"Growing the supporter base" at Aberdeen FC | Five Years On

Working in football it has often felt like trying to catch lightning in a bottle when looking to get results on the pitch, a strong feeling among supporters and the commercial side of the club firing on all cylinders for any sustained period together.

But seeing Pittodrie packed for our recent victory over Hearts (with a sold-out home and away end for the first time since the visit of Burnley in 2018) felt like one of those moments and an opportunity to reflect on how this has all come about.

Our story is not a unique one and so many teams up and down the country are seeing similar growth in attendances which is great for Scottish football, the supporters in this country and passion for football are second to none and long may it continue!

There’s no denying that football performances and results are the primary drivers of increased attendance, especially in the short term, make no mistake about that,

But our job is to understand how we can make those peaks higher and those periods last longer.

Since starting out at Kilmarnock Football Club , I’ve always believed that marketing’s main role is to try and get as many people into the stadium as possible on a matchday, increasing support for the team and really delivering a home advantage.

However, looking back it probably wasn’t until December 2019 that I began making myself accountable for this at Aberdeen Football Club , challenging myself and the wider team to focus on what we can control.

We had a strong base to work from thanks to many people including two Derek's, Derek McInnes who brought a real level of consistency on the pitch and the work of Derek Matthews who made sure we took steps early on to grow our database at every opportunity.

Lower attendance is often attributed to factors like results on the pitch, weather, holidays, or local issues like Aberdeen’s offshore work timetable. While these elements certainly play a significant role, none of them are within our control.

This brings me back to December 2019... we had just announced our partnership with Atlanta United FC , who were arguably the biggest success story in world football at the time delivering on and off the pitch in record time,

Several senior members of their team responsible for that success including Darren Eales, Catie Griggs & Sarah Kate (Skate) Noftsinger were visiting Aberdeen to share their story with us, learn more about AFC and attend a match while they were over which happened to be our pre-Christmas fixture against Hamilton Accies at Pittodrie.

Selling tickets for matches in the lead-up to Christmas has always been a challenge (another thing we can’t control - add it to the list above!) and we met on the Monday after a 3-0 away defeat to Hibs to look at sales to date. The question was: what could we do at the last minute to get more bums on seats for the match on Saturday?

The only quick solution at that stage (and I’m sure many teams in this situation have done the same) was to give away free tickets through our partner charity, Aberdeen FC Community Trust with Steven Sweeney & Robbie Hedderman assembling the team to do that for us.

The final attendance was 12,325, including 57 home supporters, for what turned out to be a routine 1-0 win.

Up until that point, we’d been focusing on other areas, like the launch of the AberDNA membership in 2018/19, and were largely “trading on the success of the team” when it came to attendances, with so many other areas taking our attention at the time.

That match was a turning point for us, everything felt reactive and it was time to think longer term so that we were ahead of the game where possible.

So at the start of 2020, encouraged by Dave Cormack I put together a strategy to "grow our supporter base", inspired by the plans that were already developed for other areas of the club looking at the longer term (Thanks Steven Gunn !), focusing on what we could control and ensuring we were ready to capitalise at the right times and build something sustainable.

COVID set us back a bit, but I wanted to share what I think some of the key milestones are that have shaped us getting to this point over the last 5 years:

    •        January 2020: The introduction of the Red Shed as the ‘home end’ at Pittodrie with a dedicated area for active support. This has revitalised the matchday atmosphere and will only continue to get better over time.

    •        March 2020: The launch of AberDNA Junior, our free membership for Under-12s. Now, nearly one in three U12s in Aberdeen City & Shire (over 10,000 kids) are members, bringing them closer to their local team and live sport.

    •        March 2021: Partnering with Sports Alliance working closely with Matt Swindells Jonny Pearson Asha Lemar-Jones in those early years to better understand our fanbase (harnessing the many years of records held and maintained by David Bowman working closely with our Insights Manager Claire Cooper) and place data at the heart of our campaigns. We also introduced Single Sign-On to make it easier for supporters to manage their relationship with the club around this time.

    •        July 2021: Developing a plan for themed matches, challenged by Rob Wicks to attract larger crowds for specific fixtures, trialling new kick-off times and creating “unmissable” matches where we have celebrated and recognised the illustrious history of AFC.

    •        August 2021: Opening a dedicated Family Area in the Richard Donald Stand (now expanded to two sections), creating a dedicated space for our growing number of AberDNA Junior members and providing a base for group ticketing.

    •        October 2022: A renewed focus on group ticketing through Jamie Howell & Ryan Finnie leading to our first “Biggest Dons Day Out,” which attracted 2,338 fans, with over 3,000 expected for this year's edition!

    •        February 2023: Alan Burrows joining as Chief Executive, really pushing us to make better use of tools and resources which were unavailable to him at Motherwell, and working more closely with Kevin MacIver to keep us focused throughout the season ticket campaign. Happily this coincided with our return to group-stage European football led by Barry Robson and record season ticket sales with a huge increase on the previous highest total.

    •        December 2023: Appointing Stephen McCormick in the new role of Supporter Experience Manager, with a clear focus on elevating the matchday experience, guided by the mantra of ‘making every match an event.’ More exciting things are on the way in this area!

    •        March 2024: Appointing Jimmy Thelin as manager leading to an unprecedented winning start to the season! And a special mention must go to Peter Leven, who led us through to finish the season strongly during a difficult period.

The club’s ambitions to move to a new stadium have been no secret, but all the progress we’ve made has been underpinned by a conscious effort over these past few years to make the most of Pittodrie and everything which makes it special to so many people, making gradual improvements each season, across all areas where we can.

Every department of the club plays their part and so many people have contributed over this period of time (too many to mention!) including many no longer working with AFC.

I can't cover everyone, but I am particularly grateful for the support of those who have worked closely together on all of our messaging, branding and campaigns over this entire 5 year period Elaine Robertson Rachel McCann Neil Halliwell Lynn Fiske Chris Anderson Cameron Rae Lisa Sheran Malcolm Panton who have heard me talking about all of this constantly for all of that time, Elaine in particular!

There’s still more work to be done to ensure that our growth in attendances remains sustainable but we have a plan in place to do just that over the next few years and more exciting things are due to come later this season.