Is "Football For All" an Idea We Can All Steal?
Hey!
I’ve been toying with an idea for the DC Soccer Club where we find a way to offer every kid in the District the opportunity to play rec soccer, no cost. The kid’s registration, uniform, coaching, and everything else…all free.
So when I saw this piece about Fortuna Dusseldorf and the idea of finding a way to throw open the doors and offer “Football for All”, I noticed it.
For Dusseldorf, they are attempting to replace $8M in revenue.
A number I think is probably pretty reasonable to replace.
Thinking this through, my mind is drawn to a couple of examples that we can consider as relevant here:
Shakespeare in the Park
The Suns’ desire to put all of their games on free TV
The scenes of people gathering to watch World Cup matches like they did in Sydney during the Women’s World Cup
How do all of these things work together and what do they mean for us?
The Public Theatre spends about $4.9M on producing Shakespeare in the Park. With a little less than $2M coming in as revenue. For a long time, it was free to everyone.
The Suns have moved to putting their games on local TV. Their old cable deal was estimated to be one of the smallest, less than $40M a season, and when the story first hit, I saw the number around $25M.
The FIFA fan festival in Sydney during the Women’s World Cup was a huge success, helping drive high occupancy rates and increased spending per room despite the viewing of the matches being free.
When you combine these ideas?
What do you see?
Let me know…
Reply to this email.
Email me directly.
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Send me a postcard.
For me, the big takeaways on using this type of thinking:
Expanding your potential market. Shakespeare in the Park or the NY Philharmonic playing in Central Park are successful because they can attract everyone.
Focus on the non-customers. No matter what you are selling, you have more non-customers than you do customers. Why are they choosing something else?
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Go back to the archives and listen to my conversation with Mark Fowlie.
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Cities I’ve got plans for:
Seattle, mid-May
Barcelona: late-March
You’ve made it this far! Thank you for reading and please share this with a colleague or co-worker that might benefit from these ideas.