When fans want to find a place to catch the game, they turn to the Internet.
Assuming that they find you in search and bar finder apps, they’re going to to check out your website. In fact, 78% of fans check a bar’s website before visiting for the first time.
And it’s not just die hard fans. According to a Kantar study, casual sports fans are most likely to watch sports outside of their own homes, including bars and restaurants (42%).
Your website is your bar’s first impression. It’s essential that it makes a strong one and gives fans and visitors exactly what they need to choose you to watch the game.
What are fans looking for on your website?
If our goal is to use our website to grab attention and drive football fans to our seats, we need to know why they’re at our site in the first place and what they’re looking for. It goes beyond location, operating hours, and food/drink menu.
Fortunately, there’s some good data out there to guide us.
To start, they want to make sure you take live sports seriously. In this case, football.
To quote one fan we spoke to, “If they don’t take sport seriously online, I don’t believe they take it seriously in venue.”
This means we need to show them that we really care about the games and sports they care about.
Secondly, fans want to know what your atmosphere is like. According to the Kantar study, atmosphere is the most important element in decision making. Half of respondents (50%) report it as their top factor for choosing a bar – outranking convenience (44%) and price (43%).
Watching sports is a shared experience. Fans want to enjoy the game (win or lose) with other fans. At the core of our nature, we are social creatures and shared experiences can bring immense feelings of joy. Your bar can be the facilitator of that shared experience and joy.
Thirdly, fans want to be able to plan ahead. Everyone’s lives are supersaturated with work, social commitments, family events, etc. No one has the spare time or energy to just randomly pick a bar and hope they’re airing the game they want. They need to know what you’re showing and when, so they can fit it into their busy schedule.
In fact, 78% of sports fans say they would go out more often if it were easier to plan ahead for major events. Our goal as operators should be to make it as easy to do that as possible.
If we can check each of these three boxes, we greatly increase our chance of driving more fans to visit us. And as we’ve discussed in other posts, a few extra visits each week can quickly add up to more than $10,000 a year in extra revenue.
This may sound like a lot but we can easily build our website to hit each pain point.
Show fans that you take football seriously
As noted above, 78% of fans check out a website first before visiting. And what they’re looking for is to make sure you take sports seriously.
In this specific case, they want to make sure you take football seriously.
If they hit your home page and don’t see a single hint that you show the NFL and NCAA, they’ll move on. Your website is your bar’s first impression and you need it to assure fans that you’re the place to watch football.
There’s a few ways you can achieve this simply on your homepage.
To start, if you use a slider (or slide show) feature on your homepage, dedicate one of the slides to football. Make this an exciting image or video with text that makes it clear that you show football religiously. This can also link to a dedicated page with more game info (see below).
If you don’t have a slider, you’ll still want some sort of photo, video or graphic that makes it clear that you show sports and take sports seriously. Don’t leave fans guessing. By having some sports info on your homepage, visitors will know that sports isn’t an afterthought but key feature of your bar.
You may also want to have a page dedicated to sports. It can be linked to in the menu bar for easy reference and/or from your homepage elements. This page can display:
📸 Photos and video from previous gamedays at your bar
🏈 Watch party information
🗓️ Your weekly game schedule
🧢 Fan club information
🍗 Gameday menu specials
And anything else that’s important for fans to know about watching sports at your bar.
Show them your gameday atmosphere
Part of showing that your bar takes sports seriously is by showing your online visitors what watching games are like at your bar. Fans want to see what your atmosphere is like. What’s the energy like during big events? How’s the vibes?
Photos and videos are how you show fans what gameday at your bar is like. It’s the ultimate show, don’t tell.
Photos are great at capturing raw emotion in a single moment.
Think: close ups of fans cheering or watching with earnest intent, completely invested in the action. Their faces show the excitement and investment in the game. You can also snag photos from behind fans, their arms raised in celebration while the game, on your TVs, play in the background.
Videos capture the overall energy of your location.
Most of us have seen the video meme of a bunch of fans watching a soccer match on a big screen TV and then roar and erupt as the goal is scored. This one…
Who doesn’t want to go catch a match at that place? Huge TV, immense crowd and even bigger energy. It looks (and feels) like the ultimate soccer hangout.
That’s the type of video you’re looking to capture. It doesn’t have to be that level of epic and over-the-top. But you want to capture exciting moments that show much fun watching football at your bar is like.
If you don’t have good pics or vids to choose from currently, it’s worth investing in. If you have the talent in house, have a team member take a shift getting some solid media to use on your website and social media.
It’s also well worth hiring a pro who knows how to capture the raw energy and emotion of watching sports at your bar.
Help fans plan ahead by telling them what football games you’re showing
The number one reason fans visit sports bars is to watch sports. So it makes sense that they’re visiting your bar’s website to see what games you’re showing.
Where else are they going to get that information?
If a fan visits your site and sees no game info, there’s a good chance they’ll look elsewhere. No one wants to roll the dice and hope a bar is showing the game they want to watch. Fans can’t plan with that sort of uncertainty.
Listing your weekly game schedule is the easiest way to help fans plan their visit.
You could do this manually. For example, Fogg Street in Nashville lists out every soccer and football game they can show for an entire month and bold the games that “are guaranteed to play” on their TVs.
It’s simple, looks great, and draws a lot of attention.
Pages like this can also be a fair amount of work, especially if you are limited on time and team.
You can achieve the same idea for less work with FANZO’s web integration. It syncs to your FANZO Venues profile, so when you choose what games you’re showing in a given week, it automatically updates on your website. All it takes is the ability to copy-paste a few short lines of code onto your page.
After that, it’s just a few minutes of clicking games every week to keep your profile and schedule updated.
(Bonus: this also syncs to FANZO’s social media integration which auto-posts your game schedule to your social media accounts, further marketing sports to fans and your followers. A huge time saver.)
Wrapping it up
When football fans are looking for a place to catch their game, they turn to search. Once they find you, they’re going to check out your website. It’s important to make sure you’re giving them info they need to choose you.
✅ Show that you take live sports (e.g, football) seriously.
✅ Show them your gameday atmosphere.
✅ Tell them what games you’re showing so they can more easily plan their visit.
Check these three boxes and you’re well on your way to building a bigger following.
Want to learn more about SportsTV Guide and FANZO can help your marketing? Get in touch!
Leave A Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.