By Nathan Hirsch & Symon Perriman
So, you want to host a fan club for a popular sports team at your bar? In this six-part series we are enlisting the help of our friends at FanWide.com to walk you through how to put on the best game viewing party for a sports fan club at your establishment.
FanWide’s Guide to Starting and Growing a Fan Club in your Sports Bar will give a 360-degree view on all the best practices that result in a thriving watch party revenue stream.
Some of the topics we will cover include, knowing the sports seasons & schedules, picking the best fan club for your restaurant, how to convince fan clubs to choose your bar as their new home base, best practices for promoting your new fan club, hosting great gameday events, and how to keep fans engaged during the offseason.
This series is going to help you cover what it takes to be the go-to bar for any fan club chapter by creating a gameday experience that is second to none!
Know the Sports Seasons to Find the Best League
Let’s say it’s your lucky day and a guest asks, “Would you be able to host our fan club chapter at your sports bar this season?” Before you get too excited about the hundreds (or thousands) of new guests you’ll be bringing in throughout the season, you had better know a bit about this sport and when the games are being played. You may only get one chance to impress your prospective fan club chapter, so it’s important that you do your homework so that you know which opportunities may be coming up.
First you need to know when upcoming sports seasons begin so you can plan in advance. Most sports bars will know the majors US leagues, but those aren’t the only fan clubs sports bars should expect to attract. European soccer and rugby, for example, are also prime targets.
Next, you’ll then need to know which days the league plays their games throughout the week to make sure it still fits your schedule. You can use the following table to see the general operating months for the major sports leagues, sorted by their regular season start date.
Source: FanWide
You will also find that some leagues are just more popular than other, which means that there are more fans spread around the country. The following chart shows the percentage of FanWide’s almost 12,500 fan clubs by each major American sports league. The NFL dominates with almost half of all the fan clubs (47%), followed by college football (16%), MLB (15%), college hoops (8%), and then the NBA (6%) and the NHL (6%).
Source: FanWide
You want to start planning for your upcoming season about three months before it begins. Ninety days goes quicker than you would think, and you’ll need all of it to find an available fan club, promote the event to local fans, and plan great events each week.
A simpler route is to work with our friends at FanWide.com who can match you with a local fan club looking for a new host for their viewing parties throughout the year. FanWide also partners with professional sports leagues to organize their official watch parties at bars around the country. All events are promoted to local sports fans via email, web, search engines, and social media.
How Well Do You Know the Busy & Slow Sports Seasons?
To give you the full picture of sports throughout the year, the following graph shows the total number of sports games in any given week throughout the year for all the popular televised sports.
Source: FanWide
In total, there are more than 12,000 games through these leagues for 2019. You may notice that the summer is the quietest time and is dominated by baseball. During this period, you may want to host watch parties for intermittent events — like the World Cup or Olympics — or find alternative sports, like Rugby League (RLIF) or the American Flag Football League (AFFL).
There is also a peak in late November when winter sports are beginning, so almost all the leagues are playing at once. There are also spikes in March during the NCAA basketball tournament and in April when the MLB season is beginning, but before the NBA and NHL regular seasons end.
Knowing the standard TV broadcast hours for each league is particularly important. For example, if you are in Los Angeles and want to attract a college football fan club from the East Coast, you will have to open for them before 9am and may need to serve a breakfast menu. If you are willing to open early, go for it, but planning will allow you to avoid committing to something you may not want to do regularly. In fact, flexibility in opening hours is an incredibly attractive element to securing watch parties for teams or games based in different time zones.
Know the Leagues’ Audience
Looking at your audience, there may be some segmentation that you’ll need to understand to help you identify which sports fan clubs you want to target. For the college audience, most avid fans will be students and alumni. They are generally going to be younger and more social, but will be buying cheaper options the menu and love deals. There may be more emphasis towards alcoholic drinks than food, so think about offering team-specific drink promotions sponsored by your local beverage distributor. As for location, these fans will be mostly clustered around metro areas and will go out for the night once the game is over.
Professional sports fans may be older in age, and more settled down in life, possibly with a family, thus more will live in the suburbs rather than in the city. This audience will probably have more income to spend on food and drinks, so they won’t always make their menu choices based on deals. They may also be looking for an all-ages venue so they can bring their kids and start sharing this cultural sports experience. What can really help is asking if any of your regular patrons are alumni or fan club members, because they may be able to do some of this work for you.
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In conclusion, make sure you know which sports seasons are coming up so that you are ready for any opportunities. Also consider hosting watch parties for sporting events which do not occur every year, such as the Women’s FIFA World Cup Soccer (Summer 2019), Rugby World Cup (Fall 2019), Summer Olympics (Summer 2020), Rugby League World Cup (Summer 2021), Winter Olympics (Winter 2022), and Men’s FIFA World Cup Soccer (Summer 2022).
Before the season begins, give yourself time to plan so you can organize other events around your busiest sports days, avoid conflicting events, and coordinate the staffing schedule for those game days.
Depending on your time zone, consider those challenging early or late games, and having your establishment open 30 minutes prior to the start if the game or staying open late for an overtime. Make sure you also know when the local sports teams will be playing as your regular guests may still want to see them.
Now that you know which leagues to target, the second part of this series will show you how to find the best team for your bar.
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