I remember a game at Stade des
Charmilles quite a few year back. I was sitting with a couple of mates drinking
wine in "tribune B" (funny thing is that I never set foot behind the
goals at the Charmilles and I have never been on the long side at La Praille).
We got pretty pissed and it was one of those "total referee failure"
games. So we got pretty angry and started screaming louder and louder and
waving our empty glass bottles until a steward came up to us and politely asked
us if he could take our empty bottles before something bad happened.
That situation is
now history. No more glass bottles in the stands, and I'm pretty sure they
don't even serve wine at the stadium anymore. At least not in the Praille north
stand. Football has entered a new era. Back in the days, clubs tried to attract
fans, today they want customers.
The biggest
example of this change is probably French club Paris Saint Germain. I was lucky
to attend a few games at Parc des Princes before the "Leproux plan".
After club owners Colony Captial managed to clean the club from its most loyal
(and sometimes violent) supporters, PSG was ready to be sold to the "clean
and honest" Qatari group QSI. The timing could not have been better,
actually too good to be a coincidence. Before QSI, PSG was nothing without its
ultras. The club was badly managed, playing boring football and even the "Classicos"
against Marseille were fading out to be quite boring. The show at Parc des
Princes was not on the pitch, it was in the stands. And believe me, there are
no words to describe the atmosphere there used to be in that stadium. No one in
France and possibly in central Europe came even close. So without the Boulogne
and Auteil ultras, the club was ready to die. But thanks to a huge amount of
cash injection from QSI, the club was able to conquer a new type of audience. Customers.
No more poor, dirty and violent ultras. From then and on, the show was on the
pitch with their freshly bought super stars. Thanks to money, they managed to
change the type of supporters from poor and passionate to rich and silent.
Another example of
money being able to buy you a new "better" audience is Real Madrid.
The Ultras Sur only occupied a very small portion of the Santiago Bernabeu
stadium but Florentino Perez knew that they occupied seats of potential high
paying customers. A penny saved is a penny earned. So he managed to finally get
rid of them. With the help of money (a lot of money), you have the luxury to
choose which kind of supporters you want in your stadium.
Servette FC
marketing team are being very aggressive lately. The Quennec/Jenkins duo don't
seem to understand that what might work in the UK or in ice hockey does not necessarily
work with Swiss football. Jenkins prides himself with increasing the attendance
at Cardiff City FC. Wrong, Vincent Tan injected the cash that made it possible.
Quennec might have seen similar marketing campaigns work with GS Hockey Club,
but you can't compare hockey and football. With ice hockey you don't have the
same offer on TV. Unless you like staying up at night to watch the NHL, your
only option is watching the Swiss league. It's a lot easier audience to attract
to the stadium than what you find in football.
A big part of our
club’s small budget, is going to marketing and trying to reach out to a new
type of audience. It is not 100% clear which type of people the new campaigns
are aimed for, but to me it looks a lot like the same type of people you now
find at Parc des Princes and Santiago Bernabeu. Families and high paying
customers. This is where I think my dearest club is doing all wrong! Swiss
football, even at the highest level, is super boring to watch. In Switzerland,
if you want to see good football, turn on your TV. You don't go to the stadium
to see a great game, you go for the atmosphere. I try to watch a few other Swiss
teams live every season, and I have noticed that the majority of people
attending football games in this country, are quite young with their eyes more
often on the ultras section than the pitch.
The association,
the league, clubs, politicians and police are trying everything possible to
eradicate the ultra-movement from Swiss football. What they don't understand is
that the ultras, are Swiss football. You lose them, you lose all the kids that
came to watch them and you lose the reason for professional football to exist
in this country. Imagine FCZ (or GC) without the ultras, the few people coming
to the stadium sitting outside the supporter section come for two reasons, the
derbies and to see the shows put on by the Sudkurve. The only way to attract
people to the stadium is to sell them a boiling atmosphere and strong rivalry
(1). Clubs don't seem to understand it, but the ultras are their bread and
butter. Not because they spend a lot of money, because the attract people who
spend money.
So my advice to
Jenkins is that if you don't have the cash (and I know you don't) to build a team that will attract people with its beautiful football and many titles, you should consider taking care of the most loyal supporters before trying to reach out
to new ones. These singing supporters are the attraction. If you take care of
them and close your eyes from time to time on flares and firecrackers (2), they
and their tifos will bring the crowd to La Praille.
(1) The club
recently removed a tweet following the home win against Lausanne because they
thought it was to aggressive. You know what they tweeted? "Have a safe
trip home on the shores of lake Geneva" What the fuck is wrong with you
people? You want supporters insulting each other, you want the little Lausanne
player cunt planting a LS flag on our pitch and you want to take the piss via
social networks after a win, YOU WANT RIVALRY! The club should not have removed
the tweet, they should have waited for LS to respond and then attack again even
stronger. It could have gone viral and would have been a huge boost for the
next games between the teams (marketing for dummies, chapter one).
(2) I am deeply
convinced that paying fines for the use of flares is a great investment. Flares and tifos attract more paying customers in the long run, than the fines will
cost you. You wouldn't believe the number of people who tell me that they are
only going to the derbies because that's when they see flares, tifos and a
little bit of rivalry.
