Seems attendance is the topic du jour. In my time in PR and marketing, my mentor always said, "Set the right expectations and your clients will always be happy." That's where the Dolphins are failing. Not on the field. By trying to pretend there is not a rebuilding happening, by shying away from calling it that, the Dolphins management is hoping people won't step away from buying tickets. I think it's the EXACT opposite. when you set the expectation that we are competing for a Superbowl each year, and the reality is that we are not ready to do it, there will be fan disappointment. Fans are smart. They invest time, energy and money based on what they expect. By being afraid fans will not buy tickets, the Dolphins are creating exactly what they fear. Here is what would work instead. Declare openly that you are rebuilding. Set fan expectations from the outset that this year is not about winning a Superbowl but about starting to see the bright future we have with new players, a new QB with a higher ceiling than anyone we've had in years. Get excited about the RIGHT things. Philbin tried to do this when he said all he wanted from this year was to be better in December than in September. But overall, the Dolphins still refuse to touch the word rebuilding as if it's toxic. I think guys like Irealnd are averse to it because it makes him look bad, but that's just me guessing. So we get fans who don;t get excited about watching the first baby steps of a fledgling team, we get fans who are led to hope for this team to run 100 yard dash's when, in truth, it must learn to crawl, then walk. Set the wrong expectations and your fans will realize it as the reality shows through. Then they stop coming. Set the right expectations, and you'd have more people willing to sit through this phase and watch the team grow. Let's get excited TOGETHER about the future, not disappointed about the present. We ARE rebuilding. And by THAT yardstick I'm proud of what we're doing and would love to go to a game. How would you be feeling about buying tickets today if this whole year's message had been "We're rebuilding"?
Your mentor is correct but you are applying it incorrectly. As a marketing person you set reasonable expectations to your client. You don't do that with their clients. You don't sell sneakers by saying they'll do nothing for you. You sell them by creating grand illusions of greatness by simply wearing these game changing sneakers....and you tell your clients to expect a reasonable increase in their sneaker sales by X even if they want X+Y. No one would come out for a rebuilding project. In fact, its because of fan backlash and demands that they didn't call it a rebuild. Let's not forget either, we're still very much in the play off hunt, to the point we actually control our own destiny.
Disagree. You claim to be better than you are, you have decent front-loaded attendance then diappointment and very low attendance, coupled with damage to faith ind trust in your brand. Damaged relationship with customer base. YOu claim to be what you are, and you have may have slightly lower attendance up-front, but it would hold steady and build as the club imporved... plus strengthen the relationship with your customer who would feel invested, like they can trust you, and that they have been along for the whole journey. The way you make a REAL fanbase is when they feel they came along for the whole ride, from the first steps to once you are great. That makes them feel proud of themselves as fans and closer to the team. Bandwagoning is the result of expectations not matching realities.
Nope. That may work in a Buffalo or a Green Bay, where football is the only thing going on. NFL teams live and die by bandwagons. This isn't college. Its simple, in Miami with all there is to do, its hard for a team not setting the world fire to get a piece of the too few dollars floating around allocated to entertainment. We win, numbers will go up dramatically. They won't be where we want them to because of the economy though.
Def true that markets with nothing else to live for have more diehard fans. Also true that winning helps. A LOT. Absent those things, I think you have to be honest to your fans or risk going from moderately low attendance to ghost-town tumbleweeds. Do you live in miami, by the way? I don't but I ask myself if I'd pay to watch them play. I mean, right now I wouldn't even pay for Sunday Ticket or to watch at a sports bar. It's not just money, it's feeling my time is worth more than that. Hell, maybe you're right, but I just feel like I could get more excited and on board if I KNEW I was only watching to see our talent develop, and traces of our coaching philosophy to see where the future lies... instead I watched games thinking we could win, then feeling let down. I mean, it's not the team's job to say they don;t expect to win. lol. The coaches and athletes HAVE to expect to win. Still, I feel like Ross consistently is a buffoon who honestly expects a Superbowl run each year. Maybe that's because Ireland annually keeps his job by claiming we are a couple pieces away?
Yup. It's called being smart and having a life and not throwing good money after bad. And its really not that fun to pay money to watch a losing team in what feels like a brick oven. I used to hate bandwagon people. Now I don't. It's perfectly rational, imo. If the team stinks, who am I to tell someone they have to support them? And when the team is good, who am I to tell them they can't enjoy it? Its about entertainment, after all
I don't even believe in the word rebuilding anymore. It doesn't exist IMO. How many times do we see teams who sucked the year before or years before and have fantastic seasons? It happens every year in every sport. The key is to finding the right pieces and and developing young talent. The only thing that will bring fans back is winning. Everything else is just a waste of time.
Do you even have any experience with marketing or PR? It seems to me you're throwing **** on the wall and hoping it sticks at this point.
I have a life and doubt I am substantially dumber than you or most people, but I still go to the games and support my team. To me, it's just what you do as a fan. Part of being a true fan is supporting your team regardless of their record or the names on the jerseys. Obviously, not everyone feels the same way, but I don't think one can really call oneself a true fan or a hardcore fan if you only go when the team is great or has a bunch of flashy stars. To me, it's OK for people to ride the bandwagon as long as they recognize and admit that is what they are doing. I am a fair weather bandwagon fan of the Marlins. When they went to the World Series I went to all the playoff and WS games. When they suck, I don't go at all. I'm just not that big a baseball fan. But I don't sit around complaining about Marlin attendance or criticizing the fans that do go either.
How do you get veterans to come to a rebuilding team, or play their hardest when they know it is not expected to get to the playoffs?
Then I disagree with the premise. The problem is simple. We are in a bandwagon heavy market (South Florida) and we aren't setting the scoreboard on fire... win and people will come. See the Miami Heat for an example.
I dont see how the organization touted itself as a Super Bowl contender? How was it not very clear that we were rebuilding? We were last on the division, everyone the ENTIRE offseason was talking about how Ireland put no talent on this team, and that we would maybe win 3-4 games. We were starting a rookie QB, and we traded away players who are great currently, for draft picks for the future. Ireland was saying on Hardknocks that we only had #4, #5, and #6 WRs? What move, if any, screamed "were trying to make a push this season!"? Not seeing it. Everyone on the planet knew we were rebuilding. As far as I'm concerned... the expectations were very low for this team, and so far we have far exceeded those expectations?
Losing is the main problem, but I dn't think it is quite as simple as you suggest. I am concerned that something has been lost in this fan base that may be very hard to restore. Sure, if the team becomes great the fans will come back in big numbers, but if it just becomes an annually competitive team that makes a run every few years (i.e., a consistent 8-8 to 10-6 team), I am not confident that the place will be full or even all that close to full. I different stadium configuration with multiple tiers of fans close to the field would be fantastic, but that alone wouldn't bring back fans in droves. And it isn't going to happen. I think the time gap since the glory years has been a factor. People who were adults when the Dolphins were winning Super Bowls are now in their 60s or older. While some still go to games, some just don't seem to have the energy to do it and deal with the hassles. It's been almost 30 years since the team even went to a Super Bowl. Fans that are under 30 or so probably don't even remember the Dolphins ever being the favorite to win the division, let alone the conference or the SB. As time goes on fan apathy gets worse and worse. The transplant factor is a very big part of it. How many people here who live outside South Florida have emraced their local team. Presumably not many, 'cause if they did they probably wouldn't be here. I've lived in Boston, LA and DC and never even considered becoming a fan of those teams. It's hard to expect anything different of football fans who move to South Florida. The heavy presence of opposing team's fans at dolphins games doen't help. A lot of that is from transplants who now live in South Florida, but some of it is because Miami is an attractive destination for a road trip, especially in Nov. and December. For a Bills fan from Buffalo or a Pats fan in Boston, getting out of the cold for a weekend in Miami in December to watch their team play sounds like a great idea.
I disagree with you on this point. I have been watching the Dolphins play for 40 years and this year's team is just not very entertaining. Haven't been very entertaining since 2003 with the exception of 2008. Getting the ball in the end zone is entertaining. Out of 11 games Miami has scored more than 21 points in only 3 of those games (24, 30, 35). In 5 of the 11 games Miami has scored 17 or less. When Miami gets good QB play and puts an entertaining product on the field and if attendance remains low then the PR and Marketing department is fair game to blame. Our defense has been relatively good, but on that side of the ball what is entertaining are "hitters" and turnovers. The defense hasn't particularly good at either of those either.
The word "Fan" is short for "fanatic." I root for the Dolphins, but I am not a fanatic. I love the Dolphins, but I try to think logically. I'm not going to go to the stadium to sit on the north side in sun that cracks rocks at an hour past noon to watch the little team that couldn't. I don't like to see incompetence and simultaneously be uncomfortable in that crucible, submerged in a sea of orange seats along with a few equally disgruntled people. Too much. When the ownership charging me admission serves up a competitive product that draws an excited crowd having fun, I'll pay for the personal experience. In the meantime, I'll watch my beloved Dolphins fail in air-conditioned comfort, for free. And Ireland has to go.
No offense to anyone, but I think a lot of it has to do with the heavy Latin culture embedded in South Florida. I grew up there and was a minority in my high school as a Caucasian, and that was in the late 80s. I can only imagine what it's like now. Football is nowhere near as big a deal in Latin countries, and the inter-generational transmission of Dolphins fandom (i.e., I'm a fan because my dad was a fan, and I grew up watching the games with him) is probably relatively absent. Hell, my eight-year-old son is a Dolphins fan who cries when they lose, and he's never lived in SFL and has been to only one game. I can't imagine the modal Latin kid is similar, not to say there are none.
another reason to get these damn renovations started. I think Fineas POV in this thread is funny and on point,
This is why I think we need to rip the whole thing up, and start over, we need to attract and win new fans..
There's some truth to that, especially with the more recent arrivals from countries that are insane about soccer. But I can tell you that most of us who have been here a while and went to school here got into the game just about immediately, because there was a position in the sandlot for everyone, even the fat kids! The same wasn't true of baseball, which was the game we had grown up playing. There are many, many Latin football fans, and specifically Dolphins fans. We stay away lately for the same reasons you do.
I'm sure there are many Latin fans, but compare the mentality of the Bears fan who has season tickets that were passed down from his grandfather to his father, and from his father to him, to the mentality of the Latin guy whose father arrived in SFL in the early 80s, for example. The Bears guy is going to the game win or lose. The (average) Latin guy of that kind is going only if the Dolphins are winning. This is why the Heat is doing so well IMO. You don't need a multi-generational heritage with a team to follow it when it has the best and most entertaining player in the league and it's winning championships. When a team hasn't fully recovered from the 1-15 season it had in 2007, you need a "Bears-like" multi-generational heritage to keep people coming. That kind of heritage is relatively absent in SFL with the large Latin influence. Of course none of those kinds of folks are represented by anyone here, as we probably represent the sort of interest in the team that fewer than 1% of its "fans" have, but we're talking about why a stadium with over 70 thousand seats isn't filled up, which then brings us way out of the realm of the sorts of people here and back to the "average" fan.
Well, the problem is in this market, because of the damage the team and front office has done to the market, your only hope is to wait for a 12 and 4 team to take the field. The other major problem is the building, you cannot sell the atmosphere in your marketing..There's nothing about the place that is alluring to the fan, especially in September October, hell half the fans are in the corridors during the first quarter because the 1 o'clock sun is literally beating them down, ( that's a fact)...I've seen thousands of fans sitting there where their only focus is to get thru it..fanning themselves, just plain dealing with it, and getting beat down, it's an ugly sight I tell ya..but some will say.." But we can't take away the heat advantage" , it's our big advantage"..... Pathetic mindset imo. If their going to keep this building, they need to expedite the renovation project and start marketing it as a change to create a 12 th man.
They should cut the amount of rows in half in the upper bowl and put in loungers so you can tan while watching the game. No seriously, its effing hot up there, I'm surprised more people haven't died watching a game from up there.
People get burnt, people sit on their ***, people are sweating profusely, thus resulting in a disconnect from the game, thus helping our no home field advantage.
