As a new team competing in a market crowded with both professional sports and college football, Atlanta United had its work cut out for it when it emerged on the Major League Soccer scene in 2017. “We really had to fight to get heard, and we had to tell the story of what we were and tell it in an authentic way,” Ann Rodriguez recalled at the 2017 WISE/R Symposium.
Rodriguez was Atlanta’s vice president of business operations from 2015 to 2017, helping to lay the club’s foundation through her leadership of ticket sales, marketing, digital and social media, and sponsorships, among other business functions. As part of WISE/R’s panel on women in sales, she talked about the unique challenges and opportunities of building a consumer-focused, brand-led enterprise from the ground up. Below are excerpts from the conversation, edited for length and clarity.
On fan engagement year-round …
We have 17 regular season games, and that is not 365 days a year, right? So the challenge to the marketing and fan engagement team, and to our service team frankly, was to think about how we could create a culture and a community around the club ... that people want to be a part of so that we could really fight to stay relevant 365 days a year and really be a part of their life year-round, and so not only do we focus on the season tickets and the games that we play, but we also focus on programming and content strategies.
On ticket pricing fans can feel good about …
We were careful in how we priced the building. I had a two-year runway with this business, which was one of the reasons I took the job. ... We did a lot of analysis around ticket pricing, evaluation of [the] secondary market, … and really tried to understand and direct communication with our fans. We actually did surveys of our thousands and thousands of founding members. We had over 6,000 people tell us what they want to pay for seats, which was really helpful in pricing our model.
On ticket plans that fit fan needs …
The final piece of the puzzle was flexibility in payment plans because we are catering to a young urban millennial demographic, and even our older fans, it’s just a different income level and a different appetite for risk financially. So we created 12 month, I think four month and just sort of all-in to give them flexibility to buy in. We’ve been able to tailor the whole experience based on the information that we acquired.
On the role of content in engaging fans …
We’ve got to communicate this idea of what we hope to be and invite everyone to be a part of building that. And when we did that, we made sure that people were excited about our content. They’re sharing it; they were featured. And we featured many, many fans in our creative, and when they shared it, we made sure that we tagged it to direct people to our dot com, to our social handles and really start to drive the behavior there. And then obviously user acquisition, our Website, you know signing up for our email list.
On seeking out a variety of touchpoints ...
Because we didn’t have a big budget and there was a lot of soccer content in the market in the summer of 2016, we organized a lot of watch parties. I think my team did 53 events that summer, and we did a lot of on-site name acquisition, and some of that was very productive. Now, some of it’s not. There’s a big drinking culture around soccer, so let me tell you some of those calls are hilarious. “Yeah, you gave me your number. You told me to call you about season tickets.” And they’re like, “Who are you?” … We had some good laughs about some of those conversations.