10 Tips for Club Revenue Generation in Amateur Football
10% of sports clubs in New Zealand were reported to have lost money in 2022.
(Source: https://www.asa.org.nz/news/media-releases/sport-clubs-report-stability-in-2022-but-work-lies-ahead)
It is anticipated that this figure would be far higher without the reliance on grant funding and other trust funding sources that are available up and down the country and comes at a time when money is scarce. “The cost of participation in sport is too high a hurdle for many families.”
These factors make reducing or maintaining membership fees, player subscriptions and other user-pay services extremely difficult, increasing the challenge of ensuring that the sport is truly available and accessible to all.
For many sports clubs, securing commercial partners of any type is a significant challenge, with the prospect of retaining these even harder. These partners should be considered mutually beneficial and clubs should always ensure to honour any agreements or conditions that are put in place to establish these links.
In my last article I posed a number of reasons why external partners and local businesses should get involved with your local club, but how do you prepare yourselves to approach organisations? How do you set up your internal properties to be monetised? How do you identify other sources of income that may be available?
Here are 10 tips to promote revenue generation in amateur sports clubs (again, in no particular order of importance or impact)
Understand who you are. Ensure you have clarity in what your brand, or sports club, is able to offer. Understanding your appeal to others and your value will help you determine which type and profile of sponsor you are wanting to approach.
Key questions to understand could be; How many members do you have? Do you understand the demographics of your local territory and surrounding suburbs? Do you understand your projected growth and have a plan, both on and off the field, to cater for this?
Set your budget. Establish your marketing budget and how much you are able to spend on branding and marketing your club to the local community, with the goal of ensuring that more money will come in as a result of your initiatives.
Determine if these costs are to cover tangible items such as printed items / physical equipment or on non-tangible items such as social media campaigns.
You will need to determine what the return on investment will be, or if you need to start with a $0 budget and purely rely upon new revenue streams without spend.
Understand your reach. Ensure that your online presence is up-to-date and active. There is potential to bring in revenue through social media content such as Sponsored Posts / Collaboration posts / Paid partnerships or even YouTube creator revenue if your YouTube channel is able to attract a certain number of views and subscribers. These can be highly effective and ensure your club pages get exposure to a far greater degree and help with your online credibility. What is your social media reach and how can you quickly grow this at no cost?
Sell seasonal Club Apparel. Merchandise income can come in various forms and would encourage all to sell seasonable club merchandise. You have to make this available in men’s and women’s sizing, covering junior, youth and seniors, easy to purchase online or at the club and at a reasonable price. Items such as beanies / scarves in the winter, or simple supporter Tee shirts in the summer can be very popular, help spread your brand and also bring in vital revenue.
Allow for ongoing donations. You can start a Club Give Little page, with a specific goal in mind and allow this to be open for a set period of time. An example would be that you need to fundraise for equipment for juniors/youth and have determined that 10 x sets of training goals will cost $1000. Donations may be more forthcoming if donors understand exactly where the money is being spent.
You could expand this further by setting up different monthly campaigns for different projects such as.
- Goals, Balls, Training Equipment
- Kitchen Upgrade
- Roof Upgrade
- Health & Safety Equipment
- New Staff Member Salary
- Gazebo & Team Dugouts
- Changing Room Upgrades
Expand your Catering Options. Consider offering a wide variety of food and drinks through kitchen, bar and tuck shop services, with amendments to the menu on a frequent basis. Clubs now will need to cater for a vast array of tastes and preferences, even different religious beliefs and certain dietary requirements. These need to strike the balance of convenience, cost and health benefits. Eg. Offer snack bars, not just chocolate. Offer vegetarian food, not just hot dogs and chips. Offer 0% beer, not just alcoholic beverages.
Offer Naming Rights / Logo Placements on physical properties. You will need to understand what you currently own and what has the most exposure, however, once this is done you can start to sell and rebrand. There will be many examples, such as the Team Benches, Changing Rooms, any seating available to spectators, certain signage or boards within the club rooms, the speaking podium, the scoreboard and any other advertising boards strategically placed around the grounds. Have you completed an audit of your properties?
Offer Player / Coach / Team sponsorships. Offer a variety of exposure opportunities for any of the supporting businesses that take up this option. Low-cost returns could come in the form of recognition of donors in the match day program and the club website, social media posts and generally offering sponsors the opportunity to have their brand exposed to as many of your members as possible.
Run Additional User Pays Programmes. Determine ways to run user pays programming for your wider community, outside of your regular club operations. Using the School Holidays and Public Holidays as a guide, offer additional training and playing programmes on and around these dates. Not everyone has a bach in the Coromandel to go to and often parents or players are looking for physical activity to take part in at any time that they are not at school or work.
This could also help with the recruitment of staff if you can offer programming all year round. eg. Sunday afternoon football, Friday night leagues, casual coaching sessions, and after-school football. The possibilities are endless with these activities offering a service to your community as well as increasing income through your programmes which can then be reinvested back into the club.
Establish your club as a community hub. This can be done by encouraging both club members and members of the public to attend various club events and utilise the club beyond their regular interactions. This can be through a variety of social, sporting or community events, such as prize givings, celebratory evenings, and special event nights, all helping with enhancing reputation and increasing the chances of more money coming in through various channels.
These also offer prime opportunities for your valued sponsors, community activations, and promotional campaigns as well as cultivating the community relationships that amateur sports clubs often survive and thrive on.
All of the above will need to form part of the overall club strategy, with this engagement needing to be well-considered, deliberate and planned out. With the potential direct and indirect benefits this will have on the club, both on and off the field, it will be well worth the investment of time, energy and resource.
Do you have any insight or tips that could help others? Feel free to share them in the comments below. Even one small idea could help immeasurably!
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