The most valuable piece of real estate for a football team is not on the field, but on the front of the players’ jerseys, a foot-wide strip of fabric that some companies pay tens of millions of dollars to rent. for a season.
But bohemian fcA small but powerful fan-owned Dublin club has made money by targeting an area under the front of the shirt. Convinced that the heart and soul of a fan can be worth more than any corporate advertising budget, Bohemian (or Bohs for short) promote causes, not companies, on their away shirts. The strategy has turned a club that was once headed for relegation and financial ruin into the most profitable in the Irish top flight.
“I can’t conceive that Bohs could be in a situation where a Bayern Munich fan in Munich or a Manchester United fan in Manchester would want to buy a Bohs shirt for football reasons,” said Daniel Lambert, the team’s youth player. chief operating officer, said last week in a video conference from Dublin. “But if you take it to an emotional space, there are people who care. They care about Palestine. They care about the immigration crisis, the climate, it could be anything.
“If we can connect with people from different countries and cities around the world on that basis, our potential market is huge.”
How big? Although Lambert declined to share detailed figures, he believes most clubs in Ireland’s 10-team Premiership will sell between 100 and 500 away shirts, while Bohemian could sell approximately 20,000 per season. While other Premiership clubs are lucky to fund 5% of their annual budget through shirt sales, Bohemian anticipate they will make around 40% of their income from socially conscious shirts which have featured the colors of the Palestinian flag, a tribute to Bob Marley and the slogan “Welcome refugees” beneath the silhouette of a fleeing family.
“There’s a lot of financial logic to this,” said Lambert, 37, whose club funnels much of those profits to immigrant aid groups, homeless charities or others that provide medical assistance to Palestine.
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At a time when many public companies are hastily backing away from anything that smacks of woke culture, Bohemian decided, proudly and defiantly, to double down on causes ranging from gay marriage and climate change to harsh politics of asylum from Palestine and Ireland. While that has generated some pushback (and earned the team the nickname “We put any cause on an FC shirt” from some detractors), it could also have saved the 135-year-old club, one of Ireland’s oldest. .
A dozen years ago, Bohemian entered their worst run of this century, in which they lost more games than they won and finished in the bottom half of the league table for three consecutive seasons and narrowly escaped relegation. The club’s finances were worse.
“We were broke,” Lambert said. “We had a part-time team; people who earn 50 euros a week, 80 euros a week.”
So for many games, Dalymount Park, the team’s more than 100-year-old stadium in Phibsborough, a diverse neighborhood less than two miles north of downtown Dublin, was two-thirds empty. By 2015, the club’s membership had dropped to 420.
The goal of the club, 11-time All-Ireland champions, was to win but, according to Lambert, they also had a responsibility to be a force for good. Bohemian was doing neither.
“That led me to a bit of introspection, I suppose, in terms of what we stand for as a football club. What is it about? said Lambert, who joined the team’s board of directors in 2011, at the beginning of its crisis. “If you are a club with a lot of money, your fan base increases by winning a lot of trophies. If you don’t have that, what’s another way to attract people? The human, emotional level.
“If you interact with someone on a human and emotional level, you are more likely to gain loyalty from them over a period of time.”
Lambert knows a bit about marketing as he is co-owner of Bang Bang Cafe, in the shadow of Dalymount Park, as well as host of an eclectic podcast emanating from the cafe, and is the manager of the Irish Republican hip-hop band. Patella. (The Irish Film and Television Academy chose a biopic about the group as its country’s Oscar candidate.)
The plan he helped develop to save the Bohemian did not depend on the generosity of a deep-pocketed owner but was, like the team itself, a grassroots effort that began about a decade ago, when the club began working with street artists. and sold his own beer, became baptized as an internal poet and began doing community work.
“The strength of most football clubs is how rich the owner is. Our strength is how many people are members, how many people are willing to come to a game,” Lambert said. “That’s our real strength.”
Then came the T-shirt campaign, although it got off to a rocky start in 2019 when the club placed an image of Jamaican singer Bob Marley on a T-shirt and quickly received cease-and-desist letters from the late singer’s representatives. They later reached an agreement that allowed Bohemian to reissue the shirt.
“We explained to them what we’re about, that we’re a nonprofit entity, and I think they really liked that,” Lambert said. “They respected the history, they respected who we were.”
A second T-shirt, released during the coronavirus pandemic, was white with thin red and black diagonal lines and the profile of a man, woman and child sandwiched between the words Refugees Welcome. The club crest is above the left chest and the discreet logo of O’Neills, an Irish sportswear manufacturer and club sponsor, is on the right side.
With that t-shirt, intended to draw attention to Ireland’s controversial system of “direct provision” of migrant accommodation, gaining international news coverage, Bohemian has seen its merchandise sales increase by more than 2,000%, while average attendance Last season was just 260 fans short of the capacity of Dalymount Park, where corner flags are rainbow-hued and a large red and black anti-racism banner hangs over the stands. fans.
The club’s membership, which has grown by 600% in the last decade, has been limited to 3,000 to ensure there is a seat in the stadium for all owners. There is a long list of people waiting to join them.
Bohemian, who kick off their nine-month league season on February 16, have revealed the first of their three away shirts for 2025. It will carry the logo of Dublin-based punk band Fontaines DC, who will open a 26-year tour. countries next month. The home jersey, introduced last fall, is a red and black striped shirt with the emblem of a local furniture store on the chest.
“We exist in a small football market, but when it comes to values and our ownership model and our structure and our potential to generate new fan bases, raise money and profile causes and issues, we can be bigger than Man United.” Lambert said. “Very often the clubs do not comment on anything. “They like to be agnostic because they are making money.”
Bohemian, on the other hand, makes money precisely because that is No its main objective. Your goal is to make a difference.
“That allows us,” Lambert said, “to have sales that far exceed our attendance. Be part of the global football landscape, even on a small scale, in issues that are not directly related to the players on the field.”
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This story originally appeared on Los Angeles Times.