BUILDING SPORT SOCIETIES
By Troy Kirby
Tao of Sports, LLC
Copyright ©2014 by Troy Kirby
www.sportstao.com
ISBN - 978-0-9835184-7-1
All rights reserved, which includes the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form (electronic, paper, audio, video, cloud, etc) whatsoever except as provided by the U.S. Copyright Law.
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1 - SPORT FAN MEMBERSHIPS
Fan membership models have been successful in the European and international sport system. They financially support clubs, which require their constant monetary revenue streams to function. This is different from the role that membership plays in the United States sports industry, which are sold on a per season annual basis in ticket form. There is no membership to speak of in most sports in the United States, except possibly in the National Football League, which offers “seat licenses” and the right to purchase a ticket to that seat, with a 10-year commitment.
Make no mistake about what true fan membership is. It's about building a society of collective fans who push financial support for meetings in- and outside of the normal match days. This is different from the P.S.L. methodology of the NFL, which does not even guarantee that the purchase of a license buys a ticket to the game. That, in effect, is a double-dip approach to the fan base.
Ever since Stanford’s legendary tennis coach Dick Gould decided to create the personal seat license to fund his stadium as well as renovations, it has been a whole new ballgame in terms of sports revenue. The National Football League took the model, first adopted by the Carolina Panthers in the early 1990s, and by the mid-2010s, there are 16 teams that have P.S.L. programs.
Selling a P.S.L. is about territory around the stadium while fan membership models are about allegiance and support of the club. Both play interesting roles in the tangible efforts of the franchise to grow financially. The P.S.L. is used as a component to help pay for stadium improvements. The membership also is considered a direct revenue stream support of the club for financial improvements, but also player or management contracts. Both play their part in selling imagery to the fan base that without their support, the team would suffer if the memberships or P.S.L. system were to fail to hit specific growth numbers.
Fan membership is also about something else that a P.S.L. or season ticket cannot provide: loyalty. While United States sports fans may align themselves in specific groupings based on teams, logos or players, it is the financial support difference which separates a fan membership from a standard ticket buyer. It's more than an affiliation of insignia and is based on a total affiliation of the fan's self.
That is an imagery that cannot be broken in the same way that a season ticket can, because there is no temporary possession of a seat or stadium location. Instead, it's a fully-functional belief system using the membership model as a conduit which allows the fan to feel that he is helping control and guide to success on the field of play through their financial support.
The membership forges a core bond from the club to the fan. It's something built upon a generational financial support where the monetary figure becomes almost automatic and passed down by family member, supporting one club as a brand of loyalty even if the fan does not attend any or all matches that season.
The brand loyalty proposition allows the fans to believe that their financial support creates not only success in the standings, but allows them to act as a shareholder in the club’s overall operations. Being a member at specifically high levels also allows the fans to feel that they are an extension of the club itself, in their giving power.
Season tickets for United States professional sport are about re-grouping on an annual basis for a period of time. There is a temporal feel to the entire exercise. While some season ticket holders have seats for a given period of 5, 10 or even 20 years, during the off-season, they do not involve themselves with the team’s inner machinations beyond what they hear from the traditional news or social media. Aside from either a phone call from their customer service representative to renew their seats for the next season, or a visit to the box office to do the transaction in-person, there is little, if any, interaction between the team and its fan base.
The transactional nature of U.S. professional sports teams is drastically different than that overseas. In Europe and Oceania, the fan membership model is really about stewardship. It is about a legacy, not a transaction, but an adoption of protecting each neighborhood or area club as a component of the greater philanthropic nature. Each fan member isn’t just doing it for direct results to themselves, but as a reflection of the area, or their community as well.
The closest comparison in the United States would not be with professional teams, but with collegiate athletic department annual funds, provided as a stewardship. This has a powerful messaging that has not been replicated in the United States, where most fan membership models (San Diego Padres, Phoenix Suns, etc) have been more geared toward “rebranding” the words “season ticket” into “fan membership” with a few extra activities in the off-season.
European and Oceania fan membership is completely different. There is often little to no off-season. Even when the on-field efforts of gameday matches have culminated, the membership stays intact and the involvement between a club and its fan base actually increases during the off-season. This is because the fan base views itself as an extension of the club’s efforts toward long-term success.
Financial support grows as well because the periods of transition between each season’s matches becomes less of a renewal phase than an expansion phase. Each member helps seek out new members to build the program. Whereas with season tickets, there is a cut-off of last’s seasons attendees who now have to be convinced that they should rejoin again, prior to new prospective season ticket holders being sold on joining as well.
This is where the two types of sport business separate in their affiliation with the organization:
First: A season ticket model that is a cyclical transaction of reselling the same product to the same customers annually.
Second: A true fan membership model is viewed as a continual legacy buy.
This is not to suggest that season tickets do not serve a role with the customer, but the legacy buy is the harder of the two the break since it is eventually viewed as a cost of living purchase to show pride and affiliation in the team beyond what the fan receives by attending the matches themselves.
When Chicago Cubs President William Veeck Sr. created the season ticket in the early 1920s as a solution to having to request an annual loan from local banks to cover expenses, the season ticket was the correct model for the time. However, it’s legacy has diminished as the availability of HDtv and global reach of sports has made it possible to access every game, to every sports league, both live and archived, from the couch. That wasn’t possible back in the 1920s, where radio was the only live competitor for the sports consumer’s attention span.
Affiliation is a complex, individual component for any person, let alone a sports fan. In the film world, a movie star releases one to three films annually. While the star may have a legion of fans who love any movie the star is in, and will go see that film on opening weekend, this passionate fan base does not extend much beyond that. When award season comes around, there is no strong personal identification between the actor and the fan base of the same core. The fan base is not upset if the actor does not win the achievement of their peers, nor heartbroken if a sure thing such as an award nomination for a role does not happen. This is because of a separation of periods when the fan feels she receives something (great acting in a film) compared to something only the star receives (accolades from their peers).
Sport is wholly different in both the season ticket or fan membership model. If the team does not win, the fan feels it emotionally. There is a bond between the organization and its base. There is a specific team that the fan will follow. While fans may watch contests between other teams, they will not feel the same passion or connection by the end result, because they have no dog in that fight. It also speaks to how each fan feels about the organization they do care about. It represents their value system, legacy with family and friends, and memories. When the club places its roster out on the field for a match, there is an expectation of victory because the fan base feels passion and support aligned with the goals of the organization.
This is where the sports world segments itself. Sport fans may respect or follow another team for a specific point in passing for viewing pleasure, but that does not translate, nor amount to the passion or financial support that those fans provide for a specific team or logo. The entire organization represents the fans’ value system. The fan also projects his emotions and self-image on the core values represented by the team and its likenesses.
Winning on the field is often mistaken as the only value to the fan, but winning is only one component of the value proposition. It cannot be the whole package. And while winning may be wholly important to the super fan who is loyal yet manic in her financial support and beliefs, it does not translate to the overall demographic of the entire organization’s base. In fact, sports organizations demonstrate that true fans are fair weather in nature because when the wins on the field are in short supply, the true fans rarely attend the matches. The super fan is the first to stay away when the team performs a mediocre, unsuccessful run in the league standings.
This generates a burning question to the sports marketer about what the organization’s values represent to the fan base: Is the club’s ultimate goal merely to win and if they do not win, have they not delivered a quality experience to the fans regardless of what they present aside from a winning result?
This is a conundrum for sports marketers. There cannot be a system in which wins aren’t a part of the equation, but they cannot be considered the whole result. In fact, there are few components to the game day experience that the sports marketer finds harder to control than winning. This is one of the issues that sports marketers tend to use as a wedge issue when they are unsuccessful at drawing fans – the club doesn’t win enough. And yet, winning cannot be viewed as the most important aspect to the fan experience, because that is all the sports marketer has to use to sell the product with.
Nothing says winning on the field cures all of the ills in the stands. Even if the club does win, there are no guarantees that fans will attend games or find the value proposition worth their time. A win on the field, even if it helps from a league or conference standpoint, is temporal in its exchange with the fan. If the organization has not delivered an overall quality fan experience to its customers, its value for the product is judged on the experience, not the match day wins.
No franchise or club can exist in the always-win model. The win or go home mentality may work for on-the-field play, however, it destroys the idea of what the fan experience in the stands is all about. While it is important for the roster management side of the team to function at a “win at all costs,” this should not be how sports business is conducted. There are no winners when winning on the field is the only sports marketing aspect to draw fans. There are only losers, especially in the club’s financial coffers.
Clubs should instead try to determine their financial success on the idea that they will not win. The strategy of focusing on how to build revenue by creating enough value for each fan that aside from the on-the-field exploits, the customers focus on what they collectively drew out of the experience. This may sound harsh, stark and rash to offer up as a strategic goal – the idea that winning on the field does not matter – but it does present great business practices when club executives and the sports marketer focus on that which they can control, which is the customer experience as a whole.
Customers may not associate wins and losses when attending matches as much as the club or its executives like to believe. Typically, wins and losses have less to do with the perception of whether the fan felt his money was well-spent. The fan is seeking out the chance to have fun, to be involved, and to find value in the financial transaction. That is why the fan purchases into the sports product: for fun.
This doesn’t mean that support through membership does not exist. Quite the opposite is true as membership support means the fan’s interaction with the team increases. The fans see themselves as shareholders in the organization and the membership bond allows them to become firm believers in the product as well as the service provided by the club. This goes beyond wins and negates losses, as the fan would pledge dire support regardless of the standings. She has invested in the product, wholly, beyond the current field results.
This is where the fan experience shatters the normal excuse of non-renewal for bad team performance. The fan experience allows the member to add credibility to their annualized purchase. There is more received in terms of fun at the sporting event than anywhere else, so the fan chooses to continue the purchase based on loyalty, respect and tradition rather than the performance of the team in a given year.