i9 Sports is a great youth sports business opportunity thanks to proven customer acquisition and retention strategies to build your business
i9 Sports is the nation’s first and largest youth sports league franchise, so clearly we’re doing something right. You can’t have a thriving youth sports business opportunity without knowing how to attract and retain customers, and at i9 Sports, we’ve got a step-by-step plan to help you do just that.
The key, not surprisingly, is actively marketing your business to your community. It’s all explained in our Marketing Game Plan, which works whether you’re a seasoned sales professional or just someone’s who is outgoing and willing to put in the work.
Building your youth sports business
The Marketing Game Plan provides training and business coaching to help guide your efforts, starting with building brand awareness. You’ll go to networking events and also use traditional and digital marketing tactics to better connect with your community and get people to sign up for your leagues. We provide templates for flyers and postcards; show you how to generate cross-promotions with local businesses; and provide best practices for search engine marketing, social media and more.
Our marketing strategies are effective because we’ve exhaustively researched how to deliver the right message to the right audience. We send you out to where the parents are, since they’re your primary target: churches, schools, PTA meetings, grocery stores and more.
i9 Sports offers investors a low-cost franchise that enjoys high customer retention. By providing a positive first experience, parents enroll their kids in multiple sports, over multiple years, creating strong recurring revenue for franchisees and at the same time reducing marketing costs as they are already customers.
Satisfied customers also mean a high rate of repeat business. Our Marketing Game Plan includes tools you can use to boost renewal registrations and encourage customers to try new sports.
Why customers love i9 Sports
We are affordable. We are family-friendly. And we focus on fun. Every kid who signs up gets to play for at least half the game, and there are no tryouts — and no cuts from a team. We provide safe, organized fun while teaching values like sportsmanship and teamwork.
Our youth sports league holds practices and games on the same day, at the same place, making it very convenient for today’s busy families. Offering programs for kids ages 3-14, we have a potential 12-year customer lifecycle. A large percentage of our customers come back year after year, and with the range of sports we provide, play is possible all year.
“We do our best to communicate to parents and coaches as much as we can in regards to expectations, scheduling and what kids gain from competition and cooperation,” says franchisee Joe Becker of Chicago. “Our closing day is really a celebration where the individual coaches and teams are recognized for their hard work, commitment, and improvement. They run through a human tunnel or banner as their team is called out on the final day and they get trophies at the end, which really leaves a great final impression for parents and the kids.
“This helps a great deal in keeping our customers coming back for more.”
That’s certainly true for Michelle D. of Spring Hill, TN, who gave i9 Sports a 5-star review on Google recently, noting, “This program is fun for kids, easy for parents and ideal for any child who just wants to learn a new sport in a friendly environment. Sportsmanship and teamwork are the focus…not just winning!”
That kind of review is proof positive that franchisees who follow the program and are responsive to their customer base will reap the rewards of positive word-of-mouth. Customer satisfaction is a key focus of our business model, and the recurring revenue you’ll generate through repeat business is what makes an i9 Sports franchise sustainable and scalable.
Learn more
If you’re interested in a youth sports business opportunity that has logged 15 consecutive years of record revenue, please explore more about our brand on our research pages. Just fill out the form on this page to download our free franchise report.
