The A Leagues Shut Down KEEPUP.
Hi!
You know I love Australia and that I love Australian sports.
So, I follow a bunch of Australian social media accounts and a ton of other stuff.
Also, Spurs manager, Ange Postecoglou, is Australian.
All of this drew my attention to a report about the A-Leagues.
I liked a lot of what I saw:
3 year growth strategy. (Even though you should be revisiting your strategy annually.)
Men’s attendance up 10%
Women’s memberships up 669%.
Free to air viewership up 9%.
All great stuff.
But one thing caught my attention that I want to highlight for you because it could be a trap you are falling into as well.
The transfer of attention from core audience away from “casual” audience.
Why?
A few points:
The Pareto Law is real, but it isn’t 80/20, but more like 60/20. Huge, but not as huge as we always think.
The Law of Double Jeopardy: this says that small brands suffer twice. Once because they are small and have fewer buyers. Once because they are small and their buyers are less loyal because they can be swayed by a better offer.
Buyer Moderation: which just means that heavy buyers don’t buy heavy every year. You want to have a mix of heavy and light buyers so that they balance out, regression to the mean is real.
Having more light buyers helps balance out double jeopardy and buyer moderation by helping with your overall market penetration.
How does this help us?
Recognize that in almost every case, the heavy buyers are going to make up 60% of your sales.
Know where that other 40% is coming from.
It isn’t all or nothing.
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Target your advertising and sales efforts at broadening your market penetration.
This has been one of the reasons I’ve been really impressed by the work of the St. Louis Battlehawks and the way they have sold so many tickets using digital channels and well timed PR.
Use these tools.
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Understand churn and buyer patterns.
Buyers change from year to year.
Knowing that, it should highlight the need to expand the number of “light buyers” because they are likely going to be 40% of your customers even if the heavier buyers make up more of your revenue.
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Let this be the golden rule of this: ‘Light Buyers Matter A Lot’.
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Back to the A-Leagues.
To turn off KEEPUP and focus on “core” customers might seem like a wise decision in the short term, but if you look at the way people really buy anything, you’ll see that your core buyers matter…but if you neglect them, they go away because their attachment to you is less than the heavy buyers.
This shrinks your audience.
The shrinking starts a doom loop that brings the Law of Double Jeopardy into play.
Meaning you have two times the chances to lose your customers now.
Once this slide starts, reversing it is a long, hard process.
One that isn’t easy to reverse…if you can at all.
A FEW NOTES:
I’m going to roll out a special digital program called ‘Sold Out’ for people that sell tickets starting later this week.
I’m putting together the copy now.
I can tell you that you are not going to want to miss it.
We are going to hit some of the biggest points for sports teams, theaters, operas, and anyone struggling to fill their seats like:
My 5 step “Billion Dollar Strategy” Framework that will help you stay focused on the big picture.
Research and how to do it down and dirty, maybe, even, free.
Pricing Power and the rule of 1%.
Real goals and objectives and why they’ll help you achieve your financial and audience goals.
I’m doing this to help as many people as I can because I know budgets are tight, morale has taken a hit, and the need to come up with new ideas and approaches is acute.
So the program is going to be $100 per team/organization/venue.
I’m going to talk with some partners to see if they will sponsor some of you to come…I won’t be able to most of the conferences this year so this is my way of bringing my conference sessions to you without the travel.
More details later this week.
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I’m going to be bringing ‘Fans For Life’ back to Australia in November.
Dates and times to come.
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Mark your calendar for Seattle, WA on 17 May 2024.
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Join us in the ‘Talking Tickets’ Slack Channel where we have been talking about the Super Bowl this week.
Last week we talked about INTIX and the topic of chargebacks and fraud. The raised eyebrows of my friends from Europe were pretty funny.
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You’ve made it this far!
Thank you!
I love you for being here.
Can you do me a favor and share this issue with one person!
Or, MORE!
And, send me your thoughts, questions, ideas, topics, and podcast guests.
I’ve got a really good podcast about the proposed Northern Virginia arena waiting on me to finish the edit so I can release it. (Spoiler: I can’t even begin to tell you how I feel about this project. Just know, I live in the District and I already would rather go to Baltimore for an Orioles game than go to the Navy Yard for a Nats game due to the traffic…now you want me to cross a bridge for a Caps game?!)