ACCESSIBILITY
We are looking to use the current boom in women’s football to promote our club. Our players are not currently all fully professional, and they don’t think of themselves as stars, so on our channels we tell stories about the girls and bring them closer to the fans, with videos and Instagram takeovers. All the whole-club marketing projects are promoted with a player from the men’s team and a player from the women’s team. We present them on the same level. We have highlight games which we really push – six games last season, which we can play in the main stadium because we have an artificial pitch there. If we play there, we have more people coming to watch than when we play at our usual venue, which we don’t own, so we can’t use any branding. We want to focus on attracting young people to our matches who aren’t necessarily already football fans. We’ll have branding of items that are more street style rather than replica shirts, and we will have them on sale at women’s matches as from next season. As well as marketing the women’s games on the men’s
newsletters, we talk to schools and give the students the chance to come along. All young people aged under 16 can attend for free, so only their adults have to pay – we really try to get families along to the stadium. When we play at the main stadium, we have the same food and drink products for sale as at a men’s game, which we can’t do at our usual ground. We also stage activations for kids – face-painting, a photo wall, giveaways from our sponsors. We’ve also had a pre-match tournament with girls’ teams taking part, and those players then stayed to watch the game. For the new season, we’ll have a double-header with the men – they’ll play at 6pm, and we will play at 8.30pm. It’s a way to try and get the fans staying, buying another drink, and supporting the women.” n
65
Made with FlippingBook interactive PDF creator