Arousing interest with Pickup Soccer.

Whether it’s a casual pickup soccer group or an organized soccer team, groups often, if not frequently, have events that are public for anyone to attend (pickup groups’ games are usually all public rather than private). And, these public events are hosted to get more players to the group and arouse interest and engagement among the local soccer players. ENDALGO surveyed more than two hundred active soccer players to understand the most optimal type of game or event to host to get the highest attention from the local soccer communities. Take the below factors into consideration when hosting public events and this could help fulfilling your group and team needs.

What day and time?

This may be obvious, but it makes more sense that it’s backed up by survey data. When asked which day(s) would they most prefer to play, 64% selected Saturday and 47.5% selected Friday (they were allowed to select multiple days). Furthermore, when asked what time(s) they would most prefer to play, 43.5% selected weekend afternoon and 42.5% selected weekday evening. Hence, this leaves us with the date and time active players most prefer to play are Saturday afternoon and Friday evening. If you plan your public events to be Saturday afternoon or Friday evening, you’d be more likely to get more attention and participation. Plus, if you’re hosting a pickup for scrimmage, make the game 7v7 as that’s the most preferred game type with 42.5% of the players selecting it.

Make events recurring.

Although a one-time event or game could be helpful to bring more attention to your group or team from the local soccer community, it can help more if you have those events recurring on a weekly basis. More and more local soccer players and audiences would be exposed with your event and group each week for some players could have missed the opportunity and ENDALGO puts effort into inflowing new soccer players to your community. Our research shows that 44.5% of active players play twice a week and 36% play more than 3 times a week; hence, your events are ought to get attention every week from different players. Moreover, if you do not have events or games scheduled in the immediate future, people will find it hard to believe that your group is an active team, club, or group. We advise you to leverage the recurring event scheduling function that ENDALGO provides to set up events. The more games and events you host to the local community, the more engagement and popularity you will receive.

Make participants pay for events and games.

As a final factor to have more successful public games and events, you should make your participants pay even the smallest amount to be part of it. This may sound weird for one might think that providing the game or event for free would be more attractive to the audience, but the information from organizers on the ENDALGO platform and their past events and games confirms that with paid events the experience was much satisfying for both them and the participants. This happens for several reasons: 1) when people plan to attend and RSVP, if there’s a small fee to pay, the participant will be more likely to be committed to actually show up, whereas, if the event is free, they could easily RSVP and not show up, 2) the event itself looks more organized; new players would expect the event to be more professional, 3) with the money you collect, you can give it back to the group and participants with better amenities (i.e. goals, pinnies, cones, etc.).

The suggestions above are purely based on the survey on active soccer players, so it could be helpful when planning and listing new public events for your group. A public event shouldn’t be limited to a pickup game or scrimmage, but rather expand into open training, practices, tryouts, or anything that you and your groups can do to make the soccer scene more active in your community. ENDALGO is always monitoring which groups are putting the effort to stay active, and we plan to put more effort to grow your group with you. Please reach out if you have any questions to hello@endalgo.com.