every season, ateneans get emails from any number of varsity teams, asking for support. if it's not a request to be present at an important game, it's an outright pitch for money - for airline tickets to go to a tournament, for special training expenses, for lots of essential items that the university athletics budget and handouts from athletes' parents routinely fail to cover.

the fact that many teams need to beg, and beg in such an unsystematic, ad hoc manner, ought to tell you about the state of school and fan support for non-basketball events. but maybe the question to ask is, should we expect the teams to be more active in raising fan awareness and raising their own money?

the question has many implications for how athletes and other team members go about their business. should student managers be business managers as well? should team members learn to promote their sports? should marketing campaigns and the hosting of special events be part of the minimum skills one looks for in a varsity athlete? or is a team really entitled to sit back and demand that the school or the alumni fund their needs as they arise? is the athlete's life so demanding that no extra activity is possible, or even desirable?

this is an ideas forum for teams who may want to go beyond the traditional channels of getting funded and growing a loyal fan base. i'm sure there's enough entrepreneurial expertise in the atenista community to propose and critique ideas that might (or might not) work. to start things off, i want to throw out a few things being practiced inside and outside of sports, by ordinary people and by elite athletes, and how they might apply to the varsity team trying to grow a following beyond the usual captive audience of parents, friends and significant others.


FUNDING IDEAS

1. ticket sales for special events are a staple fund-raiser for many student organizations. are ateneo's teams fully exploiting the possibilities here?

2. jersey sales. as any manchester united fan will tell you, the replica uniform is a cash cow. is it feasible for teams to run a side business selling replica jerseys, caps, t-shirts, jackets, plush toys and all kinds of logo merchandise? how would they compete with the university's own merchandise sales? does ateneo control the rights to the uniforms or will it waive those rights for a team willing to sell them to non-team members to raise funds? are some teams more suited for merchandise sales than others? would anyone interested in an authentic jersey from the football team? the fencing team? official ateneo speedos?

3. can a team put out a product or a service that people will actually pay money for? the US high school team model for fund-raising is a cake sale or a carwash service, but you can only sell so much carrot cake and wash so many cars. how about something out of the ordinary, like a deck of baseball-style trading cards with personal stats? how about team calendars? (for ateneo purposes, the widespread practice of selling calendars of near-naked elite athletes probably won't fly. not that this should discourage anyone from trying anything risky that might stretch the disciplinary code a bit.)



FAN BASE-BUILDING IDEAS

1. as anyone who's ever run an organization knows, it's important to project a sense of mission, even an image of cool if you're to attract the best and most committed people. this applies to very much to teams and how they manage their relationships with their fans. (think duke university and their basketball supporters' clubs) is there a systematic effort to identify devoted fans and get them to watch the games? are teams courting potential allies among the alumni, in the student and national publications, or the online world? the team B phenomenon from last season might serve as a model for the self-sustaining buzz that's possible for a small but rabid set of followers to generate, even for a team as humble as the reserve men's basketball squad. how is it possible to raise the cool factor of even the most undersupported university teams?

2. should athletes be writing more online diaries that they can share with supporters? a lot of people write blogs already; it's just a small step to make the blog link or a whole series of diary entries available to the general public. are there any writer-athletes out there with a hidden talent for documenting the athlete's life and for subtly persuading people to watch the games?

3. is it possible, in the case of sports with a high participation rate, to get varsity athletes to run tournaments with the involvement of fans? play-with-your-favorite-player events, like a golf pro-am tournament? maybe even play in a few pickup games with core supporters, assuming their coaches don't mind the injury risk? a sport like football in the philippines is rarely played on a pickup basis, but i do know that some major professional football clubs in europe run five-a-side football festivals to get their fans involved. how about a running club for supporters of the track team? or a skills clinic by the badminton team?

not all strategies will work for every team of course. but it's clear lots of new things can be done if the teams get a bit more entrepreneurial about finding and keeping supporters. i'll be posting more proposals as they come up; meanwhile, it's time to let the ideas flow. because there are surely different ways of running university sports out there that just might be better than the way things are run now.

It can't be avoided that some sports really aren't conducive to live viewing by fans for various reasons such as (1) inaccessibility of venues; (2) conflict in schedules; (3) lack of interest in the sport, etc. It's a sad fact that for the less-popular sports, the only time they get noticed is when they win championships.

In my opinion, team handlers should concentrate their efforts more on the team's finances. You may argue with me when I say this, but better training brought about by sound financial backing is more likely to win championships than crowd support. In fact, during my time in the Ateneo, the relatively huge support for the dark ages basketball team was a source of bitterness for the non-UAAP Arnis team which won competitions left and right despite being less equipped then their opponents from obscure universities.

Of course, we could always choose to romanticize on the "Win or Lose its the school we choose" angle to generate crowd support....but teams have been doing this for years and sadly, it has only been basketball (and probably football) which have been the recipients of this kind of school spirit.

Before I digress further (which I think I already did) my point is that, pound for pound, an effort in getting better funding produces better results that an effort in generating more fans. Sports officials should concentrate on the former.

i agree with funding as a main necessity in promoting those so-called "less popular sports". perhaps what these teams can do is look up and call back alumni who can help find ways to generate financial support for teams. i believe once we get winning teams, the fans will come.

it also wouldn't hurt to have some "prettboys" or "prettygirls" on the team, pang-attract din ng fans yun.