I want to share an article from Fine Soccer:

Welcome to the Soccer Newsletter. Today's newsletter deals with simple marketing for soccer.

Most high school, college and professional teams would love to have more fans attend their games (I didn't include youth club teams because most of them don't even consider the possibility of fans attending other than parents) but too often they seem to be working against themselves to encourage fans to attend.

For school teams, are there flyers being put up around school to let the students know where and when the games are? If you aren't the major activity at a school don't assume people will research to find the next home game. Instead, be proactive and get them the information.

If you have a website, do you keep it up to date? Recently I looked was looking for a high school teams schedule online and the schools web site had a schedule but every game was TBA for location and time. Rather than looking any further, I went to a different game. If you want people to come to your game, make it easy for them to find where and when the games are.

If the local newspaper has a schedule section, make sure your games are listed. If they will put in the results or even a brief write up after a game, provide the information to them in a timely manner.

Use some common sense in scheduling your games when possible. Recently I noticed there was a girls varsity and a boys varsity game for the same school scheduled for the same time. Both were home games but they were using different fields. If they had been scheduled back to back on the same field, it would have allowed people to consider watching both teams play. However, by playing at the same time on different fields, it turned it into an either/or situation.

Get your team out in the community. Do a free clinic for a local recreation league and invite them to your next home game. This gives the kids a connection to the team they might not have otherwise and they will want to watch their "coaches" play.

If you are a school team, support the other teams. Too often, we want others to support out teams but aren't willing to support other teams.

When people do come to your games, make it a positive experience. Have a simple roster available so the fans can know the players. This doesn't have to be an expensive book but rather just a sheet of paper with the players names and numbers etc.

If you want families to come to your games, realize that if it's not a family friendly environment, they wont come. While some have "jupiter jumps" and other games for the young children, I think of greater importance is the language the young fans are exposed to. If the fans are close to the field and can hear your players cursing at each other, cursing at the ref, cursing at the opponents, etc., this isn't the type of environment most people will want their young children exposed to. You might allow certain things to happen on the field but you must realize, this type of language will (and should) discourage families from attending games.

When a game is over, have the players (and coaches) go over and thank the people for attending. Many teams will jog over after a game and wave or clap towards the crowd to thank them for coming. While this is certainly better than nothing, they frequently then go back to their bench, stretch, talk as a team and then slowly get ready to leave. Rather than doing this, have your players go over and actually thank the people for coming. Encourage them to talk to the children as they are leaving. This isn't the time for them to hang out with their friends but rather to talk to the people you want to come back to future games. It takes 5 minutes and can make a big difference for future attendance. If you think that this time could be spent talking to the team about what they did right and wrong, I can assure you that most post game team talks are ineffective because the last thing the players want to do is relive the game that just took place. This type of post game analysis should wait till later on.

Any questions, comments or suggestions should be sent to Lawrence@finesoccer.com or they can be posted on the FineSoccer Forum

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