A Global Young Fan Engagement Strategy
Client: Premier League Football Club
Challenge
In a world where content is king, the beautiful game is tremendously valuable. Yet to harness the potential of the world’s greatest content, the Boards of the biggest clubs need to be innovative and disciplined – both on and off the pitch.
Our client, a top-flight Premier League football club, needed the evidence and direction to inform one of it’s key strategic priorities, engaging with an audience central to the club’s future - young fans.
The club turned to forward thinking inc to develop a compelling business case and a clear strategic framework for engaging with young fans globally. To do so successfully, we sought to fully understand this complex, global audience by speaking to young fans themselves.
Approach
SITUATION ASSESSMENT: Examining the challenges and opportunities of engaging with young fans, creating examples of global best practice and developing hypotheses. This was achieved through a large-scale desk research exercise, supported by interviews with the club’s senior executives and external experts on youth behaviour and marketing.
BUSINESS CASE: Using evidence from the situation assessment, we created a compelling case for senior management to be investing in understanding and building relationships with young fans as a priority over the next five years.
AN INNOVATIVE QUALITATIVE RESEARCH PROGRAMME: The main strand of which was holding online discussion forums over two weeks with young fans from seven international markets. This was supported with face-to-face focus groups and depth interviews with other young fans in the UK.
STRATEGIC FRAMEWORK: From the findings of the research stages, we developed a needs-based strategic framework, built around four key young fan needs. With this as a base we developed ideas for the club to undertake across key areas of their operation including - membership, sponsorship, ticketing, content development and social media strategies.
Outcome
A Premier League team with a world class organising intelligence for engaging successfully with young fans – one that plays to the club’s unique assets and informs every aspect of their operation.