By Dennis Read
Dennis Read is an Assistant Editor at Coaching Management.
Coaching Management, 9.3, April 2001, http://www.momentummedia.com/articles/cm/cm0903/crowd.htm
Imagine increasing the crowds at your volleyball games by more than 50 percent next season. Sound far-fetched? That’s just what Western Michigan University did last fall as the Broncos averaged 1,002 fans per game in 2000, up 56 percent from an average crowd of 644 in 1999. And perhaps most impressive, the Broncos had only one home crowd that fell below last year’s average figure.
So how can you see an increase like that in your own gym next year? According to Western Michigan Head Coach Cathy George, the time to start asking that question was a couple of years ago. “It doesn’t happen in just one year,” she says, “and if people think that it does, then they’re going to be bitterly disappointed. It’s an ongoing process, and it will get better every year, but you have to commit yourself to making it happen.”
Attendance at Bronco matches this season certainly received a boost from an aggressive marketing and promotions effort spearheaded by Assistant Director of Marketing and Promotions Chris Hanna—a campaign that included giveaways at every home game. Bringing home the team’s first Mid-American Conference title in 12 years didn’t hurt, either. But a third factor was the clincher: the team’s development of, and on-going efforts with, its booster club.
“The major focus of the booster club has been increasing attendance,” George says. “We’ve had more events between the team and the community, and we’ve done several projects to educate the community on the game of volleyball since we need to make fans more aware of the strategy and intricacies of the game. These efforts have been going on for several years, and our attendance has been growing over those years. With our marketing and promotions department doing its part, and the team doing well, it all came together at the right time, and we were successful.”
Community Connection
The process actually began shortly after George arrived at Western Michigan in 1995. The program had made several trips to the NCAA Division I championships during the mid 1980’s and even hosted a then national-record crowd of 8,543 when the Broncos played Nebraska in the 1983 NCAA playoffs. But the program’s fortunes had waned by the early ’90s.
“When we first took over the program, our focus was on recruiting,” George says. “Then, once we had the players we needed for our program to be successful, we started our booster club, the Spikers Club. Because if you’re going to try to lure supporters to your program, you have to make sure you have a quality product.”
While some coaches may view booster clubs simply as a source of additional funding, George took a different tack. “The main emphasis of the club was to gain exposure and help us promote the matches,” she says. “It really wasn’t a fund-raising endeavor. We just wanted people to get involved.”
One of the most important elements of the process was developing game-day activities for club members, which allow these boosters to enjoy contests to their fullest. Before many matches, George holds chalk talks for club members to fill them in on what to look for that night and what’s going on with the team. Other nights, the boosters have a pre-game pizza party so members can get to the game without having to worry about making dinner first.
“At my first chalk talks, people would tell me that they didn’t realize there was so much strategy involved,” George says. “Most may understand volleyball in the back yard, but they don’t realize the strategies of power volleyball.”
These and similar efforts were designed to build a stronger connection between the team and the booster club, and they appear to have been a success at the ticket office—and beyond. Some players feel their connection with the booster club members makes their collegiate volleyball experience much more fulfilling than if the club was not there.
“The booster club members know the girls and feel the volleyball program is important,” George says. “All the people coming to our matches make the players feel they are doing something important and that relates positively to how they feel about themselves.”
The Spikers Club certainly does its part in the fund-raising department, too. Now the largest single-sport booster club at the school, it recently helped fund a preseason trip to Europe.
In addition to its work with the booster club, the team is also involved in many community-service projects, such as visiting local hospitals and holding clinics for grade school players at a local community center. “A lot of coaches feel, ‘How can I give up my time for my athletes to do these things?’” George says. “But I have found that our team has really enjoyed these activities and the players have gained a great deal of self-esteem from them. So now I feel, how could we not do these things?
“This year, the requests have been at an all-time high, so we’re having to say we can’t do this until this or that time,” George continues. “But this wasn’t the case years ago. It’s nice because it’s a problem that women’s sports typically hasn’t had.”
Promotions...Promotions...Promotions
When Hanna started planning the team’s promotional activities last season, one of his main goals was to take advantage of other things occurring on campus. He also put much more emphasis on early-season matches, when turnout had usually been low.
The first promotional efforts took place when Western Michigan hosted a four-team tournament Sept. 15-16, which also coincided with CommUniverCity (a campus-wide celebration to mark the start of the school year) and the Western Michigan football opener. “In the past, those events have hurt our attendance, but Chris worked with us to put our matches at certain times so that we could get the most out of that weekend,” George says. “We made sure we worked with football to get the best results we possibly could and, as a result, our attendance from the start was at an all-time high.”
The Broncos held a special premier night event for the home opener on Friday, Sept. 15, since it marked not just the first home volleyball match but the first home contest for any Western Michigan team. Players and coaches from other Bronco teams were invited to address the crowd and everything was tied together with a Hollywood premier theme.
The next day, the volleyball team played Ohio State in the early afternoon, giving its fans the chance to watch both the volleyball match and football game, which started at 6 p.m. They even promoted the convenience aspect, stressing the ease of finding parking if fans came to the volleyball match first. In the time between the end of the match and the beginning of the football game, the volleyball team set up a tent in the tailgating area with burgers and drinks, giving players and fans a chance to get to know each other a little better.
Unfortunately, the schedule called for the Broncos to be on the road the following two weekends, so Hanna made sure the first game back from the road trip was heavily promoted. “We knew once we got to conference play things would pretty much take care of themselves, but there was really a concentrated effort to build up the non-conference part of the schedule,” Hanna says. “We didn’t want that to be a throwaway from an attendance standpoint, and I think by focusing on each event we were able to do that.”
The promotional efforts obviously increased the final season attendance figures by shoring up the crowds at the early season contests, but they also paid dividends by increasing crowds later in the season. “People say that if your team is successful you’ll get good crowds,” George says. “But by that philosophy, everyone will wait until halfway through the season to see if you’re successful or not.”
“If you can have good crowds early and people leave happy, then they bring more of a crowd with them the next time,” Hanna says. “At some point, the crowd starts to build on itself. You get a boost through word of mouth from people telling others that there were a lot of people at the match and it was a fun time.”
The volleyball team was also the first beneficiary of a new sponsorship deal between the athletic department and Old Kent Bank, which allowed the Broncos to give away special items at home games. The home volleyball opener marked the program’s debut as fans were given magnet schedules and posters. The giveaways continued throughout the season and included items such as license plates, steins, memo boards, and key chains.
“The idea is not that any of these items will bring people to the event on their own,” Hanna says. “The goal is to create a fan who is more loyal to the Broncos because they have these Bronco items in their home, and they’re being rewarded for attending game after game.”
All For One
While some of the giveaway items were created especially for the volleyball team, most of the promotional efforts were designed to benefit the department as a whole. “The purpose of our giveaways is to create Bronco fans, rather than Western Michigan football fans or Western Michigan volleyball fans,” Hanna says. “We want someone to have an attachment to Western Michigan University and the Broncos rather than one specific program, and that’s been pretty successful for us.”
Western Michigan has accomplished this by doing a lot of cross promotion between the sports. “We might put a volleyball ad in the football program and talk about the volleyball and soccer matches during the football game,” Hanna says. “Then at the volleyball game, we’ll talk about football and the basketball and hockey seasons coming up to get people excited about those sports.”
The idea is that a rising tide raises all boats—a volleyball coach can help improve his or her team’s profile by improving the profile of the entire athletic program. “We’ve explained to each of our coaches about our desire to expand their fan base,” Hanna says, “by connecting with the other programs and creating a Bronco culture—to help the Bronco name be at the highest possible level. In the end, that will help every program we have.
“And Cathy has done a very good job supporting that,” he continues. “When she goes out in the community to speak, she’ll talk about what is happening with her program, and then she’ll mention that we have a hockey or basketball game coming up and how the audience should support those programs as well. It makes it a lot easier for me, and a lot more enjoyable, knowing the coach is supportive of what we’re trying to do.”
Part of the Job
Throughout the college volleyball community, raising the level of attention for the game has been an ongoing discussion for several years. And while much of the discussion has centered around rule changes, George feels that more can be done at the grassroots level—if each coach joins the promotions game. It’s critical, she says, for coaches to take the initiative and not wait for others to promote their sport for them.
“If we really want the recognition and we want the stands filled, there needs to be a united effort,” George says. “Coaches need to get involved. We can’t say, ‘It’s not my job,’ and expect things to happen. There are some programs where everything is done for the volleyball coach, and the marketing staffs can devote all their time and effort to getting people to the game. But if you look across the country, probably only 10 percent of the schools can do that. What are the other 90 percent going to do?
“I want to encourage our people here to get involved with promoting our volleyball team and get excited about doing that,” George continues. “And I think that starts from inside. If we want to build a volleyball program, and not just a volleyball team, maybe we have to do a little bit more work—just roll up our sleeves and get it done. I think it’s going to take a united effort through our marketing and promotion people, coaching staffs, and teams because this is not a sport that everybody automatically knows about.
“There also needs to be a better understanding of the game itself. Television exposure would help us educate more people, but if we want more television coverage, then our attendance across the country has got to increase.”
And that’s one of the reasons George won’t be satisfied to sit back and relax after seeing a 50 percent increase last season. “We’re excited about averaging more than 1,000 people per game, but we’d be more excited about averaging more than 3,000 across the nation,” George says. “We’re at a starting point here and it’s only going to grow year to year. We’re not going to be content with where we are now. Look at Nebraska. They had 12,000 for one match. Those are the kind of numbers we need to start churning out across the country and the television will follow that.
“Some people may say, ‘It’s not my job,’ and it may not be,” she adds. “But it comes down to what you want from your program. It does take a lot of work, but we can sit around and wait for something to happen, or we can make it happen.”