Sports clubs work hard to attract new supporters, but what happens after somebody attends their first match? Research suggests the second visit could be a crucial moment in building a lasting relationship. We explore what encourages people to return and why clubs should pay more attention to the days between fixtures.
Sports clubs put enormous effort into attracting new supporters, but research suggests that what happens after somebody’s first visit could be just as important as getting them through the turnstiles in the first place.
Imagine a family attending their first football match. They’ve bought their tickets online, arrived early enough to find their seats and spent the afternoon enjoying an experience that’s entirely new to them. The children have had a brilliant time, the atmosphere was better than they expected and, on the way home, somebody suggests they should do it again. It’s been a good afternoon, and the club has gained four new visitors who might eventually become regular supporters.
From the club’s perspective, however, the transaction is complete. Four tickets have been sold, four people have attended and the revenue has been recorded. Unless somebody within the organisation is paying particular attention, there’s a reasonable chance that family will receive exactly the same communications as every other person on the club’s database. They might get an email promoting the next home fixture or a reminder about season tickets, but nothing that acknowledges they’ve just experienced something for the first time.
A few weeks pass, other commitments get in the way and the family never quite gets around to checking the fixture list. Six months later, they still remember having a lovely afternoon at the football. They just haven’t been back.
It’s an entirely ordinary scenario, and that’s what makes it interesting. The club hasn’t necessarily done anything wrong, and the family hasn’t decided that football isn’t for them. Somewhere between enjoying the first match and organising the second, the opportunity has simply been lost.
For sports clubs investing time and money in attracting new audiences, that gap between a first visit and a second could be one of the most important commercial challenges they face.
Most clubs are understandably interested in the number of new supporters they attract. First-time ticket buyers provide an indication that marketing campaigns are working, community initiatives are reaching people and the club is finding audiences beyond its established supporter base. Those are all worthwhile achievements, particularly for smaller organisations trying to grow attendances.
But a first visit can happen for any number of reasons. Somebody might have received a complimentary ticket, accompanied a friend, taken their children along during the school holidays or decided to attend because a particular fixture caught their attention. They might enjoy themselves enormously without necessarily developing any intention to become a regular supporter.
A second visit is different. It suggests that something about the original experience was sufficiently appealing for somebody to make another decision to attend, often with the competing demands of work, family life and other forms of entertainment to consider.
Research from sports analytics company Proem Sports offers an interesting illustration of this distinction. Drawing on what the company describes as more than 40 million fan interactions and over 30 seasons of sports data, Proem reported that supporters who attended twice were approximately three times more likely to return the following season than those who attended only once. Its analysis put following-season retention at 18% for one-time attendees, compared with 56% for those who attended twice.
Those figures are striking, although they need to be understood in context. They are findings reported by Proem rather than independently established benchmarks for every sport or club, and they don’t prove that attending a second match causes somebody to become more loyal. People who return twice may already have a stronger interest in the team than those who attend once.
Nevertheless, the difference points towards something clubs should be paying considerably more attention to. A second attendance is an early indication that somebody might be developing a relationship with the organisation, rather than simply enjoying an isolated afternoon.
For a club that attracts hundreds or thousands of first-time visitors each season, understanding how many come back could reveal considerably more about its long-term growth prospects than the number of new tickets sold alone.
One of the difficulties in attracting new supporters is that regular fans often forget what attending a sporting event feels like when you haven’t done it before.
Somebody who has followed a club for twenty years knows where to park, which entrance to use, how early to arrive and where to find something to eat. They understand the routines of matchday almost instinctively, and their attachment to the club means they’re likely to tolerate the occasional inconvenience. A disappointing result, a lengthy queue or a particularly miserable afternoon in the rain might be frustrating, but it probably won’t stop them returning.
For somebody attending for the first time, those same details can have a much greater influence on the experience. Finding the stadium, navigating the ticketing process, understanding where to sit and knowing what facilities are available all contribute to whether the afternoon feels enjoyable or unnecessarily complicated.
Research from Deloitte into stadium experiences and fan satisfaction highlights the importance of these practical considerations, particularly among more casual supporters. While committed fans may be motivated primarily by their relationship with the team, less established audiences can place greater emphasis on the overall experience of attending an event.
That distinction becomes particularly relevant when clubs are trying to attract families, younger audiences and people who haven’t grown up attending live sport.
A parent taking two children to their first match is making a judgement about considerably more than the quality of the football. They’re thinking about the cost of the afternoon, whether the children enjoyed themselves, how straightforward everything was and whether repeating the experience feels manageable.
If the match itself is disappointing but the children have a wonderful afternoon, there’s every chance they’ll want to return. If the team wins comfortably but the family spends half the day feeling confused, uncomfortable or unwelcome, the result might not be enough to persuade them back.
The growing audience for women’s football offers another useful example. Research published by Populous and YouGov Sport in September 2026 examined the relationship between interest in women’s football and attendance at domestic matches in the UK. Among existing attendees surveyed, only 15% attended women’s football at least monthly, illustrating the considerable difference between having an interest in a sport and making regular attendance part of everyday life.
The research also highlighted the importance of practical aspects of the stadium experience. Comfort, accessibility and ease of movement all influenced how supporters thought about attending matches, with many respondents preferring better seating arrangements over being closer to the pitch.
For clubs attempting to turn growing interest into consistent attendance, these findings are a reminder that the quality of the experience surrounding the game can be just as important as the product on the pitch.
Even when a first visit goes well, there’s no guarantee that somebody will make the effort to return. This is where the relationship between a club and its supporters becomes particularly interesting, because the days following a match are often treated as something of a commercial dead zone.
The club moves on to preparing for its next fixture, dealing with operational matters and promoting the next round of ticket sales. Supporters return to their normal routines, and those who aren’t already in the habit of attending can quickly lose touch with what’s happening.
For a regular supporter, the next home game is already part of their calendar. They know when the fixtures are, how to buy tickets and who they’ll be attending with. Somebody who has only been once may need considerably more encouragement, even if they thoroughly enjoyed the experience.
Proem Sports has suggested that the period shortly after a first attendance can be particularly important, identifying an eight-to-thirteen-day window in which conversion to a second visit was strongest in its analysis. As with its retention figures, that shouldn’t be treated as a universal rule, but it does reinforce the value of maintaining a connection while the original experience is still fresh.
The opportunity doesn’t necessarily require an elaborate marketing campaign. A simple message thanking somebody for attending their first match, asking how they found the experience and introducing them to another suitable fixture could make a meaningful difference.
For families, that communication might include information about upcoming matches during school holidays, junior activities or the facilities available for children. Somebody who attended with friends might be interested in a group ticket offer, while a supporter who travelled from further away could benefit from practical information about future fixtures and transport.
The point isn’t that every supporter needs to receive more marketing. It’s that different people have different reasons for attending, and the communications they receive should reflect that.
A first-time visitor who receives a generic season-ticket sales email immediately after attending might reasonably conclude that the club is more interested in selling them something than understanding whether they enjoyed the experience. A thoughtful follow-up that recognises their circumstances is a rather different proposition.
And for smaller clubs, where commercial teams are often responsible for everything from ticketing and sponsorship to social media and matchday operations, finding the time to communicate with supporters individually can be difficult. That doesn’t make the opportunity any less important, but it does mean clubs need to think carefully about how these relationships can be managed without creating another substantial administrative burden.
There is a broader question here about what clubs actually mean when they talk about growing their supporter base.
An increase in ticket sales is obviously welcome, but it doesn’t necessarily reveal whether the audience is becoming more committed. A club might attract hundreds of new visitors through a particularly successful promotion, only to discover that very few return once the offer has ended.
Conversely, a smaller campaign that brings in fewer first-time attendees but encourages a significant proportion to come back could prove considerably more valuable over time.
Research from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology provides a useful perspective on this. A 2025 study examining the journeys of more than 930,000 newly acquired sports fans explored how early interactions, ticket purchases and engagement related to subsequent supporter behaviour and spending.
Rather than viewing supporters solely through the value of an individual transaction, the research examined how their relationships with sports organisations developed over time. Its findings underline the importance of understanding the different paths people take after their first interaction with a club.
For a football club, those paths might look very different. One person could attend a single match every Christmas when visiting family. Another might begin attending once a month before eventually purchasing a season ticket. A parent could start by bringing a child to a community event and gradually become a regular attendee themselves.
None of these relationships develops in exactly the same way, and clubs shouldn’t necessarily expect them to.
What they can do is begin to understand the patterns.
How many people attending for the first time return within the next three months? Are families more likely to come back for afternoon fixtures? Do supporters introduced through community programmes behave differently from those attracted by discounted tickets? Which matches are particularly effective at bringing new people into the ground, and which are more successful at encouraging them to return?
These questions are commercially valuable because they allow clubs to move beyond simply counting transactions and begin understanding how their audiences are developing.
They also create opportunities to make better decisions about where limited marketing budgets and staff time should be directed.
If a club discovers that a particular type of first-time visitor is especially likely to return, it might decide to invest more in reaching similar audiences. If another group consistently attends once and disappears, the club can investigate whether the issue is price, scheduling, the matchday experience or simply a lack of communication afterwards.
The objective isn’t to turn every visitor into a season-ticket holder. It’s to give people who enjoyed attending a better chance of finding a place for the club in their lives.
For much of the past decade, the conversation around sports ticketing technology has concentrated on making the initial purchase easier. Clubs have invested in digital tickets, mobile access, faster checkouts and systems that reduce the amount of manual work involved in selling and distributing tickets.
Those improvements matter. A complicated buying process can discourage somebody from attending before they’ve even reached the stadium, and removing unnecessary friction is an important part of making live sport more accessible.
But the transaction itself is only one part of the relationship.
Once somebody has bought a ticket, the club has an opportunity to understand what they’re interested in, help them prepare for the event and learn something about their experience afterwards. If they attend again, that relationship can develop further, with communications and offers becoming more relevant as the club learns what matters to them.
For larger organisations with dedicated marketing and data teams, some of this work is already familiar. For smaller clubs, the challenge has often been finding the time and resources to make it happen consistently.
That may be one of the more interesting areas of change in sports technology over the coming years. Rather than requiring somebody in a club office to identify every first-time visitor, remember to contact them and manually follow up after each match, clubs are increasingly able to think about supporter relationships as something that can be managed continuously.
The potential is considerable, provided the technology is used to make communications more useful rather than simply more frequent. Supporters don’t need another stream of generic promotional messages, and clubs shouldn’t mistake the ability to contact somebody for a reason to do so.
What they need is a better understanding of when a message might genuinely help somebody enjoy supporting their club.
It’s an area we’re particularly interested in at Fanbase, and one we’ll be exploring in more detail over the coming weeks.
There will always be pressure on sports clubs to attract new supporters. Growing attendances, reaching younger audiences and introducing more people to live sport are important ambitions, particularly for organisations operating in communities where competition for people’s time and money is considerable.
But perhaps clubs should spend a little more time thinking about what happens to the people they’ve already persuaded to attend.
A first match can introduce somebody to an experience they didn’t know they would enjoy. It might be a family afternoon, a birthday present, an invitation from a friend or simply a decision to try something different. The club has done the difficult work of getting that person through the turnstiles, and the matchday experience has given them a reason to consider coming back.
What happens next shouldn’t be left entirely to chance.
A second visit doesn’t guarantee that somebody will become a lifelong supporter, but it suggests that the club has begun to earn a place in their routine. From there, the relationship can develop in all sorts of ways, whether that means attending a handful of matches each season, becoming a member or eventually introducing another generation to the club.
For sports organisations trying to build stronger, more sustainable audiences, there is an opportunity to pay as much attention to that second visit as they do to the first.
Because attracting somebody to a match is an achievement. Giving them a reason to come back is how a supporter relationship begins.
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