In light of a recent thread about Quakes marketing, here's a bit by Oliu on mlsnet.com about that very thing. In particular, he points out the value in building supporters groups and mentions the challenges faced by the Quakes: http://mlsnet.com/content/03/oped0328oliu.html
"San Jose can prosper if they can successfully sell the game to the community." Here's a good place to start: there were close to 40,000 fans at the Chivas-America match at Pac Bell Park.
I don't know. What I do know is those teams can draw 30000+ to an exhibition match in the Bay Area, and if the Quakes could figure out how to get 10% of them to come to watch MLS, that's 3000 fans per match.
I don't think MLS will ever really draw large numbers of immigrants to their product. What's going to draw ethnic crowds is the children of those immigrants. At the CSD Municipal game, the vast majority of Latins at the game wore Municipal jerseys with one or two Quakes jerseys in there. However I saw a lot of children with Quakes posters in their hands. Trying to turn Club America or Chivas fans into Quakes fans won't happen. In a sense you're asking them to reject their identity, their heritage. When one of those teams comes to town, it's a physical connection with home. Nothing else here can reproduce that. You can attract intelligent fans who want to watch good football, but the vast majority are not football (spellcheck please) coneissiurs. Go after their children.
      Great points!       Let's face it... the two groups of fans that will never attend and/or support the Earthquakes (or MLS in general) in any significant quantity are the anti-soccer U.S. sports fans (a shrinking lot, but unfortunately still too large a group) and the immigrant fans who already support their own team back home (around here, that mainly constitutes Hispanic fans... the ethnicity varies around the country, though)!       At its inception, MLS made the mistake of adding in a lot of "Americanized" extras and changes like the stupid shootout, the countdown-clock with time controlled by the clock instead of by the referee, etc. (and regardless of how many times spejic will say that those were within FIFA regulations, they were still bastardizations of what most soccer fans here wanted). Those extras and changes were made specifically to attract the general U.S. sports audience... not only did it not work for the most part, but it alienated enough of the die-hard MLS fans to seriously consider not watching MLS anymore (reverting back to standardized world rules at the conclusion of the 1999 season wasn't done so much to attract new fans as it was to keep the ones remaining from leaving).       As for the immigrant fans, Defender has the right idea. San Jose wasted so much time in its first few MLS years trying to get that star Mexican player that they had overlooked so many other good players that could've helped them at the time. Either way, the Hispanic crowd would not have shown up in droves, but at least an overall decent pre-Yallop San Jose squad could have stemmed the tide of hard times earlier.       The first priority for the front-office is to please us die-hard Earthquakes fans. We are what keep the steady gate-receipt afloat, and as we go, so goes the attendance.       The next priority is the children, both of immigrants (again, as Defender pointed out) and of the AYSO-playing variety. Now that they have local sports heroes such as Landon Donovan to look up to, it makes the job of marketing to them that much easier (not easy, just easier). And if the children come to the games, you can bet your bottom dollar that their parents and/or guardians come with them.       Then of course there are the other groups to attract: the sports fans curious about soccer; the teenagers who think that Landon and the other players are "cool"/"hot"/whatever; the corporate tickets (which may be the most viable financially, but tough to get in this economy); fans who used to attend NASL Earthquakes games but for some reason have not attended any MLS games; others that I may have forgotten to list.       In any case, the various San Jose front-offices over the years have failed by not using Defender's formula in the past. It's about time they did... if they haven't started already.       GO EARTHQUAKES!!! -G
Maybe would could go after the women AND children. Should we burn their crops, too? ransack the village? maybe pillage a little?
This reminds me of an interesting spectacle just after halftime of the Municipal game which spoke volumes for the lure of MLS to the young. A scruffy 30-something hispanic guy (I'm going to assume he was Guatemalan) in a red sweater came over to the Casbah section with his 5 or 6 year old son. He clearly looked out of place and you could tell that he felt quite uncomfortable. His son, however, wanted to sit in the Casbah with the other Quakes fans, and he had his Quakes poster that he was waving around. They stayed for a couple of minutes, and then the father decided to hightail it out of there. I was kind of bemused at what I had seen, but I didn't give it a second thought until I read Defender's post. Makes you wonder if the children of immigrants would not be the most lucrative target for the front office. After all, several MLS players are the children of immigrants, so it would make sense if many fans were as well.
The same thing happened at the Pachuca game last year. The mom and dad in front of me were in their full Pachuca regalia, but their son (probably about 10) was wearing a Quakes jersey (that wasn't the only combo I saw like that). When it was over, I shook hands with him and told him, "We'll get 'em next time."
Wow. I'm actually getting some sort of positive feedback/response from one of my posts. Do I actually contribute something to this forum? I should be sleep-deprived more often. There are no magic bullets. It take a long period of time to establish a loyal fanbase. The quality of play on the field in MLS has improved dramatically. The fanbase has not. You can't develop a fanbase, a tradition, a culture in 8 years. The majority of professional teams in any sport are at least 30 years old, with many more being 40, 50, 60 and 100 or more years older. An overly simplified way to examine the success of MLS is the ticket sales. Since the initial season, ticket sales (and more importantly season ticket sales) have dropped, but are now moving up again. There are numerous reasons why, but one big reason is the success of the US in the World Cup. I wouldn't be surprised that the growth of MLS is reinvigorated every 4 years due to the World Cup. America will be a team of world players in the worlds game. Looking at the pool of players now points to that trend. O'Brien, Adu, Garcia, Bocanegra, Mastroeni, Reyna, Regis, McBride, Eskandarian, Beasley, Cherundolo, Stewart, Gonzalez, Yi, Akwari. Simply looking at the names, you would think it was a club team. Look at Arturo Alvarez. He's a first generation American who has very strong ties to his Salvadoran roots. What youth system did he develop in? The American system. What club team does he play for? San Jose Earthquakes, an American team. What nation does he represent? America. I'm dead tired, and I'm not quite sure where I'm going with this, but I think you will get the point. Maybe G or Albany could finish the thought for me.
Yes, you have to get the kids to create a foundation for future fans. But kids aren't going to come to Spartan on their own ... they will come when their parents bring them. Right now, they mostly get brought to games featuring teams from their homeland, and those don't happen very often. What is needed is to get them to come to Quakes games. It's easy for me to think of ways to spend someone else's money, of course , but one way to increase the number of Latino fans with kids at Quakes games is to do more promoting in the Spanish-language media. Spanish-language media in this area is a big enough deal that to a certain extent it helps foster a community that exists largely outside the mainstream. Putting ads on Univision and Telemundo and the rest, on the various Spanish-language radio stations, the Spanish-language print media ... that's the kind of thing I imagine would at least get the word out to the parents who will bring the kids who will become Quakes fans. Of course, sometimes it seems like the Quakes only spend a few bucks at most on English-language advertising, so I don't expect the above to happen.
The Clash (and the league) did significantly more direct marketing towards the local Latino communities when MLS started, with minimal payoff. This included print ads in Spanish language papers, broadcast ads on Univision and radio, and, probably more importantly, Spanish language coverage of MLS games of the week on Univision. I believe from what I've read on BS that the Burn also tried the same tactics and got the same results. Should the Quakes pursue this now? Sure. But they and/or MLS may be hesitant to spend too much money on these marketing channels because of the lack of payoff in the past. And I'm more in agreement that the focus should be on all the young'uns, regardless of ethnicity. Make Quakes games seem like a happening place to be, etc. Haven't seen anyone else mention this, but some of the Latinos at last week's game were Communicaciones fans, who were vehemently against CSD Municipal, not really pro-Quakes. However, we can only hope that since these fans got to see the Quakes beat a Guatemalan side, that it legitimizes in their eyes the quality of MLS and hopefully they return. For what it's worth, I don't think the Quakes get any respect in the Spanish-language media. Apparently, some bastion of journalistic integrity had a whole slew of those CSD fans believing their team had beaten the Quakes 4-0 down in Guatemala, because a bunch of those fans by us were constantly chanting "Cuatro a cero" as a taunt.
A lot of the same stuff has gone on down here in LA. We had a front office that was hell bent on signing a Mexican star. First it was Campos, then Hermosillo, then Hernandez. None of them panned out and it seemed we gave up the boat and the house each time they came. I have noticed the same situations in the Rose Bowl with the youngsters in their MLS shirts and the parents sporting foreign jersies. I was at the park surrounding the Rose Bowl this past weekend and saw two youth teams in a hispanic league playing, one team wearing Galaxy kits and the other Rapids kits. That was the first time I had ever seen that. Keep this in mind, the kids don't have any direct knowledge or connection to Chivas, Pachuca, (insert name of club here) other than their parents. They do however have a direct connection to the Quakes, the Galaxy and the other MLS clubs. That will be a huge market a few years down the line.
I think you're right and as BlueMeanie said, how does MLS and its teams go after them? Is Johnny Moore still working on getting leagues to have a ticket package as part of their league membership signup?
Many, many great posts on this thread, I'll add only one thing: you want immigrants and their kids to come? The biggest part of that ios to wear them down with better and better soccer. You don't have to give up 'your' team to adopt a second team. I'll use myself anf baseball as an example. I am a born and raised New Yorker. I am a Yankee fan, period. I however like the A's and go to thier games too, in part because it's good baseball. Give them good soccers and the immigrants will watch 'their' team in the afternoon and head out to the Quakes in the evening.
Thinking about Alvarez and connecting with the Latin, another tactic is to sign the first generation kids. I'm not too informed of Memo Gonzalez, but I think he is a 1st generation American out of Los Angeles (who was drafted/signed by them). Whatever ties a community has to an old team would certainly sway to the team of their child(ren).