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Anyone located near a football field or stadium ?

T

td_VP192

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Out my back door there is a 15,000 seat stadium that holds HS football events, concerts, track and field, soccer tournaments, etc. When there are events the parking lot and surrounding streets are filled with cars. We opened in August and tried advertising in the HS football program. It was a complete waste. We had two coupons in the program and did not get a single one back. We’re talking about thousands of people that did not take advantage of it.
We’ve also tried putting flyers on all of the cars which gave us a very limited response.
Last week we had people at the entrances of the stadium handing out coupons which didn’t give us anything.

They do have a consession stand at the stadium and I’m currently trying to get in there. I was wondering if anyone has done anything that has been successful.

Thanks.
 
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Get to the athletic director and the president of the Booster clubs. Don’t wait another week . . . do it now. They are ALWAYS looking for fundraisers and ways to get community support.

Try creating some sort of offer and print it on cards that you can print up and have the boosters sell for profit. Something like 14" one topping pizza . . . you sell them the cards at $4 or $5 apiece, and they can in turn sell for $4 or $5 markup. You get exposure to the market, and they get a decent shot at fundraising. Someone else mentioned on here doing something like this with schools, girl scouts, etc. Get creative, and make the cards attractive. Mark them so they are easy enough to identify duplicators.

Really, once you get a good experience with onje of the programs (football, cheerleaders, soccer, basketball, band, whoever) word will get around, and you will be welcome into the “hen house”. You may find that someone is already on the inside, and that you have to negotiate the better solution for them.

Concession stands are very often run by booster clubs (parents supporting the kids). Get a contact and you may be able to sell them reduced price pizzas for them to resell as slices . . . wholesale pricing that they can make a return on. You get to put up a sign saying pizza provided by and they get a good quality product to add to their menu. You may even get a better discussion once you find out what equipment they have on site at the stands.
 
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Nick writes:
Concession stands are very often run by booster clubs (parents supporting the kids). Get a contact and you may be able to sell them reduced price pizzas for them to resell as slices . . . wholesale pricing that they can make a return on. You get to put up a sign saying pizza provided by and they get a good quality product to add to their menu. You may even get a better discussion once you find out what equipment they have on site at the stands.
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I had a H.S. football stadium across from me once when I was with Papa John’s. The concession stand was run by the band boosters. The deal I made with them was $5 14" Pepperoni pizzas. We sold an average of 20 pizzas whenever they had a home game.

My experiences (been there done that):

Programs - this idea sucks
Windshielding - very limited response
Passing out flyers - same as windshielding

As yourself WHY these things don’t work too well… Most times the reason isn’t you. The games usually start around 7 or 8 and by the time they’re over, most people just want to go home. Sure you’ll have a few that will straggle into your shop but for the most part you won’t see anything materialize from these games.

If you want to get any kind of sales off the game:
  1. You need to advertise pre-game specials. This is the crowd to target.
  2. Sell pizzas inside the stadium.
  3. During halftime throw tshirts into the crowd (or get one of those cool $3,000 tshirt cannons).
  4. Have a drawing where you award a section free pizza compliments of you (make sure you have someone in that section passing out coupons the moment you make the announcement).
Items 3 and 4 won’t spark immediate sales but they will give you additional customer traffic in which some may become regulars in the future.

You can try #5, but only if you’re a gambling man:
  1. Whatever the home team scores, this is the percent off the order with any ticket stub (i.e. Home team 40 Vistors 10 = 40% off). Some may prefer the offer to be valid only for the weekend. Some may prefer the offer to expire the day before the next game. It’s up to you.
Hope this helps. -J_r0kk
 
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j_r0kk:
You can try #5, but only if you’re a gambling man:
  1. Whatever the home team scores, this is the percent off the order with any ticket stub (i.e. Home team 40 Vistors 10 = 40% off). Some may prefer the offer to be valid only for the weekend. Some may prefer the offer to expire the day before the next game. It’s up to you.
Hope this helps. -J_r0kk
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I like this one for the reason Dave Ostrander would: It is a bit of a risk and fun with the customers. They like to be ‘played with’ as in fun. It is really a risk, but it let’s the potential customers know that you are willing to risk big to get their patronage.

An aside, my high school team set the regional record for point spread one year: 96-10. Talk about losing your shirt on a deal!!!Might want a disclaimer somewhere for that eventuality. If your home team is lousy, you may want to ‘guarnatee’ a discount or bonus of some sort, like a free something (soda, breadsticks) if they get shut out.
 
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This post hit pretty close to home for me, so I’m bumping it back up in hopes that more people chime in.

J’s comments about people wanting to go home after the game gave me an “ah ha” moment. Which also explains why the ads put in any media guides, or flyers given out at the games don’t pull well.
 
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slew1234:
The Washington Redskins and PJs did something interesting, I worked at a TV station at the time and we did a story on how busy PJs was because the team scored 7 TDs (7 free toppings)
You could do just one of them…free topping for every home team touchdown or % off it home team wins, any variation.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/24/AR2005102401807.html
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Works for baseball, too . . . home runs, runs by home team (with maximum, I’d suspect) or anything else. Grand Slam means a fee 2liter soda . . . whatever. Minor League teams might jump on this sort of thing as a cooperative marketing ploy and reduce the rate of advertising in their materials.

Back to original post, you could offer to feed the team or boosters or whoever in exchange for considerations in getting into their marketplace. Maybe a pizza party a the end of the season for the team, or the band, or the cheerleaders, or whatever makes sense. Negotiations are easier when there’s pizza involved 🙂
 
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NicksPizza:
Back to original post, you could offer to feed the team or boosters or whoever in exchange for considerations in getting into their marketplace. Maybe a pizza party a the end of the season for the team, or the band, or the cheerleaders, or whatever makes sense. Negotiations are easier when there’s pizza involved 🙂
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When the coach came in to see if we’d advertise in their program I offered to throw a pizza party any time they wanted it if they gave us a full page ad at a 1/2 page price. He agreed, which made me even more excited about the prospect of serving football fans. Then when we didn’t receive one order from the two coupons on that full page it made me ill. I’m starting to realize that the only time these potential customers have a need for pizza is while they are watching the game.
Getting into the consession stand is my top priority. If I can get in there I believe it will generate more walk-in business at the store better than any program, windshielding or handing out flyers would ever do. Of course the additional sales, community involvment(splitting profits with school) and getting our pizza into more mouths won’t hurt either. 😉
 
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