Offseason Opportunities
With NISA wrapping up their season a week ago, we’re down to one national league (UPSL) and a handful of regionals in action (which we’ll continue to cover, obviously). But for a host of men’s and women’s teams, the long offseason is upon them. Most leagues now dormant won’t kick off again until well into 2021 to avoid the threat of the pandemic. While players will use this time for work, attending school, and, in some cases, just being kids, for the organizations, it’s a time that’s easily wasted, lulled into complacency by weather and exhaustion. But the offseason is full of opportunities, and every club, no matter what level, should take this offseason as a chance to improve their situation for the upcoming season.
Gameday Planning
Too many clubs focus all their attention on the field and not what’s happening around the field. Taking the next step can be greatly facilitated by building a fanbase and potential ticket revenue. Rather than focusing on what isn’t possible (a massive stadium with 100,000 fans), focus on making incremental changes to make your homefield more inviting and memorable to potential fans. Try to look at the experience through the eyes of different kinds of fans. There’s family members, supporter group members, and non-committed fans. Each of those fans are looking for points of interest and while some overlap, some are very specific.
Small investments can go a long way to making your homefield more interesting to fans. Giveaways (even super cheap ones) will drive interest. Concessions are always good and don’t have to cost a fortune. Making players accessible to fans after matches, creating fan traditions, working with supporters groups to facilitate their involvement (but completely independent), designing and selling merchandise, creating a fan ownership or fan membership model, these are all options for creating a better gameday experience for your fans. And a club doesn’t have to pick all of them this offseason, pick one or two, learn lessons, and continue to build.
“We want to make sure our fans can have a great atmosphere where they can bring their family, friends, coworkers, whoever, enjoy quality soccer, while making the experiences one they want to come back to. That means formalizing season tickets, supporters section tickets, getting our Ops team in place, znd making sure that we are ready to hit the ground running. Plus you know we love kit and merch, so there may be some of that in the works.”
Staffing the Club
Keeping a coach on the staff is only the first step to running a club, but definitely an important one. Finding the right person to lead the team can be all about coaching style, playing philosophy, dedication to your club, connection to local feeder clubs and players, even personality is part of the magic mix. The offseason is the time to assess and evaluate your current coaching staff and decide if that person is the right person for the job. If not, it’s time to start the hunt!
But the head coach is only the first person to consider. Many clubs need to consider finding people to fill positions in other areas, like gameday operations, merchandise, social media, and website development. Ignoring those aspects of club building will lead to failures in the long run. Always best to expand possibilities instead of limiting potential by not considering all available options.
“We’ll be focused on supporting new coaching hires and successfully launching our team store.”
Digital Marketing
Digital marketing sounds very complicated to the less tech savvy, but it’s all about doing what you can and adding as you go. There are clubs, and this might describe some of our readers, who have websites with inaccurate information, dead links, wrong emails, updated so long ago that they no longer make sense. Think of a website as the store front facing a busy street. It should stand out, reflect what the organization’s values are, attract potential customers, and it should definitely not look boring, ignored, or outdated. So clubs without those sites, now is the time to get those going. And if a club hasn’t updated in a while, do the work.
The layering on top of a good website is basic steps that don’t have to cost a fortune. Social media is clearly a way to get a club into conversations and customers’ awareness. Having a Facebook page, a Twitter account, and an Instagram handle are the bare minimum. Consider adding a Linkedin page is a smart add on, particularly when it comes to attracting staff. From the basic accounts, there’s further steps: creating a content calendar, producing social media ads, blogging, podcasting, connecting with media outlets (US!), the list is really endless, but doing the basics is the first step.
“In this extended offseason, we’re definitely focusing on growing our digital presence. By leveraging our social media accounts, we’re finding an international audience well beyond our hometown. It’s just the right approach when in-person meetings are so difficult.”
Offseasons are full of possibilities, especially for clubs. During the offtime, every club operator should be thinking about how to tighten up their operations and prepare for next year. If you stop growing, you’re dying, so get to growing!
“We’re focused on launching the Futures Program (begins next month) and that’s a big lift. Typically though, and we are also working on, we plan for the upcoming season—lock in stadium agreements, training facility and schedule, coaching staff, budget, etc.”
- Dan Vaughn