefully will have a great time and pay off many times over over their lifetime.
It’s a gamble though. Clubs have to look five, ten, fifteen years ahead not just at that seasons budget and that’s a risk many aren’t willing to take especially when they don’t have the experience to know what will work.
The funny thing about our situation is we’ve proven we can decouple the crowds from the budget to some extent. We got promoted and stayed up with tiny crowds. In many ways were in a unique situation and probably better placed than many to take a risk.
I see it how my work sees customers: you’ve got a cost of acquisition and you’ve got a lifetime value and as long as the latter outweighs the former you’re golden. We can afford to lose probably hundreds of pounds to get a lifetime fan on board.
The other side of course is churn and retention and I’m not sure clubs know enough about what makes fans stick and what makes fans give up. They need to figure that out and work out how to increase retention.
As I say, my guess is it’s about minimising the actual performance on the pitch and maximising the other aspects: community, family, tradition, feeling part of something bigger. I’d like to see the match day extended and the club do more to enhance the experience whether it’s drinking in pubs or taking three generations. What that means exactly will be different for different groups of fans but it’s just basic marketing really.
Weve been here before. Look at the stuff Hill did with the sky blue express or whatever. He had the right ideas for the 60s, we need to figure out what the 2020s equivalent is.
Interesting post and one that has merit IMO.
Very few clubs can look a month ahead let alone a generation. What Hill did was reinvent the wheel in terms of the marketing and how to galvanise the City. There is an argument on here that the population of Coventry is multi cultural, that many are from somewhere else and if that argument applies today then it certainly did in the 50’s and 60’s yet somehow Hill tapped into that demographic brilliantly and the ground was filled and it certainly was a revolution.
Yes there are lessons you can learn but recent history has had us on life support and for some/many the club has flatlined whereas for others, the true hardcore, it has become a faith that has been tested but with the upturn has provided the incentive to affirm such belief.
Some go on about the match day experience, the lack of pubs, the location of the ground, the parking, the alternative activities on offer, the price of a ticket...and so on. Yet I spent 15 years on empty terraces and seating at HR from 72 to late 86 with entire rows to myself with a centrally located ground with pubs galore, top flight football and competitively priced tickets.
For me the truth is that a winning team is the factor that drives our support upwards and little else. The product on the pitch dictates who comes and who doesn’t, unless we play a Manchester United or Liverpool and we haven’t played them in our City for a generation. Get it right on the pitch and we have a chance to grow, move grounds and you will lose many, lose games regularly you will lose some until you are down to those that will be there no matter what. We decomposed to such an extent we had nothing but our name and no much more.
This version of the club has won games on the pitch, has offers to entice fans, has had a can do attitude to marketing with shirts, ticketing and pre COVID meetings yet has been hamstrung by playing outside the boundaries of the City. One step forward two steps back, like much of our history. We find a way to shoot ourselves in the foot.
It is imperative that we take risks at this point IMO, organic growth is not an option, it’s ALL or NOTHING because a team finishing where we did last season for a few years with no signs of progress will test the will of many.
You can see on here how some see the horizon differently to others, there is already an undercurrent growing regarding our preparations for the new season that is waiting to spew it’s bile at the club, the manager and the players. There is little leeway, goodwill is gained by the last result and that was 7-1 to MK Dons according to some. It’s about the result.
