Introduction to J.LEAGUE to-C marketing strategy

The to-C marketing strategy is a generic term that refers to marketing activities that increase the number of fans and supporters at all 60 clubs, starting from people coming to stadiums to watch match. In specific terms, J. LEAGUE works with each club to enhance customer experience in a series of five steps centred around J.LEAGUE ID: “awareness, interest, visits to stadiums, repeat visit, regular visits.”

For the 2023 season, two “priority segments” were defined as those people who know about J.LEAGUE but who have not yet come to watch a match, and those people who have drifted away from coming to a match since the pandemic. In 2022 the focus was on encouraging people who already had a high degree of interest in J.LEAGUE to come to match, register for a J.LEAGUE ID, realise their attendance at match and ensure promote repeat visits. In 2023, in order to further promote the transformation of awareness into interest, local exposure was strengthened and interest-boosting measures, including 30th anniversary projects, were enhanced. In addition, we continued to implement measures aimed at acquiring new fans and so increase the number of new visitors, aiming for a record attendance that would surpass the previous record high of 2019.

Survey results

Marketing KPIs

In terms of overall attendance at official J.LEAGUE match during the 2023 season, a total of 10,965,170 people attended match, the second-highest figure ever and just short (99.3%) of the figure for 2019 when attendance first exceeded Eleven Million (11,000,000), and up 136.3% year-on-year.

9segs® survey results (visitors to stadium match, high-interest fans)

In formulating customer strategies to expand our fan base, since FY2021 J.LEAGUE has been conducting the 9segs® survey, a customer-driven marketing framework, in order to better understand the overall market and more precisely quantify the effectiveness of our measures.
The survey is a mapping of the five-tier “customer pyramid” with an additional interest factor incorporated. For stadium match, the survey divides the customers into nine tiers based on desire/intention to attend a stadium match within one year, the number of match attended in the previous season, experience of attending match, and awareness of J.LEAGUE. The survey was implemented online, targeting people between the ages of 20 and 69 nationwide. Measures are progressing steadily to convert people to become part of the stadium visitors segment, and measures to acquire new supporters/fans are bearing fruit. However, interest in J.LEAGUE (the percentage of those with a high interest) has remained flat in the last year, moving from 16.9 points to 16.7 points. Although the level of interest had reduced every year up to 2021, following promotions and exposure enhancement in 2022 it finally increased, after which interest has continued to be maintained. However, in terms of age groups, interest is diminishing in 20-year-olds, and there is either very little change or only a slight positive change in interest among other age groups, indicating that retaining the interest of younger people is an ongoing challenge.
The volume of the priority segments (those who know about J.LEAGUE but have never come to a match, fans with high interest but who have drifted away) has declined by 1 point (637,000-person scale) over the past year, and there are concerns that this figure will further decrease if interest cannot be boosted. As of November 2023, the volume of the target segments translates to a market scale of approx. 6.76 million people.

MAU（Monthly Active Users）

With regard to Monthly Active Users (MAU: No. of J.LEAGUE ID active users), a new record for MAU was set in July 2023, reaching 934,000 persons, and for the 2023 season as a whole the number of MAU was up 131% year-on-year. It is important to not simply increase the number of IDs, but ensure that the owners of those IDs use them actively.

Designing large-scale promotion measures

J.LEAGUE ID (JID) registration is a requirement when any consumer applies for the large-scale promotion free ticket campaign. This measure helps clubs to convert users of promotional campaigns into potential customers, through a structure that enables the compilation of a customer list. Given that J.LEAGUE takes the lead in implementing simultaneous TV commercials and media exposure campaigns these measures are supported by clubs, which recognise that the effect of these promotion measures is greater than if clubs were to implement a home town campaign on their own. During 2023 three large-scale promotions (TV commercials+large-scale invitations+digital advertising) and a total of eight events at the Japan National Stadium (a total of 10,000 invitees) were implemented. The cumulative number of applicants for the free tickets was 1.83 million, including approx. 240,000 new JID registrations and approx. 430,000 JID reactivations, which contributed approx. 300,000 people to stadium visitors. Including the results of digital advertising for ticket sales it can be seen that the annual contribution to new visitors is about 500,000, and the total visitor contribution, including returning and existing fans, is about 1.04 million.

J.LEAGUE customer structure

The customer structure of J.LEAGUE can be thought of as being divisible into three parts: the pyramid of each club’s fans with season seat holders at the top of the pyramid; the JID pyramid; and the 9segs pyramid that represents market size.
While using these three pyramids for the purpose of customer analysis, large-scale promotion measures for 2023 were planned mainly for the purpose of acquiring new users and targeting the casual spectator, who visits only once or twice a year.
In order to convert the F1 and F0 tier of visitors/spectators into the F2 tier (as shown in the central pyramid below), with aims of “creating incentives for people who have JID, but who have not yet come to a match to make their first visit,” “promoting people who have only ever come once to make second and third visits,” and “encouraging fans who drifted away from visiting stadiums in person due to the pandemic to come back to in-person viewing,” large-scale promotions were implemented three times during the year, during the season’s opening period /spring holidays, during Golden Week holidays, and during the summer holidays.

Summer holidays large-scale promotion results

The large-scale promotion during the summer holidays received more than 600,000 applications, the largest response of its kind ever.
It can be said that this made a major contribution to reinvigorating the fan base, including not just new visitors, but existing fans, and fans who have drifted away. Subsequent visitor analysis showed that approximately 30% of new visitors whose visit was prompted by the large-scale promotion efforts made repeat visits to match thereafter.

Localisation of TV commercials

The TV commercials we run in conjunction with large-scale promotions are tailored to the specific characteristics of each area. In the TV commercial distributed during the summer holidays a total of 31 different customised versions were prepared, using the local clubs and players of each particular area. As a result, responses that “the commercials made me want to go and watch the match,” and “I actually went to the stadium,” which demonstrate intent to go and watch a match and the degree of attitude change, reached a record high of 62% and the contact rate for the commercials themselves was 67%.

Aims of holding match at the Japan National Stadium and actual attendance

The aim of holding match at the Japan National Stadium can be broadly divided into two perspectives.
Firstly, from the club’s perspective, such match could provide an opportunity for fans and supporters in Tokyo for whom it would normally be difficult to visit home stadiums to watch match, and in so doing help to expand the fan base in the Tokyo Metropolitan area. It could also contribute to the activation of club sponsors and expansion of further business opportunities. From the perspective of J.LEAGUE, holding match in a stadium located in central Tokyo, with its outstanding ease of access and convenience, helps to attract spectators and customers to J.LEAGUE as a whole. Using fireworks or drone displays, and other productions, as well as appearances by famous guests, can also contribute to increased media exposure. It could be said that the Japan National Stadium match therefore function as a stage for developing fans among casual spectators, who usually only come to a match once or twice a year.

Match at the Japan National Stadium started with the J.LEAGUE 30th Anniversary Special Matches on May 12 and 14, and in total the stadium hosted 13 match. The match between Shimizu S-Pulse and JEF United Chiba in July attracted the highest ever attendance in the history of J2, and the match between Nagoya Grampus and Albirex Niigata in August was the highest attended match in J1 for the 2023 season. In addition, the two pre-season matches, the MEIJI YASUDA J.LEAGUE WORLD CHALLENGE and the Audi Football Summit powered by docomo, both attracted more than 60,000 attendance. The average attendance across all 13 match was about 54,000.
Match played at the Japan National Stadium serve as a “showcase” of football to help further engage with casual spectators in the Tokyo Metropolitan area. We have therefore been working on a variety of ways to encourage those who come to a match at the Japan National Stadium to become J.LEAGUE fans and visit the home stadiums of the clubs. During the 2024 season the Japan National Stadium will continue to be fully utilised in its showcase role as we work to attract even more fans.