When Major League Soccer launched, its marketing seemed to have advertisement ADD. Football stadiums, family marketing, no-tie shootouts unlike anyone else in FIFA and ultimately an unreliable target audience. In its inaugural 1996 year, several of the MLS teams shared stadiums with their city’s NFL counterparts. They also shared owners. Consider the Kraft family in New England, it made sense for them to encourage the Revolution to use its stadium as oppose to renting out others. Money saved and marketing space to be shared. Of course, now Gillette Stadium appears a cavernous beast swallowing the meager component of loud and passionate Revolution supporters. Stadium choices can certainly be forgiven, particularly in the league’s infancy and the relative unknowns that come with starting this new thing called soccer.
Some things however cannot be forgiven, particularly those flamboyant jersey designs and logos to boot. Anyone remember those MetroStars jerseys? How about those banner flags intended to corral the NFL market? Hot commodities if you’re a collector, shameful displays if you’re a league supporter. I mean, what is that? That taxi looks to be designed by a talented fourth grader.

This certainly doesn’t mean there are no place for families in MLS, in fact teams like the LA Galaxy and Real Salt Lake have had great success with it. That said, the rest of the league should take note: It’s the hardcore sports fan, the college kids and the boisterous that will sell your product. With active and loud crowds, the atmosphere will sell itself (and doesn’t look too shabby on TV, which brings sponsors). Marketing to families would be especially effective in the small markets, provided teams can offer consistent reason to return. Any parent can tell you, bringing kids to any outing is expensive making it difficult in the post recession years to show up to repeat games. MLS is realizing that it needs to reconsider its target audience. Seemingly, its starting to work.

Vamos.
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