BY FORTUNE MBELE
CHICKEN Inn Football Club are holding a three-day strategic workshop in Bulawayo to come up with best ways of drawing crowds to their matches.
The GameCocks are one of the most successful clubs since they joined the Premier Soccer League in 2011, winning the league title in 2015, but do not have as many followers.
Club president Lifa Ncube yesterday said energising a fan base was one of the reasons they have embarked on strategic planning among other issues that will benefit the club.
“One of the most important things; if you realise we have been playing well and in the last four years we have been in the top four but that has not really translated into fans coming to watch us. So, we are hoping that by us having this, we will also be able to attract more fans to come and watch our games. We want to market the team. People know us locally but Chicken Inn is an international brand, we also want it to be known in the region. In the last year or two we have set up a marketing department. It’s one of those areas that we have identified as a club as where we are lacking,” Ncube said.
He added: “Chicken Inn have been there for 18 years and in those years we have seen that we have not had a session like this to plan for the future. Initially when we came into the league, we didn’t have such expectations; if you check we are one of the longest serving clubs in the league currently and we have been performing very well. We are now trying to plan for the long term, hence this strategic workshop.”
The GameCocks have engaged Team Consulting and Teddy Chikondo as facilitators at the workshop.
“When you look around the Premier Soccer League right now, the issue is fan attendance. How do you energise and mobilise the fan base? I think for Premier Soccer League clubs right now, that is the key issue. So, what we are going to look at in the next three days is just tactical ways on how to energise the fan base because a football team is only as strong as its fans. So, we are going to be looking at how do we engage the fans better; how do we get them involved and how do we fill the stadiums again,” Chikondo said.
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