As it prepared to launch its newest franchise team, our client wanted to size the target market for the new team leading up to its 2021 inaugural season to ensure they had a realistic understanding of potential ticket and merchandise sales, viewership and more. They also needed to understand the hockey fan journey and lifecycle to optimize their marketing and advertising messaging and attract the largest and most diverse fan base possible.
- Outcome 1: Helped identify the team’s name
- Outcome 2: Informed marketing and communication strategy
- Outcome 3: Outlined community engagement opportunities for the franchise
The challenge
In 2019, a major professional sports league was preparing to launch their newest franchise team in a new major US city. As the new location has not traditionally been a “hockey town” there were questions around if locals would welcome a new sport, how deeply they would engage with the franchise, and where there would be opportunities to build and deepen fandom.
The approach
Hypothesis, an Elixirr company, partnered with a major professional sports league to strategise how to build fandom in a new market by conducting primary research through qualitative focus groups and a quantitative survey. This research focussed on:
- Audience interest: In-person focus groups with current and potential hockey fans in the new location explored team name options and ‘ways in’ for fandom
- Sizing the market: an online quantitative survey to determine targeting and marketing opportunities for the team
- On-going tracking: we revisited our survey in 2023 to identify new avenues to capture fans and increase engagement with the franchise, post-launch
The team conducted four in-person focus groups in the new location among fans/committed season ticket buyers as well as potential fans/general sports fans. We then leveraged these insights to craft a 15-minute online survey, sent to respondents across the Pacific Northwest (Washington, Oregon, Idaho). Using learning from across the unique pieces of research, we brought current and potential fan segments to life through a fandom timeline, team advice/pitch activities, and attitude and lifestyle profiling. This work was followed up with an additional quantitative survey in 2023 to measure how interest and engagement in the franchise had evolved since the team’s launch.
The value delivered
With the insights in hand, the client was able to make strategic decisions around the team name, types of fans to target, ways to optimize marketing and communications and types of community engagement opportunities in which to invest.
Our insights enabled the team to create a brand roadmap that was authentic to locals by bringing fan segments to life through a fandom timeline, team advice/pitch activities and attitude and lifestyle profiling – all culminating in a fan landscape presentation for the client’s board of directors.