Top Promotional Ideas

[tmote]

I want to thank you for your reply on the “Positive franchise examples”. That thread has given me some good information to research. I hope y’all will help me with another topic. I have been studying successful minor league teams regardless of the sport. It seems to me that minor league baseball has had the most success. These teams seem to find promotions more important than the game itself. They attempt to find ways to really get people involved.

This is my question, what are some of the better marketing or promotinal events that you have seen. As critical as some are, I find the ABA’s 13th man intriguing. Any others? Once again, this is not a post meant to turn into the ABA/PBL/IBL/CBA sucks thread. I just am looking for any successful examples.

[nksports]

I don't know about minor league basketball specifically, but any promotion that gets the fans involved. That's why it works so well in baseball. You usually have something about every inning. The puck toss is popular in hockey, along with the half-rink shot.

For basketball, you could have a half-court lucky shot promotion, a kids hot shot contest, kiddie teams playing a five-minute mini game at halftime (anything that brings in kids brings in parents. How about a team of Elvis impersonators taking on a team of Michael Jackson impersonators. The sky is the limit.

[robster2001]

The best marketing I've seen sells the fan experience more than the game... in minor pro sports, you have a hard time selling individual players (as you never know if they'll move up or move on), so you have to make the experience the selling point.

How you do that depends, in part, on where you are and who you can partner with.

[minorleagfan09]

in minor league basketball you want to make sure the players engage the fans (mostly kids) after the game and sign autographs (and pose for pictures).

you can have half time contests and give a signed ball and a free hotdog and pepsi to a lucky fan.

Just in general you want to keep the fans entertained during non-basketball periods. A dance team (cheerleaders) can help out with that as well.

As far as selling tickets go... have your sales reps sell season tickets along with sponsorships. also it helps if the media actually covers you. So yea... market and league matter.

One last thing... the ABA sucks. :mrgreen: sorry tmote i couldn't resist. but it is true... the league you get in does matter. if a league has a horrible reputation can you seriously expect the media to cover it? And that is the best free promotion you can get.

[tmote]

One last thing... the ABA sucks. :mrgreen: sorry tmote i couldn't resist. but it is true... the league you get in does matter. if a league has a horrible reputation can you seriously expect the media to cover it? And that is the best free promotion you can get.

I agree with you. I just meant the idea of a 13th man (bringing in celebrity) sounds like a good idea.

[minorleagfan09]

I agree with you. I just meant the idea of a 13th man (bringing in celebrity) sounds like a good idea.

only if the celebrity does it for free... yea right. so many teams have tried bringing in a celebrity to sign autographs for a game or things like signing Tim Hardaway etc. They generally end up losing a ton of money without doing what it was designed to do. Once the celebrity isn't around... the fans stop showing up.

Teams have failed all over the USA... and even in England because of this. The Worm (Rodman) isn't going to save your franchise.

[Paul S]

Tmote - WOW. You are one very determined guy. I mean you cover all bases.

Its just, going to the ABA boards to see what things work is like a Polar explorer doing some prep time in the Sahara Desert............or moving to Germany to learn Spanish..........or driving on the wrong side of the road because you want to see what driving is like in Australia.

Its counter intuitive. But to be fair you are seeing the entire sphere of basketball. The only thing I could recommend is avoid anything that seems ABA-ish.

[tmote]

Its just, going to the ABA boards to see what things work is like a Polar explorer doing some prep time in the Sahara Desert............or moving to Germany to learn Spanish..........or driving on the wrong side of the road because you want to see what driving is like in Australia.

Its counter intuitive. But to be fair you are seeing the entire sphere of basketball. The only thing I could recommend is avoid anything that seems ABA-ish.

LOL. I only post on the ABA board because I know there is a lot of traffic on their section. Very few are fans of the ABA. I just tried to post where the most people might see it.

The point of this thread is to try to see promotional ideas that have worked or failed. For example, the "13th Man" I thought sounded like it would work. However, Minorleague said he has seen it fail more times than he has seen it work. That is helpful. Socrates stated "The unexamined life is not worth living". Well in my opinion, the operations of a team are not worth doing if they have not first been examined Can you believe everything you hear on this board? Absolutely not, but you can examine it further.

[runninref]

Promotional idea ... how about a Joe Newman bobble head night?:mrgreen:

[not so fast]

tmote, with all due respect, how do you know what these people on here are telling you is factual? If you truly are getting ideas from here, it kind of amazes me you don't contact these people and talk with them.

I mean why are you wasting so much time? rochester in the pbl, is the best franchise outside the D-league. Why not just talk with them?

If you dont have enough money, then teams are doomed to fail. I hate to be a bearer of bad news, but all the promotional gimmicks you try are not going to matter, you can't sustain a quality minorleague basketball team with promotional gimmicks, at least not for a long period of time.

All you have to do is research and see all the number of failed franchises in the ibl, aba, pbl, cba, usbl, etc.....

it takes money, and lots of it, then you have to be lucky and have the right community, then you have to hire good people to run it and put a good product on the floor.

Now in saying all of this, I just contradicted my own statement, (cause you dont know me either). but I have been involved with ibl, teams, pbl teams, cba, teams,usbl teams, and aba teams. It is one common denomimator. How much cash does the owner have, and how much is he willing to spend, and how long is willing to lose money!

[wellington]

If you dont have enough money, then teams are doomed to fail. I hate to be a bearer of bad news, but all the promotional gimmicks you try are not going to matter, you can't sustain a quality minorleague basketball team with promotional gimmicks, at least not for a long period of time.

It takes money, and lots of it, then you have to be lucky and have the right community, then you have to hire good people to run it and put a good product on the floor.


Not So Fast -- Very sound advice there. You hit on some great points especially hiring good people, which is SO important. I think a lot of minor league start-ups naively think you can go down to the local college and hire some marketing interns (volunteers) and have them run things. That's okay, but if most of your staff is unpaid, it's a recipe for failure. It 's just unrealistic to think that a volunteer staff is going to get the job done (time, effort, desire). As human beings we are driven by ambition and money. I could see someone volunteering for say a NBA or NFL team with the hopes of getting their foot in the door and maybe getting a full-time, paying position. For a minor league team that 'carrot' isn't really there. Sure they get experience and can put it on their resume, but for the most part interns are going to gravitate to the more 'established' minor league sports teams -- minor league baseball/hockey as opposed to minor league basketball. It's okay to have volunteers on board, but the core of your staff has to be paid (although 'paid' may be a relative term) -- you definitely need permanency, stability -- these are the folks slogging it out in the trenches on a daily basis. In addition, having a year round staff (at least a couple of people) is going to be a huge plus. It's very hard with a seasonal staff to turn on the 'operational spigot' -- it takes several months to ramp things up and in reality, planning for the upcoming season is already taking place during the current season. Having year round staff will help maintain that inertia, momentum. With any business your staff is critical. It's very difficult keeping people motivated, enthused, on task. These are the folks that are going to be the face of the organization -- you want them to represent your team well (are they courteous on the phone, do they reply to e-mails, etc.). Beyond money, in my opinion hiring a stellar staff is one of the key determinants of long-term success or failure (for minor league basketball we may be more focused on short-term success).

[tmote]

I mean why are you wasting so much time? rochester in the pbl, is the best franchise outside the D-league. Why not just talk with them?

I am sorry I didn't make myself clear. That is exactly my plan. I posted earlier that I spent the past few months with 3 management teams in minor leauge baseball. The point of this post was to find some franchise's that are run well. Then contact them and see if they will allow me to pick their brains. I wanted multiple teams because some owners are not willing to help.

[not so fast]

Well don't go the owners 1st, go to league presidents. Man if you contacted dulio from the ibl, he would bombard you with so much information, you wouldn't know what to read first. I am sure that the doc from the pbl, and if you contacted the pbl office, Carrie who works there, is fantastic, and would gladly help you.

I realize there are some basketball junkies that post here, many are people who are and were directly involved with minor league teams, and some are very bright and knowledgeable people, even the ones I disagree with on things, are good basketball people.

If I were you, I would try and contact really sucessful former coaches and GM's from the CBA or D-league. Chris Daleo formerly of the Rockford Lightning and Minot, someone like him has forgotten more about this stuff, than most of us will ever know. Rod Baker has been around along time and has great experience and success coaching. I forget his real name but his screen name on this message board is Ten. He ran a very successful usbl franchise for years. Individuals like these would be the best resources.

[CHris902]

If I were you, I would try and contact really sucessful former coaches and GM's from the CBA or D-league. Chris Daleo formerly of the Rockford Lightning and Minot, someone like him has forgotten more about this stuff, than most of us will ever know. Rod Baker has been around along time and has great experience and success coaching. I forget his real name but his screen name on this message board is Ten. He ran a very successful usbl franchise for years. Individuals like these would be the best resources.
And after you're done talking to some of these very bright people you should offer them a job.

As Wellington said, you need to hire experience staffed who know what they're doing. Having unpaid interns is often more work than it is help (at least from my own, non-sports related experience) and any young, fresh out of university staff you hire will require guidance from someone experienced (as well as for you to shell out for some training for them).

One good coach (with an eager, unpaid assistant) can handle all the scouting, player personnel, and general coaching duties, but if you have just the owner and a couple of interns trying to handle all the off court stuff it is going to be a short run for the franchise.


The most overlooked thing in my mind about on-court promotional stuff is running it professionally. The game-day ops people need a script that lists exactly what is happening at what time out, the announcer needs to have the timeout games in his/her script, and the runners need to make sure that fans who are shooting free throws/playing whirly bats, the dancers and the mascot all know exactly when they're on. And everyone needs to be aware of how long the timeout/halftime is so people are off the court as soon as the first buzzer goes. Everything needs to run smoothly and look polished, even if it is just little kids playing basketball with the mascot.