When I first came to Sarasota there was no facility in the area where a professional soccer team could play. The only option would’ve been to cut a deal with the Major League Baseball teams and paid hundreds of thousands of dollars each season to flip the field to soccer. Or build a stadium, which takes years.
This is why we started Paradise as a pre-professional team in the USL League Two. But when that decision was made, there was a part of me that was happy. Because I believe that for a club to be sustainable over time you need true, genuine supporters. To create that type of support, you need a story.
There is many ways to tell a story, but for me the best are when there is some ups and downs, new developments, surprises while being a logical progression. When Sarasota Paradise started in USL L2, it gave us the perfect opportunity for a story with a gradual buildup. Starting from nothing, playing in the summer only with amateur players and ending up being the model for professional soccer playing in its own stadium.
It’s my belief that by going on this journey together with our community and our fans, that we will be able to have more genuine support in our community than if we immediately launched a pro team. This country is funny because people are always drawn to the new shiny object. Whatever new, people will buy or try. Love that about American culture.
However, that also means that new soccer teams get a lot of false positives when they launch. You think you’re doing good in your community outreach, ticketing strategies, merchandising and fan experience. But people just show up because you’re the new thing in town.
This is also why after the second season many teams see a drop in attendance. The support wasn’t genuine. Something else came around that was new, or it turns out you didn’t really do a good job connecting with your fans. Too late. You have to semi-start over and figure out how to (re)connect with your fans.
I believe that for us, by starting small and being very transparent in what we do and our struggles we have a greater chance of connecting in a genuine way with our fans. Sure, we probably only had 50-100 core fans in our first season. You know, people who would show up to any event we put on and came to more or less every game. That grew to around 100-150 this second season. Next year it will grow again and create a core of supporters that are dedicated to our mission of building Paradise.
There is nothing I look forward to more than being able to tell these people that we are going pro. It will be fun, and the party will be great! But, I can’t tell them that yet, because it’s not done yet. See, that’s another part of the gradual buildup. Don’t go around talking (too much) about the plans and the future that might happen.
We humans tend to “buy” the future if exciting plans are repeated too often or confidently. If they don’t happen folks will experience a “loss” which stings. Even if they never actually had this future! It’s tied to a boring brain bias called loss aversion. I don’t know about you, but I do hate to lose. So don’t promise things you can’t keep!
In our first season we did well outside the field, having a huge crowd of over a thousand people at our final game. On the field we were okay. In our second season, the average attendance was about the same (slightly up) but no top in crowds as year one. However, and this is important for our gradual buildup approach, we won the division and made the playoffs. This was by design.
First year I was preoccupied with figuring out all these things I didn’t know about how you put on a game event and get people to come out. Second year my focus was on making sure the team was good enough to make the playoffs. Guess what the focus will be in year three?
It’s actually going to be both on and off the field. We have invested in building out our organization with adding staff to have the best game day experience in USL L2 - and - we will have an even better team on the field. The story so far reads; weird Swedish tourist guy starts team that does okay first year, great second year and (hopefully) knocks it out of the park in its third year. Before…
As we continue to create experiences and interact with our community, we are gradually building the story and our support. It’s not fake or phony, it’s genuine and transparent. Painful process but one that will pay off in the end. Sarasota Paradise is build to be sustainable over time, survive many hurricanes and live on forever representing our incredible community.
MW
