Faced with public disdain for women’s football, the Kobe club, which nevertheless represents one of the best teams in the world, is struggling to secure stable income. He had the idea of attracting newbies with “free price” tickets.
In Japan, a major women’s championship team is offering to let fans decide for themselves how much they are willing to pay to see one of their matches. This very original initiative has just been announced by the INAC Kobe Leonessa club, the women’s football team from the city of Kobe in central Japan.
This club is often in the top places in the Japanese championship. He provides many players to the national team, which distinguished itself during the last World Cup. Many athletes who have passed through Kobe have gone on to have great international careers, particularly in the English championship.
But despite these successes, the club is struggling to build a base of loyal spectators who would ensure stable income. So he decided to test a new way of selling his tickets: paying based on expectations or level of satisfaction. The campaign launched by the club was called “Shall We Pay?”. Concretely, spectators go to the Noevir stadium in Kobe and pay the amount they deem appropriate, depending on the team’s performance. Everyone pays at least 100 yen, or 60 euro cents, to enter. But then, viewers complete their payment based on their enjoyment.
A catch-up in the price of the ticket on derivative products
The last time the team tested this system, some spectators decided to donate 10,000 yen, or 63 euros, others left only 1,000 yen, or 6 euros, or even less. In total, the club collected 887,000 yen in ticket sales (5,588 euros), but twice as much in the sale of derivative products. The addition represents more revenue than the usual 100% paying matches. The club boss says this experience helps him get an idea of the ideal price of a ticket. Not too low to still generate some money, but not too high either to attract new fans who come to the stadium for the first time.
As the women’s football championship is not very followed in Japan, the difficulty for the Kobe club, as for the others, is to generate profits with stadiums which remain empty even during major events. Club bosses often complain about the disdain of the public, who sometimes have a somewhat macho approach to certain sports.
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In Japan, we find in sport the same gender inequalities that we see in businesses or in politics. This summer, during the Women’s Football World Cup, no television channel wanted to pay the rights to broadcast the matches of the Japanese team, which is nevertheless one of the best in the world. Those in charge of the women’s federation had to start thinking about setting up a public donation campaign. Under pressure, the public channel finally bought these broadcasting rights at the last minute, to broadcast the matches on a small cable channel.