IPL teams have
recognized the importance of fan loyalty but are clueless on how to go about
building a loyal fan base. They started
off assuming that this would happen automatically because they had captive
markets and strong regional affiliations.
Once they saw that this was not happening they started taking a very
‘top down’ approach to solving this problem.
Design some marketing programs at the very top and pray that the
benefits reach the fans. This has also
come to naught.
The only way
to building fan loyalty is by taking a ‘bottom
up’ or fan centric approach – building a
loyal base one fan at a time. Teams
need to invest in understanding its fans, offer the fans what they want and
only then will fans reward them with their loyalty. You can’t rush this process. Just because you have 10 beautiful women
around you, you cannot deliver a baby in 1 month, now can you J
Building fan
loyalty is a complex science. While
monetization of fans is the Holy Grail, teams should not jump into monetization
right away. This is a common mistake
that franchisees make. You need to
acquire fans, retain fans and engage fans for a period of time before you can
even dream of any serious monetization. Each of these steps has very different
objectives and therefore has to deploy very different tactics. Each
of these steps is driven by a combination of many online and offline marketing
and branding efforts. Our experiences
from other consumer aligned industries like retail and CPG and banking has
greatly enhanced our ability to measure fan loyalty and track its growth.
Taking a
holistic and long-term view to fan engagement is the only sustainable way to
ensure that fans become a bankable balance sheet asset for sports teams.
Many sports franchises globally are run for the romance of it by wealthy owners. With a few exceptions (like the NY Yankees and RedSox here in the US) and select examples in other sports, the big challenge would be to show owners that
ReplyDeletea) there is a scientific way to drive engagement and
b) there is great financial reward for doing so.