The Fan Experience

I’m not a short post person. I start with one idea and write my way to 3 others. It’s easy to split them (see my last two posts) but I don’t like the fractured idea concept…I’d rather put it all out in one massive post and let you read or not read it all as you will.

I’ll work on focusing my posts, but for now here are some of my musings on the Fan experience.

Weak Fan Experience

A weak fan experience could mean a lot of things, tying into the performance of the team and the outcome of the game, but here I refer to everything that happens at a game that’s off the field. From the minute a fan arrives at the stadium: the parking, buying a ticket, entering the stadium, their first sight of the field. There’s a great quote that I once read, and yet cannot seem to find now, that I remember as being attributed to Michael Jordan. His legendary commitment to every game came, in part, from an awareness that every single game he played was somebody’s first time seeing him play. And he played knowing he had to make it special for that one person.

Every game is somebody’s first game, somebody’s first experience, with a team. And that is going to make or break a relationship between this spectator, this potential fan, and the team they are watching. So every game needs to be taken as seriously as that. Every game should be a special event for someone who attends it.

(This is definitely not to say that the topic is not taken seriously in women’s soccer, this is merely my musings on the subject).

Another great Michael Jordan quote is, “I never looked at the consequences of missing a big shot... when you think about the consequences you always think of a negative result.”

When shaping the game experience, the WPS shouldn’t be afraid of scaring off kids if they cater too much towards adults or visa versa. They should instead look at it from the kids perspective AND the adult perspective. The biggest mistake a WPS team could make is to create a game-experience that is mutually exclusive, only for a family or only for childless adults.

Club Traditions

Traditions usually start with friends and stupidity, shared things to do created from a passion to connect, to boast and celebrate fandom. Or a persuasive and imaginative liar, and I say liar in the utmost positive manner, decides to mix things up. Another great Michael Jordan story found while looking for that elusive quote I mention above, is affectionately called the LaBradford Smith saga.

Jordan created a gauntlet, a challenge made by Smith after a Bulls v. Bullets game, to spur himself (and his teammates, and the press, etc.) to achieve more in the subsequent matchups. The story goes that Smith scored 37 points against Jordan one game and mockingly said post-game to the basketball giant, “Nice game, Mike.” Mike spread the story and challenged Smith in the press, saying he would get 37 points before the half in the next Bulls v. Bullet game.

And he did.

Though not a tradition, this story illustrates my point that as long as there is passion and conviction, truth (and age) don’t matter. An act becomes tradition the moment an individual or a group of people commit to it. It doesn’t need to have been done for years, thought it hopefully will continue for years to come. Athletes do this all the time with their pre-game traditions and superstitious ticks.

Being a fan is much like being an athlete, so why not give the fan experience just as many “superstitious ticks” as the athletes?

           

I know many clubs are developing traditions and the fans are as well, but I firmly believe that the fans want more. They want more. Show them the way and even if they don’t pick up this tradition or that one, they might fall in love with the third idea or the fourth idea or the tenth idea. And when that one tradition finally sticks, the failures before it won’t matter.

Having trouble coming up with ideas? Sit in a room with fans and ask them what they want. Then sit in the room with smart people at the club, doesn’t matter how high or low they are on the chain-o-command, and ask them what they want. Talk to anyone from outside the US. Or shoot me an email and I’ll chat it out with you. The point is: talk it out and ideas will come. That’s my rule of thumb.

The Root of the Problem

One of the biggest problems with soccer in the US is that they need the crowd to help create that unforgettable experience and yet American crowds will not turn out for just the sport of soccer. Not consistently, at least. Football, Basketball, Baseball and Hockey all have commanding crowds that guarantee (depending on the team) a great experience even if the team does poorly. That guarantee is part of what a spectator buys when they purchase a ticket.

The Pali Blues W-League team has a fan group called the Tony Danza Army. These guys come to the games and whole-heartedly cheer the players on when they do well or call them out when they screw up. They heckle the ref (a bit) and mock the opposing team (with good cheer). They throw some adrenaline in the seats; carry chants with just their own voices if the crowd doesn’t join in, come dressed the part, etc., and help make the spectator experience a contributory experience.

The game is not just won for the players and the staff on the field it’s won for the fans. I have never come home from a Trojan defeat and not felt the sting of it, any spectator that chooses a side stings when their team loses. But when the Trojans win…the entire stadium is electric. The entire campus and the 2-mile DPS safety bubble are alight with Cardinal and Gold. 

Another great thing the Pali Blues seem to embody is the idea that it’s OK to be competitive. There is etiquette to athletic competitiveness, of course, but the worst thing anyone can do to a female athlete is making her feel bad for wanting to win. I always hear talk about how feminine a female athlete appears, how intelligent, how nice…the first attribute I care about, regardless of gender, is the athlete’s undefeatable competitive spirit. You can never defeat a truly competitive person because there is always another game.

You may have won this battle, but one battle is not the war. Michael Jordan conceded he lost 27 points to LaBradford Smith and used that to motivate an extraordinary performance in a later game. The loss may have been fictitious, but the reasons behind Jordan’s decision to create that story and use it as motivation exemplify the “one battle is not the war” mentality. So many of his quotes spoke of failure and how he succeeds because he allows himself to fail.

She may not be the most feminine, she may not be the most polite, but damn if she can’t play the game. Start with the core and build off of that, but there has to be that core and the WPS league should embrace and support that competitiveness even if it sometimes diminishes other “more favorable” qualities.

Every game is a new chance to excel, every time you lose provides more motivation to win next time you face the same opponent. That spirit, that passion, should be celebrated before a female athlete’s femininity, before their intelligence or demeanor. Not to diminish the other attributes, but stars are made on the field with their wins and how they handle losses.

Look at Hope Solo (saw this coming, didn’t ya?), she is celebrated for her desire to win above everything else. She was not nice, she was not polite, she was not the “I’ll have two fillings…” image of a woman soccer player—and she is one of the most well known female soccer players in the world because of it.

  

And going back to the crowd, that passion and spirit also needs to be instilled in the fans because the fans can also fail. And the club should have a standard that fans must live up to; this is a large part of the purpose of traditions.

A True Fan

Have you ever heard the phrase “a true fan…?” A true fan knows to do this and not that, a true Trojan knows to add “UCLA sucks” at the end of Tusk no matter what team the team is actually playing, to sing the SoCal Spell-Out after every touchdown and, my favorite, at a key moment in the game (such as a fourth down, punt or go for it?) to chant “Big Balls Pete” with an accompanying gesture. That’s such a student tradition and it will always make me smile while fondly remember my four years of Trojan football.

And that’s the key. The traditions, the off-the-field experiences, make the game better. They elevate the memory of it. They make it more than just a soccer game—they make it a Sol game, a Red Stars, an Athletica, a Breakers, or Freedom game. It’s not just the team on the field and their colors that make it their game; it’s what they do to make their stadium and their game experience differ from everyone else’s.