By L.E. Eisenmenger - BOSTON, MA (Oct 19, 2009) USSoccerPlayers -- In August, Major League Soccer ticket sales dipped over 4% overall and dropped double digits up to 34% for six franchises while nationwide sales for international matches skyrocketed. That should be enough of an indication that MLS needs to rethink what marketing to adults means.
The biggest challenge MLS faces is the diversity of soccer fans in this country. There are US national team fans, Premier League and European fans, MLS fans, WPS fans, South and Central American soccer fans, USL fans, college soccer fans, and youth soccer fans. Many of these people disregard other leagues. Some are openly contemptuous.Initially, MLS targeted youth markets, assuming young players would grow into adult ticket buyers. This has proven not to be the case.
Television promotions and broadcasts have grown in presentation and in volume, but it’s the exceptions that give MLS a unique stadium atmosphere. It’s no coincidence that most are expansion teams, with older clubs seeing declines in attendance and general appeal.
MLS clubs are re-imagining their marketing plans, trying to attract adults. More often than not they follow an established template, such as that of the National Football League, the 'classic rock' of American pro sports. For MLS, this can come off feeling and looking like a cheap imitation.
American football is a different game with a different mentality and different fans, so MLS needs to use different strategies and build on the collective strength of diverse American soccer fans to creative a successful, unique atmosphere. American football is an American-grown male-played sport. Soccer is an international sport carried through generations of diverse immigrants and also played by 15 million US females, and those are two good reasons MLS can sell tickets and succeed.
Given the crash and burn of the print media industry, MLS went in-house online to create low-budget news, interviews, video promotions, and fan boards. They developed MLSnet into a fairly accessible statistics and sanitized news source. But in the process of creating a communications product, they lost track of their very specific audience.
Simply put, they often deal with college-educated and media-saturated fans born and raised in the wiles of marketing. These fans have seen oil companies promote the environment, fast food joints claim health benefits, and watch celebrities propping up products nobody should want, much less need.
American soccer’s target audience is smarter and savvier than the people trying to sell to them, and MLS can use that to their advantage. MLS commissioner Don Garber is on the right track with his blog and twitter feed. MLS and their clubs need to open the discussion about the growth of the league to the public and attract fans with increased transparency. Growth, change, and possibility are what MLS is all about. These are big picture topics and often the message behind powerful advertising campaigns.
Money is interesting. Policy is interesting. Conversation is interesting. Being talked at is not. MLS doesn’t even need to reveal dollars and deals, but it can raise its profile by making business and growth a public matter, opening up discussions about the choices and outcomes they face. When people/consumers are faced with controversy, as small as one product vs another, they make a decision.
The critical moment in advertising and sales occurs when the customer makes a decision. They commit to that decision, defend it, invest in it, and often affiliate with a tribe. The greatest challenge in MLS is affiliation, within the current power structures of the sport and with both the general sports fan and the genuine soccer fans. The risk is alienation. When it works, it creates a culture.
For MLS, this culture should include convincing people that they’re putting money into the product by spending on talent. The games should be presented in an atmosphere that speaks to soccer in the contemporary era and as a unique experience. MLS doesn’t have to be like anything else, and it would be far better off putting that into practice.
High quality players, teams, and games satisfy the various tribes of fans. Guillermo Barros Schelloto, Cuauhtemoc Blanco, or Landon Donovan don’t need the sideshow to get their game over. It’s right there in front of the audience.
Rather than make the major and minor league moves that risk alienating a soccer-specific audience, make the experience about the game. Copying what other North American leagues are doing doesn’t work for those leagues, not really. Everything gets turned into a trend and is eventually pushed aside for whatever is next. Sports marketing becomes about product rather than the event.
Soccer in America can be different. After all, this game is about character.
L.E. Eisenmenger writes for a variety of outlets including covering Boston soccer for The Examiner. Contact her at eisenmenger@soccerlens.com.
What I don’t think enough people at MLS get is that all a league’s teams don’t need to be just alike. The current model is no different than what Nike was trying to do in ’95. It’s just more current. What MLS needs is a reality check. They’re not important to enough people. Rather than act like that’s an insult, come up with ways to matter. The big one would be making sure your schedule highlights league games rather than putting on a bunch of exhibitions and whatever.
What MLS need to do is change many of their team names. San Jose Earthquake? New England Revolution?… give me a break. It makes MLS feel cheap and silly with those silly gimmick names. If MLS want to get serious, get serious, no Gimmick names, no cheerleader, No Mascot, all we want is Soccer game, that is all. Some Firework would be nice, but that is it.
If you win over an adult fan, you have someone with disposable income. That whole youth soccer thing was an attempt to get families to spend, but they’ll never spend more than a few times a year. Doing steep discounts for youth teams is a wash in the long haul. Create an adult fan, and you normally end up with someone who doesn’t need permission to spend money and a ride.
This is a topic too seldom addressed, but even when it is, there are few concrete answers. We all know MLS needs to do a better job of marketing itself, but few of us would be a willing applicant for the job if it came down to knocking up a convincing power-point presentation. Exactly how do you target fans nationwide in a league of disparate cities where the local sports market varies hugely from one franchise to the next?
Blanco has been a success for Chicago, thanks to a mixture of his play, his character, and his popularity among local fans, but we’ve seen that formula fail in countless other markets. Signing genuine talent is always a big risk when compared with picking up half a dozen cheap, expendable college boys, one of whom might turn out to be a prospect.
Also, I’m not sure where Don Garber’s twitter feed fits into all this. Are people making decisions on next year’s season tickets based on The Don’s two cents, or sentences, of accrued soccer wisdom?
One thing that is clear is that the quality of play and talent in the MLS is very poor by world standards. It’s no wonder immigrants such as myself will prefer to spend their time and dollars watching the Premier League, European or South American leagues. The MLS in the US is a ‘business model’, not a cultural entity as it is in most other parts of the globe. Fans are treated simply as purchasers, and the sad fact is that what they are asked to purchase pales in comparison to the rest of the world’s domestic leagues. In most other countries, soccer grew up out of the working-class areas and the intense rivalries between teams are the result of many decades of evolution; such teams are not ‘manufactured’, they are embedded in the culture. The biggest hope for the MLS lies in the creation of teams from the grass-roots up, not the fat, bloated MLS owners down.
Re transparency:
Conflict lies at the heart of identification (commitment) whether political debate, characters in books or movies, spending choices. Presenting the controversies, possible outcomes from various directions in marketing and league development, forces people/consumers to make choices whether they care or not. Once they’ve agreed/disagreed to anything at any level, their commitment increases because they identify is some way and will stay involved because they invested some part of themselves in their decision. The league’s decision’s (and hence the league) will then matter to them.
Investment (personal) and spending (time, money) follow identification.
I’m honestly not sure what you’re on about there. I’ve invested ten years of time and money in DC United, and frankly, I no longer give a rat’s arse.
Not sure I agree with you on quality of play, Paul. Did you watch last night’s Fulham-Hull game? Hull are dreadful, absolutely dreadful. Honestly, in most leagues in Europe once you get past the teams that are usually at the top, the level of play drops off considerably. The difference is that in MLS we don’t tend to get a team that is just miles ahead of the competition, and that reinforces the idea that none of them are really that great. A few MLS teams are playing well in the CONCACAF Champions league. Sure, they’re getting beaten by the Mexican teams, but I think everyone expects that.
I do agree with you that MLS teams need to work grassroots in order to pick-up support. I actually think most teams are in good cities for soccer (yes, even Dallas, a club that was well supported until ownership lost the plot.) but they need to do a better job of creating an actual soccer atmosphere. I still hear teams talking about chasing the family ticket, and while I agree that families cannot be ignored, chasing the family at the expense of the supporters groups is not the way to go. Supporters groups are guaranteed attendees. These are the people buying season tickets and group packages. These are the people traveling. These are the people evangelizing the team to the community without being paid to do it. Kill that and you’re just at the mercy of fickle families who are always looking for a cheaper way to spend family time.
This is where teams like NE, Chicago (great as Section 8 are, they’re constantly fighting the front office), Colorado, and NY are falling down. Big time.
MLs is like bands I used to like. They’re still pushing a product, but I’m just not interested in buying. I don’t mind hearing good things. I might even read a review assuring me it’s ‘a classic return to form.’ But I’m not spending my money.
One more thing. I don’t think I’m alone in deciding the national team is enough. They play more games in a year than most NFL teams. It’s spread out. I don’t need to be that involved with pro soccer. MLS seems to think it’s required to be a full-fledged fan. I don’t agree. To me, the obsessives that are watching a bunch of games every week are no different than those people who spend all day Saturday and Sunday watching college and pro football. At least those guys get a break half the year.
I agree with Maeles – the MLS seems to demand instant allegiance from the public, whereas this needs to be a) relevant to the public, b) earned. These people don’t want to just mooch round JC Penney on a rainy Sunday afternoon – they want a team they can relate to, follow and believe in. And Chris, yes, I see the point you’re making – I have seen some howlers of games in the Championship and League One. Plus, I’m a lifelong West Ham supporter, so I know first-hand what frustration, disappointment and suicidal tendencies are! But, by the same token, I saw my local team, the Revs play New York and afterwards I was angry with myself for wasting 2 hours of my life watching a bunch of half-wits huffing and puffing around a rock-hard excuse for a pitch, where you could only see the NFL markings, in front of 6 people – and 5 of those were dressed as Minutemen. The only decent player out there was Allston, and in 18 months I expect he’ll be snapped up by a foreign team. Therein lies another problem, in that anyone really skillful in the MLS is either creaking over the hill or very soon going to end up playing in Europe. And because of this, consistency and true grassroots growth (not the ‘franchise’ kind but real grassroots) is very difficult to achieve in MLS. Trust me, I would really love MLS to be good value, if not just to offset the heartache of following the Irons…