S1/E5: Nice Kicks

LABNOTES is a production of SECTORLAB and is designed to help people at cultural organizations to challenge conventional thinking by presenting ideas from inside and outside our sector. These ideas are also put to use in consulting.

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Season 1 / Edition 5

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Detroit City FC offers a fascinating look at a set of community engagement programs with impressive substance and strategic intent.

DCFC plays in the United Soccer League, just one step below Major League Soccer (the top-tier league in the US & Canada).

And the USL is a league that’s growing quickly, alongside soccer’s exploding popularity in the US (especially in markets without an MLS team, like Detroit). Currently, DCFC is about a $5-6M organization, averaging about 6,000 fans at each of their 17 home games (for context, the BBC notes that attendance figure is “greater than plenty of clubs in England's League One.”).

Unlike most other franchises in sports, the team was founded (and is owned) by a group of young Detroiters passionate about the sport and their city. It means they can’t run their team like other multi-millionaire/billionaire team owners, says Alex Wright, one of the co-founders: “our livelihood, whether we can pay our mortgages, depends on how the team is doing.”

Perhaps as a result, the organization seems as concerned with being a service organization as a sports outfit:

“I don’t want you to feel like you’re giving $175 to a soccer team.” Alex says, in discussing season ticket sales, “I want you to feel like you’re giving $175 to a community organization that does good”

Here are some ways they go about that:

• They are active in supporting causes relevant to the community: from organizing tree planting, fundraising for Freedom House (which protects asylum-seekers), providing support for those affected by the Flint water crisis, and running a campaign to end gun violence. In 2014, they were the first sports team in America to dedicate their shirts to LGBTQ inclusion in a competitive match.
  

• They offer an impressively comprehensive youth soccer initiative - with programs and camps for kids ages 2 through 18 - partly funded by a $1 surcharge on each ticket sold (meaning every ticket buyer is also “bought in” to their mission).
  

• They work to raise the visibility, for college scholarships, of aspiring soccer players in their community who want to go to the next level.
  

• Alongside season packages and single tickets, they sell “buy a ticket / season pass” for local families who can’t afford tickets as an add-on.
  

• Northern Guard Supporters, DCFC’s independent supporters group, not only creates a great game day atmosphere, but doubles as an active volunteer corps: donating equipment to local public schools, organizing clean-ups, supporting foodbanks, and working with the club to distribute tickets to poor families.
  

While Alex believes this is the right thing to do, he also understands it’s strategically important to the team’s success - as they’re not just trying to promote the team, they’re trying to win converts to the sport of soccer.

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OBSERVATIONS

• There’s a lot more depth to these programs than I could provide in brief, but I think many ideas here are adaptable to an arts/cultural context - e.g. helping talented kids take the “next step” to college, the $1 “fee” for youth programs (Alex says they follow-up with ticket buyers on how much this fee has generated and what impact it has had, so the ticket purchase is not the end of it).
  

• Alex relayed, via research from their sector, that soccer fans are mostly created by either playing the sport at a young age, or being introduced to it by an older relative (sounds familiar!). DCFC has clearly taken this to heart, aiming to maximize the number of participants in their youth programs, because while 99.9% of them won’t ever play for the club, they and their families will view the organization as a part of their lives, places where they could learn and grow (of note - they own an indoor sports facility as an extension of this commitment).
  

• I think there’s a lot of parallels between soccer and the arts. In many cases, we’re selling the category (soccer/artform) as well as the “product” (team/organization) to a lot of outsiders. This “solution” of achieving greater relevance through community engagement is not unique to DCFC, with newer MLS teams pursuing it as well. It’s interesting to me the moves these teams have made in a space (community engagement) we might view as “our area.”
  

• Brands of all types look for ways to demonstrate their social responsibility to gain a competitive edge - even sock companies (i.e. “buy a pair, we’ll donate one”). DCFC’s brand benefits from this not only with ticket buyers, but in making the club more attractive to sponsorships as well. On our side, we know many foundations are moving in the direction of supporting causes that solve problems in society rather than projects that justify themselves on purely artistic terms.
  

• Our “silos” of education/community, marketing/brand, and fundraising may not be conducive to this kind of holistic strategy.
  

If you find this interesting and would like to learn more, or try to adapt some of these ideas for yourself, get in touch!

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