By Nathan Hirsch & Symon Perriman
Welcome back to FanWide’s Guide to Starting and Growing a Fan Club in your Sports Bar. In our previous posts, we have reviewed the value of understanding the upcoming sports seasons and how that can impact which fan clubs to engage throughout the year. We have also discussed how to pick the right team for your location and how to connect with the local alumni association or start your own fan club chapter.
Now that you’ve found your team, you can begin your marketing strategy.
Sports Bars Should Start by Looking Inward
Even if you were lucky enough to partner with an existing fan club chapter, you must still actively promote its events to keep the group growing. You should be constantly trying to attract new supporters who have recently moved to the area or are visiting your city.
Start by using your establishment as its own marketing channel, by putting up table tents on the bar, flyers in high traffic locations, and hanging a team banner or flag outside to show that you will be the local meetup location for your new team.
All Sports are Social
When promoting the events to younger sports fans, social media is king. Plain and simple, almost everyone under 30 is on it at some point in the day, whether that is Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.
Social media often gives the best ROI when seeking potential patrons because of its massive reach at little to no cost. You should be on the major platforms promoting your spot as the hometown bar for your team, using teams-specific hashtags (like #GoDuke), so that you post gets linked to other related messages. You can find the hashtag for your fan club by browsing the team’s official social media page.
Use your bar’s Facebook page to create and promote your events, then use Instagram or Twitter by sharing photos and videos showing people having a great time at a game watch party. Be sure to tag the fans in attendance if you know them as this will make them more likely to share with their followers. The power of social media to gain followers and likes can help tremendously in making you the top host in your city.
Unlike emails which are saved until the recipient opens it, social media posts are transitory, so they gradually become less visible as they get displaced by newer content. To maximize the impact when you post to your social channels, you have to consider when your patrons are most likely to be looking at their social media channels.
Check out the following chart which shows website traffic throughout the week at FanWide.com. This shows when sports fans are trying to find a place to watch their favorite teams. The darker colors represent the busier times (the times are in Pacific Time).
Source: FanWide
You can see that the most popular days when fans are searching for events are early on the weekend (before their team plays) and Tuesdays (after Monday Night Football). You can see the same type of data from your own website or social media accounts, which helps you understand when your guests and follower are most active. Posting on social or sending emails to your patrons earlier in the week will probably help your patrons plan their weekend, which should include a trip to your bar on gameday!
Handling TBD Games
One of the most difficult things when organizing game viewing parties is the dreaded “to be determined” (TBD) start time for a game. Nothing will drive you crazier than not knowing when your team will be playing until a few days before kickoff. This typically happens during playoffs or later in a season when broadcasters want to see which teams should be featured in their primetime slots. This is especially true for NCAA Football, when many of the last-season primetime broadcasts will only be determined the week of the game.
There is no simple solution for this, but you can be as prepared as possible by subscribing to the SportsTV Guide, so you’ll have the most up-to-date broadcast information at your fingertips.
Once the times are officially posted, get out the information using SportsTV Guide’s web widget, and promoting the info on your the social media so your guests and followers know when to come to your bar and watch the game. You may even impress your patrons if you know the tipoff time before they do. If your events are listed on FanWide.com, they will automatically promote your events to local sports fans in your area and adjust the scheduled as it changes, helping you stay ahead of any uncertainties.
Don’t Forget About Email Marketing
Let’s talk about the power of emails! Almost every American has an email address, so it may be the best way to connect with patrons of all ages.
You’ll need to find the right frequency to send emails. Too often and customers may unsubscribe, yet too few and customers may miss your events. A good practice is sending a single email towards start of the week with a list of all upcoming events for the next two weeks.
FanWide found that sending emails to sports fans on Tuesday resulted in the highest opening and engagement rate. People usually are catching up on weekend emails on Monday, and Tuesday gives them more time to plan the rest of their week. During the NFL season there are also Monday Night Football games which often change the standings, so fans may wait to plan their weekend the following day. Essentially Tuesday is the start of that week for NFL fans.
When Should Your Sports Bar Promote Events?
The league itself may also influence when you should promote the event. Here’s some good rules to follow:
- NFL & NCAA Football. Football teams play 12 to 16 games in the regular season, so every game counts. Most games are played at good times on the weekend, and fans will often plan their schedule around their team. But as soon as the team is eliminated from post-season contention, which can happen halfway through the season, the fans’ interest quickly drops off.
- NCAA Basketball & Soccer. With about 30 games per season, fans generally watch about half the games, or one per week. You should focus on promoting all the big tournaments (season openers, conference tournaments, and March Madness/NIT), rivalry games, or matchups against top ranked teams.
- NBA & NHL. Teams in these leagues have about 80 regular season games. The most successful watch parties will be for the opening games, rivalries, weekends, holiday games, and throughout the playoffs, if your team is lucky enough to make it. You probably will not get a big crowd for a midweek game against a struggling team.
- Professional baseball teams play over 160 games a season! Unfortunately, this means that fan interest is diluted and can be almost non-existent for insignificant games. We recommend only promoting events for opening day, important games, rivalries, and the weeks leading up to a postseason berth. Once an MLB team misses the playoffs, fan interest drops massively, so some bars wait until towards the middle of the baseball season before picking a fan club chapter to support.
No matter the sport, the most important thing is knowing how your team is doing throughout the entire season. Take a look, for example, at the Green Bay Packers in 2018. They were projected to go to the playoffs and have strong following across their hundreds of their fan club chapters. It would make sense for bar operators to plan for a full house every Sunday for the regular season, and beyond, to host Packers fans. However, after going 3-2-1 by week six, and dropping to 4-6-1 after week 12, fan enthusiasm tanked. Consequently, you might need to adjust your future Sunday plans based on the success of the season and look for other sports to generate revenue for your bar.
Get Your Sports BarListed on FanWide
If you would like to maximize your reach, make sure your game watch parties are listed on FanWide.com so local fans know where to go. Events on FanWide usually get published on Google, Bing, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to maximize the reach to sports fans. They also partner with many professional sports teams and leagues to help groups set up new official fan club chapters around the country, matching these fan clubs to sports bars that are looking for more patrons.
FanWide will even help you project the popularity and attendance for any game, so you can optimize your operations to have the right-sized staff and inventory.
What Info Sports Bars Should Publish
A good question to ask is what information should be posted about your game watch party? You want to show potential guetss that they will get an experience tailored to their favorite team and its fan culture. Describe the experience of watching your favorite team with other local fans in your hometown with local food and drink, giving them a gameday experience like they would get inside their favorite team’s stadium. Mention any raffles, prizes or anything else which will help you stand out from the crowd. Add photos from past game watch parties, hashtags to help likeminded fans discover your event, and don’t forget to mention the day and time of kickoff!
You should now know a variety of marketing tips which you can use to increase the size of your crowd and grow your revenue. Try using both social media and email marketing to engage patrons of all ages, and use the built-in social media analytics tools to determine the best times of the day to reach each audience.
Also be aware of how your fan club’s team is doing throughout the season as their success may be linked to yours. Stay tuned for the next lesson on how to give your patrons a great gameday experience so they keep coming back to your bar.
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