From Metrics to Meaning: How the Portland Timbers Engage and Recruit Devoted Fans

What is the total addressable market for a sports team?

Depending on who you're talking to, the answer may be everybody who lives within a certain radius of the team's home city or venue all the way up to, well, everybody in the world with a pulse.

With seemingly limitless goals, it's a delicate dance for sports marketers and strategists to try and be everything to everyone while understanding the most effective use of not-limitless time and resources to develop the healthiest, lasting fan base.

The key is to put the fans first. Sure, that sounds like a 'Duh' comment, but in the endless chase for numbers and vanity metrics, are fans really at the center of the strategy? That's not to say virality is bad, far from it — we want to recruit new fans — but that doesn't mean the bulk of time and resources should be spent thinking about these potential new fans at the expense of those already in the fold. Ruben Dominguez manages these masters in his position at the helm of the Portland Timbers social media and content strategy. The Timbers have a passionate fanbase and Dominguez knows serving and speaking with them is paramount.

"I really use these times to talk to fans and gauge them in that sense because if you read the comments, you can get some stuff out of that of what people want, but when you come up to people and they're telling you what they like about the channels or what more they want to see I think it's always the best thing that you can get," said Dominguez, referencing the real-life conversations he'll have with fans at Timbers events.

Dominguez continued: “The best example I can give getting to that is press conferences. So when I first got here, I really thought, as a soccer purist, that press conferences and hearing from the manager and players is the best insight that you can give. Win, draws, losses — it just really gave the opportunity for a manager to speak, so I was pretty hell-bent on getting those out. Even if they didn't do the best numbers, there's a good chance to just provide people with info about the team and dictate narratives.

"With that being said, a lot of people saw that as low [engagement] numbers, not really any juice for the squeeze. But now that we've had a little bit of a higher-profile manager [Phil Neville] come in and people are wanting to hear [from him], I thought it worked out well, and now that's something that gets a lot of buzz when we put those out."

Dominguez championed content like the press conferences, which he used as an example of content that would serve fans more than serve metrics, but he also put the strategic lens on the initiative. The team can produce content that's valuable and desirable for fans and make the most of it for the organization and its business objectives. A coach press conference on its own may not do mega numbers, but the recurring nature and the countless clips they beget produce meaningful opportunities.

"It might not be the greatest piece of content, but I think there's a lot that you can get out of it for the organization," said Dominguez, who spent time with the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL) and the United Soccer League (USL) before making his way to Portland.

“So when you're looking at these specific things you're doing, whether it's training photos or arrival photos or all these things that are recurring and come about, I think you just got to put it in that context. How does it work for the fans? How does it work internally for you all? Is it something that you can get a lot of juice out of the squeeze for, and then how does it work for the business side? And that's kind of how we make decisions with everything."

Meeting fan expectations and identifying value within recurring content are key cornerstones, but the Timbers, like any team, want to continue to grow that fanbase and find new ways to develop and engage fans. It can be easy for content teams in sports to get caught up in the routines of the season's grind, one practice and pregame warm-up and postgame coverage blending into the next. Many fans may count on the routine coverage, resting assured that the team will deliver it day in and day out. But teams need to disrupt themselves, too, take chances, try new things, and find ways to break through the expected to attract new attention in the feed and find new ways to bring in new and existing fans. There's a calculated strategy to the experimentation and innovation, and it's a mix of art (creativity) and science (what the numbers say).

“I think when we do take those risks, we ask the same questions," Dominguez explained. How is this going to affect the brand? What is this going to do for us? Could this be something that lives on? If we do it, what metrics do we need to measure for — and not just numbers-wise, it's like the pulse of the community. If we do something and we see that a lot of fans like it and they're like, 'We want more of this', but maybe it doesn't fit our brand, then we'll look at it and say, 'Okay, where can we fit this?' Or we say, hey, maybe this is our brand because this is something our fans like, our players like, and those are the people that we're speaking for when they go out into their communities and when they get to talk to their people, what do they want to show about their teams?”

The sum of fan touchpoints and engagements makes up the brand of the team. Now, not every encounter and impression is expected to carry the impossible burden of burnishing every brand pillar. There are different fans, different expectations, and different opportunities with each platform, digital and otherwise. For someone in Dominguez's role, it's integral to activate each platform with intent and appreciate the expectations, behaviors, and opportunities each presents. Dominguez broke down how he and the Timbers think about the various social media platforms.

"When we look at a social strategy, we're looking platform to platform of what we want to do," he said. "I think one thing that we can say about TikTok, for us, is we kind of just want to show the cool aspects of what we do of our life, our players, and just show those kind of aspects of the game; [whereas] you look at something like Twitter or Instagram, it's going to be totally different.

"I think when we look at Twitter, we want to show that we know ball, because I think that's the best place where you can kind of display that, where things kind of go and you see things from different platforms, and when you do reach these other audiences, whether they support a team in Europe, South America, we want to show that know what we're talking about, and we're not one of those typical American teams or have that stigma."

Teams are continually trying to serve their fans and create a brand that's attractive to prospective fans. Oftentimes the simplest path to a spike in fans, or at least supporters, is through the players. Just ask Inter Miami, who saw their fanbase grow exponentially upon the arrival of Lionel Messi, or look at Tottenham Hotspur over in the Premier League, who gained perhaps an entire nation of fans when South Korean football star Son Heung-min joined the club. Such star power can get fans in the door, but it's on the organizations to foment deeper, lasting connections that transform individuals' identities to adopt everlasting fandom. Dominguez had a front-row seat to player-driven fans, particularly when he worked with the Portland Thorns, which boast US Women's National Team star Sophia Smith on their squad. There's a difference between cultivating fans of the team that 'x' player plays on and fans of the team who love both sides of the jersey.

“I think, speaking on the Thorns side, just the dynamic of that and working at the NWSL, the national team players are highly regarded," he said. "People are going to switch team allegiances with their players going to different sides. So I think that's one thing in that in a sense sells itself, where I think the difference on the Timbers side is I feel like the brand of the Timbers is almost like the star player and just playing for the Timbers. So we've always tried to keep that mantra...

"On [the Timbers] side we have the obligation to tell a lot of stories. And I think, since I've gotten here, I've really made it a point for us to, no matter the player, their play on the pitch, their status within the team, I think there were stories everywhere to be told. So we really tried to make that a point to get them out into the world and tell their stories."

Teams want fans to feel connected through the players, but in a way that family members support each other because they're part of a common group with a shared crest. This type of familiarity and communal support is achieved by telling stories of players all the way up and why Dominguez talked about the team's content strategy around their Timbers Academy, where fans can get to know the players they're bound to love, because they play for the Timbers (even if it's not on their first team yet).

"We have probably the best academy we've had in the Timbers’ short history," said Dominguez, "so really showing those players and getting them accustomed to what we do and ultimately banking on if they make it to the first team that we have archived footage and can tell their story from when they were young up to when they get into the first team.

"I think probably one of the coolest things I've been a part of since I've been here is we signed a homegrown this year. His name's Sawyer Jura. He's Oregon through and through. He's from Bend. When we were able to do his announcement, he had pictures from when he was like 7 or 8 with [Timbers mascot] Timber Joey coming to games, we were able to recreate some pictures with him and his family from when they were on the field at games when he was younger to now. He's been on the first-team squad a couple of times this year. So it's been awesome.

"That's kind of what we're striving for from a content side, is just having all of that stuff built up to tell the best possible stories we can, and have players on this team that people feel like they know and can connect with, and then, in turn, you feel like it's a family and a community that you're building and you don't have to depend on X star coming in for you to be a Timbers fan, you're just a fan of the club.”

Perhaps the best example of generational fandom is in college sports. Dominguez has first-hand experience and perspective having attended and worked at Texas A&M, with a massive fanbase that loves their Aggies across sports and as student-athletes cycle in and out. That type of unconditional devotion transcends one's understanding of the X's and O's, goes beyond any individual player, is bigger than wins and losses, and lasts a lifetime.

"Coming from a [college like Texas A&M] that is very big on tradition, I feel like we're kind of the same here in Portland," said Dominguez, who's in the midst of his third season with the team. "We have a long history, coming up on our 50th year of the club, so those sorts of [traditions] are just things that you can highlight and just show people love and feel a part of something at the end of the day.

"I think any footy fan that you speak to just wants to feel that community and feel something to be a part of while supporting their team."

LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH RUBEN DOMINGUEZ

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