The Clubhouse
10 Observations From Working With More Than 350 Sports Clubs
There is no shortage of advice available to sports clubs. Spend a few minutes online and you will find somebody explaining how to increase attendances, grow memberships or generate more commercial revenue. Some of that advice is excellent. Much of it is based on a single successful campaign, or borrows ideas from outside sport and assumes they translate universally.
Our perspective is slightly different. Over the past few years, Fanbase has worked alongside more than 350 sports organisations across football, rugby, cricket, speedway and basketball. Every week we watch clubs launch season tickets, introduce memberships, rethink matchdays and look for new ways to strengthen relationships with their supporters. Most clubs only ever experience their own successes and failures. We have the privilege of watching hundreds of organisations tackle remarkably similar challenges in very different ways.
Certain patterns keep emerging. What follows are the observations we find ourselves returning to most often.
Many clubs treat communication as something that begins when they need supporters to buy something. A season ticket campaign launches and emails go out. A derby approaches and social media fills with promotional posts. Once the immediate objective has passed, communication slows until the next commercial window opens.
The clubs growing most consistently think very differently. They understand that supporter relationships are not built during campaigns. They are built in the weeks and months between them.
Bury FC's season ticket campaign sold more than 500 tickets in its first 24 hours, but that outcome was not created by a strong launch video. It was built on weeks of manager interviews, behind-the-scenes content and regular supporter communication that had been happening long before tickets went on sale. Caernarfon Town's remarkable community growth has followed the same pattern: consistent dialogue rather than occasional announcements.
The fastest-growing clubs understand that communication is not simply a vehicle for selling. It is the product. Everything else becomes easier once that relationship is established.
Supporters increasingly judge their club against every other digital experience in their lives, not just other sports organisations. Whether they are ordering groceries or booking a flight, they have become accustomed to transactions that are fast and frictionless. Those expectations do not disappear when they decide to buy a match ticket on a Saturday morning.
The people most affected by friction are often the supporters clubs are working hardest to attract: the family considering their first match, the casual attendee who comes twice a season, the friend invited along at the last minute. These are people with no established routine, for whom every unnecessary step becomes a reason to postpone the decision or abandon it entirely.
The clubs seeing the strongest digital growth are rarely those making the boldest changes. They are the ones removing dozens of small frustrations that accumulate across the supporter journey. A faster checkout, clearer matchday information, tickets that work on a phone without three login steps. None of these feel revolutionary in isolation. Together, they make supporting a club feel easy, and easy to support is more valuable than most organisations realise.
Every sports club talks about putting supporters first. Far fewer can explain exactly who those supporters are.
For many organisations, supporter data still exists in fragments: ticketing in one system, memberships in another, retail purchases somewhere else. Each department has its own view of the supporter, but very few have a complete picture of the relationship. That creates a persistent problem. Clubs are making important commercial decisions using incomplete information.
The clubs making the strongest decisions have started to move beyond fragmented data. Rather than measuring individual transactions, they are trying to understand the supporter behind them. Which supporters have quietly stopped attending? Which members are approaching renewal? Which families have bought junior merchandise but only attended once? These questions lead to better decisions because they are rooted in behaviour rather than assumption.
The objective is not to collect more data. It is to understand supporters well enough to make every interaction feel more relevant than the last.
When clubs talk about increasing attendance, the conversation usually begins a week before kick-off. Marketing plans are finalised, social media graphics are produced and emails go out. By that point, however, much of the outcome has already been determined.
Attendance is rarely won or lost in the final few days before a fixture. It is the result of weeks of consistent engagement that gradually builds anticipation and strengthens habits. Supporters rarely decide in isolation whether to attend. Their decision is shaped by everything that has happened since the previous game. Have they continued hearing from the club? Do they feel connected to the team? Has the club remained part of their routine?
Gloucester City AFC's record play-off crowd did not appear because of a campaign in the final week. It was the culmination of months of clear communication, careful planning and a matchday experience designed to make attending straightforward. The clubs achieving the strongest long-term attendance growth understand that attendance is not simply sold. It is cultivated.
It is easy to think of commercial growth in terms of products. Season tickets, memberships and hospitality packages all have prices attached, making success relatively simple to measure. Yet the clubs achieving the greatest commercial results are rarely selling products in isolation. They are giving supporters another way to belong.
Supporters rarely become members because they have spent hours comparing benefits against the annual fee. They join because they want to feel closer to the club. Rochdale AFC's £5 Fan Card worked not because it was an inexpensive product, but because it was an invitation to become part of the club's future. Raith Rovers' Club 1883 became a significant revenue stream because supporters understood what they were contributing to and felt they were playing an active role in something meaningful.
The organisations seeing the strongest long-term growth rarely ask "how do we sell more." They ask "how do we make more people feel part of what we are building." The answers often lead to the same commercial outcomes, but they begin from a very different place.
Most clubs spend the majority of their time looking inwards, focused on the next fixture and the challenges directly in front of them. There is rarely enough time to study what other clubs are doing across different leagues and sports.
That broader perspective is one of the most valuable things working at scale provides.
Millwall's decision to sell back-of-shorts sponsorship specifically for the Championship play-offs challenged conventional thinking about how commercial assets are packaged. Palermo's Valentine's Love Pack demonstrated how ticket bundles could become experiences rather than simply discounted products. Membership models have evolved after clubs observed success elsewhere. Email strategies have become more sophisticated as clubs adopted techniques from ecommerce. Even matchday guides improved because another club demonstrated their value during a high-demand fixture.
Good ideas rarely stay within one club for long. The organisations benefiting most are those curious enough to look beyond their own four walls and ask: could that work here?
There is a tendency in sport to look for silver bullets. When attendances stagnate or revenues plateau, the conversation turns to finding the next big idea. It is an understandable instinct, but it rarely reflects how sustainable growth actually happens.
The clubs making the greatest progress are usually not doing one thing dramatically better than everyone else. They are doing dozens of things marginally better, and those improvements compound.
Gloucester City's successful play-off campaign was built on careful planning, better communication, colour-coded tickets and improved supporter guidance. None of those changes would justify a press release in isolation. Together, they created a matchday that felt organised rather than stressful, and a crowd that exceeded anything the club had seen before. The most productive question a club can ask is rarely "what is the one thing that will change everything." It is "what can we make slightly better this week."
Retail businesses have long measured Customer Lifetime Value because they recognise that the most valuable customers are rarely those who spend the most on a single visit. Sports clubs should be thinking the same way about their supporters.
A supporter who buys a season ticket, renews their membership, purchases merchandise, brings family members and attends club events has a value that extends far beyond any individual transaction. The challenge is that many clubs cannot yet see that full picture, because the data reflecting it lives in different places.
When ticketing, memberships, communications and retail sit within a single supporter profile, the questions a club can ask change entirely. Who has stopped attending and when? Which members are likely to lapse? Which supporters engage regularly with communications but have never come to a game? Those questions lead to better decisions because they reflect the complete shape of a relationship rather than a single moment within it.
For all the advances in technology, one observation continues to stand out above almost everything else. The clubs with the strongest communities consistently outperform expectations.
That does not necessarily mean the largest crowds or the highest revenues. It means supporters who feel a genuine sense of ownership over the club's future. They volunteer, recommend matches to friends, introduce younger generations and defend the club during difficult periods. Technology can strengthen those relationships. It cannot create them.
Caernarfon Town illustrates this better than almost any club we have worked with. Its identity is inseparable from the town itself, the Welsh language woven through its communications, branding and matchday experience because it reflects the community the club represents. Supporters are not consuming a football product. They are participating in something that feels uniquely theirs. That authenticity is impossible to manufacture, but it is one of the most powerful commercial assets a club can possess.
If there is one observation that connects everything else, it is this: supporters do not experience clubs in departments. They do not think in terms of ticketing, retail, memberships or CRM. They experience one continuous relationship with one organisation, and every interaction either strengthens that relationship or quietly weakens it.
A first ticket purchase influences whether somebody returns for a second. A smooth matchday shapes how likely they are to recommend the club to a friend. A thoughtful follow-up email makes them feel recognised rather than forgotten. Even something as simple as clear parking information contributes to the impression they carry away.
The clubs making the strongest progress understand this. They have shifted their thinking away from individual transactions and towards long-term relationships, and they are relentlessly focused on improving the quality of those relationships one interaction at a time. The approaches vary. The destination is remarkably consistent.
Stronger relationships build stronger clubs. After working with more than 350 sports organisations, we have not found a more reliable path to growth than that.