Czech Baseball Association keeps working on ways to engage with fans

Czech Baseball Association keeps working on ways to engage with fans
05/11/2021
The latest project from Baseball Czech is to create a fan club to give the most engaged fans the chance to have a close experience with baseball in the country, but this isn’t the only thing they are working on.

One of the keys to success in the sports world is to find a way to make fans feel part of the game. This is a goal that the Czech Baseball Association has a very clear idea about. Their latest project is to create a fan club to allow them to have a close experience with baseball in the country, which is one of the leading baseball destinations in Europe.

“We decided that we want to support our national team's fans. Make fan club merchandising, fan stuff, help them organize trips around the Czech Republic and abroad so that they can travel to support our national teams, discounts on our e-shop, organize autograph signings for them with our national team players," Lukáš Ercoli of the Baseball Czech media team, told the WBSC.

“The main idea is to have full stands in stadiums during our national team matches both in the Czech Republic and abroad at the European Championships. In order to achieve this, we must offer our fans the best service and support them,” Ercoli added, explaining that the idea is to have the project running next season.

But they know a strong communications strategy is another foundation of the successful connection with the fans.

“In the Czech Republic, baseball is a secondary sport, behind football, ice hockey and floorball. Therefore, it is very important to have a well-established communication strategy. It is difficult to reach new fans at a time when baseball is really a small sport in our country. On the other hand, we believe that if we do a good job in terms of graphics and streams, we can make baseball more popular in the Czech Republic,” says Ercoli

But this strategy also reaches the clubs: “We try to support clubs that play the highest competition in graphic activities and streams, so that they are marketing self-sufficient and we can focus more on representations. At a time when baseball is a secondary sport in the Czech Republic, we must all pull together in marketing”.

Besides posting content on the most common social media platforms, Baseball Czech also produces a podcast because of this medium's popularity and the chance to discuss a topic in detail.

One of the highlights of the work of this association on the communications side is the quality of their pictures. “This is an absolute basis,” replied Ercoli, when asked him about the importance of the visual aspect to promote the discipline.

“We try to pay a few photographers who send us a lot of photos every week, which we then upload to our photo bank, from which we draw all year round. We then have the photos available and it only depends on our creativity in how we use them. I am very happy that the photographers who work with us are always moving forward and going to various training sessions. They want to keep improving and this can be seen in their photos, which we have really high quality.”

Understanding how to take advantage of the different opportunities that social media platforms offer and the different ways to create content is a key to success, the Baseball Czech media team understands this and is working towards being instrumental in the success of baseball in the country.