A Football Ground Is Not Just a Football Ground

One of the things I became increasingly interested in during my year at Aberystwyth Town was how many different things could happen at Park Avenue that had very little to do with eleven players trying to put a football into a goal.

We hosted business networking. The ground became connected with running events. We explored wider commercial ideas, workspace concepts and ways of bringing new people into the stadium. The more projects I worked on, the less I saw Park Avenue simply as a football ground.

I started seeing it as an asset.

That distinction matters because the words we use to describe things can unconsciously limit what we think they are capable of doing. If I say “football stadium”, my brain immediately produces fixtures, spectators and hospitality. If I say “venue with outdoor space, rooms, local recognition, parking, commercial relationships and a community attached to it”, a completely different set of possibilities appears.

This is one of the places where marketing and business strategy overlap.

Marketers spend a lot of time trying to create demand for existing products, but market orientation can also reveal entirely new uses for existing capabilities. Sometimes the opportunity is not finding more customers for exactly what you already sell. It is finding another valuable problem that your existing assets can solve.

The AbeRAStwyth 5K was a useful practical example. The football ground could become the start and finish point for a running event. The same location reached a different audience and gave people another reason to interact with the football club.

The Black & Green Business Club did something similar with businesses.

The football itself remained the core product, but the organisation could create additional products around it.

This is where segmentation becomes particularly powerful. A runner, local business owner and football supporter may have very different relationships with Aberystwyth Town, but the same physical asset can serve all three. The organisation does not need to turn everyone into a hardcore football fan for the relationship to create value.

There is a brand benefit too.

Every additional useful interaction creates another category entry point through which somebody might remember the organisation. A person might associate the club with Saturday football, business networking, a community event, children's activity or simply a good experience at the venue.

That broader mental availability can strengthen the organisation even when every interaction does not immediately generate a ticket sale.

There obviously needs to be discipline. Not every possible use of an asset is strategically sensible. Playing to Win is a useful reminder that strategy involves choices, and a football club that attempts to become a gym, conference centre, restaurant, office provider, event agency and everything else simultaneously would probably end up doing none of them particularly well.

The important point is not that every idea should be launched.

It is that organisations should occasionally challenge the assumptions they have built around their assets.

What physical spaces are empty?

What expertise could serve another market?

What audiences already trust us?

What data or relationships could create something new?

What capability have we built for one purpose that might solve another customer's problem?

Those questions go well beyond promotional marketing.

And that is exactly why I think marketers should be asking them.