Reaching out to Hispanic fans

Lubbockist · Aug 5, 2024

Good stuff here from the Extra Points newsletter (if you're not already subscribed you can do that HERE). I know @tech1978 has posted on this before and I agree that this is one of the most meaningful ways we could grow our fanbase and, therefore, our appeal to TV partners and stay at the big kid table in realignment.
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How are college athletic departments reaching out to Latino fans?

Here's how, from exhibition matches to broadcast deals...in Mexico

Last August, I wrote about Fresno State doing something completely unique in college football.

They decided to broadcast their home football game against Eastern Washington on UniMás, making it the first FBS game to be exclusively broadcast on a Spanish-language network.

Why Fresno State? Well, there are currently a handful of football games each season that aren’t covered in the Mountain West Conference TV package, so the school had television inventory and flexibility that not every FBS school enjoys. But it also made sense given their market.

The city of Fresno is a little over 50% Hispanic or Latino, per the US Census. The school also reports a student body that is well over 50% Hispanic or Latino. Along with 16 other schools in the Cal State University System, Fresno is officially designated as a Hispanic-Serving institution.

So making an explicit effort to broadcast a game in Spanish, or to explicitly engage Hispanic or Latino fans, would make sense for Fresno State.

But Fresno isn’t the only Hispanic-Serving Institution in DI or FBS, or the only campus in a metropolitan area with many Hispanic or Latino residents.

Nobody else is exclusively broadcasting games on Spanish language television….and only a few are broadcasting events in Spanish at all. So what do other schools do for Hispanic/Latino fan outreach? And what keeps them from potentially doing more?

Before we get too far into the weeds, let me quickly clarify some terms

The words “Hispanic” and “Latino” are often used interchangeably in the United States, but they don’t actually mean the same thing. “Hispanic” generally refers to folks whose ancestry comes from Spanish-speaking countries in Latin America, like Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, etc. “Latino” refers to folks whose ancestry comes from Latin America, which includes countries like Brazil, who speak Portuguese, or Haiti, whose residents speak French.

Neither of these terms should be considered racial categories, since one can be of Latin American extraction and be any race. Since both Hispanic and Latino are meant to describe folks whose ancestry comes from a lot of different countries, exactly how the categorization should be applied is a matter of debate.

For the rest of this newsletter, I will use the term “Latino”, in an attempt to be as expansive as possible, as the communities around many college campuses will include fans whose ancestry comes from several different countries and backgrounds.

UTRGV has perhaps the most creative broadcast solution I’m aware of

The University of Texas-Rio Grande Valley, is truly a unique school in D-I. The school’s main campus, in Edinburg, Texas, is only about 20 miles from the US/Mexico border, and other regional campuses, like in Brownsville, are even closer. Sarah Hernandez, the school’s Associate Athletic Director for Marketing and Strategic Initiatives, told me that many UTRGV students, and even some employees, commute every day from Mexico.

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20.4 miles. That isn’t very far, in my humble opinion

So engaging with a Latino population isn’t just a box to check or some aspirational goal. It has to be part of the institution’s holistic mission, something they do every day.

The school’s unique geography presented an interesting broadcasting challenge. As a member of the WAC, UTGRV’s primary media rights partner was ESPN, who could stream the school’s athletic contests on ESPN+ (UTRGV officially left the WAC and joined the Southland on July 1). But those streaming rights were only for the United States, and a non-trivial portion of the UTRGV market included Mexico.

So how could the school reach the entirety of their market? By broadcasting games in Mexico.

Jonah Goldberg, UTRGV’s Senior Associate Athletic Director for Communications, told me that the process actually started well over a decade ago…with hockey. “We used to have pro hockey here down in The Valley…the Rio Grande Valley Killer Bees in the CHL. The Bees would do a Game of the Month on Televisa (a Mexican telecom company), where they’d come up with their own truck and produce the broadcast. I’d actually go help on the radio in those days. It was an interesting idea, and something I always remembered.”

Fast forward to 2022. Goldberg is working at the university, and one of his old colleagues from those hockey days is now an account executive at Televisa…and Goldberg decided to pitch him on a partnership. Both sides were very excited, but they also had important technical issues to work out.

“We needed to figure out how to produce games without having to duplicate all our equipment,” Goldberg told me. The school’s production team was already using a Tricaster to produce the feeds for WAC International and for their typical home feed, so they figured out how to “split” the WAC International feed (which is broadcast in English), allowing the Televisa team to use Spanish audio and Spanish graphics over the broadcast. With a second mixer and a second crew, broadcasting in multiple languages was possible and affordable.

At first, UTRGV and Televisa worked together to produce three Saturday baseball games for broadcast in Mexico. Televisa produced a full 30-minute pregame show (complete with coach interviews) leading into the broadcast, and then aired the games across linear networks, rather than just streaming. Now, the partnership has expanded to also include a men’s basketball game, a women’s basketball game, and multiple baseball games.

“There are a lot of people on both sides of the border whose primary language is Spanish, and we need to meet them where they are.” said Goldberg.

Evaluating success is complicated. Both officials acknowledged that the deal isn’t a massive revenue driver to start, and since Nielsen ratings only cover the American side, the school doesn’t have great analytics for exactly how many people are tuning it.

“We know that Televisa is a popular channel in Mexico,” said Hernandez, “so we know there’s the potential to be reaching that market. But this has to go beyond just analytics. This is also about showing that we’re making that effort to reach our fans…some things are bigger than just how many people are watching.”

The Spanish broadcasts in Mexico aren’t the only way the school tries to reach out to fans in the entire region. The athletic department also runs Facebook ads in Spanish, and they’ve sought to explicitly celebrate the unique culture of the Rio Grande Valley, (which by extension, is also a celebration of Latino influence) in their department’s branding, events and outreach.
“As a university, we see ourselves as a unifying force within the Valley,” Hernandez said. “That’s been beautiful to see.”

Cal State Bakersfield uses a slightly different approach

Like UTRGV, Cal State Bakersfield sits in a market with a large Latino population, and is classified as a Hispanic-Serving-Institution. But the school is a good 250 miles from Mexico, so replicating the UTRGV broadcast strategy probably isn’t possible.

But Cal State Bakersfield Athletic Director Kyle Conder told me about another strategy that has been effective…bringing Mexico to Bakersfield.

Men’s soccer is a fall sport in college, but teams can also schedule games in the spring. Schools can schedule other college teams during the spring season, but they’re also free to set up exhibitions against programs completely outside the NCAA system.

That’s what Bakersfield did. Last year, the ‘Runners faced the U-20 squad of Club América, one of the most famous clubs in Mexico (Bakersfield won, 5-0). Over 2,100 fans showed up, an atmosphere that Conder described to me as a “party”, one with better attendance than the typical fall season. In previous years, Bakersfield also hosted the U-20 for Club Tijuana Xolos.

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Via CSUB Athletics

Using the exhibition season to look for either teams based in Mexico, affiliated with Mexican squads, or affiliated with various ethnic or affiliate groups can be an effective way to reach out to community members.

Not every school that tries to reach out to Latinos sits in a heavily Latino community. They don’t even always have to use sports.

BYU is not like the other schools I called for this story.

Unlike, say, regional public schools in California or Texas, BYU is not a Hispanic-Serving Institution. According to the school’s website, the undergraduate population is less than 10% Hispanic or Latino…and over 80% Caucasian.

So it’s not a particularly ethnically diverse campus. But more than 60% of students on campus speak a second language. This isn’t just because BYU recruits students internationally (although they do), but because of the unique religious breakdown of the institution. BYU is owned and operated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, colloquially known as the Mormons, and the vast majority of the student body comes from members of that faith. Many LDS young people go on two-year missionary trips across the world, requiring missionaries to learn new languages and throw themselves into new cultures.

LDS membership is also global, with countries like Mexico and Brazil boasting some of the largest pockets of church membership outside the United States.

BYU doesn’t currently broadcast athletic events in other languages, but school Athletic Director Tom Holmoe did point out a unique type of outreach the school has been doing recently.

Members of BYU’s popular football team regularly speak at LDS congregations before football games, sharing religious messages and connecting with fans all over the country. Recently, Holmoe told me that members of BYU’s football team, and coaching staff, have visited and spoken to congregations that only speak Spanish.

The current roster does not have any native Spanish speakers, but does have several players and coaches who learned Spanish on missions, and still speak the language. Holmoe added that during last year’s Big 12 Media Days event, spanish-language radio from Texas attended, and multiple BYU athletes were able to give interviews in Spanish.

Holmoe told me he didn’t view any of the Spanish-speaking congregation visits or additional outreach programs as pathways towards earning new revenue or even selling any more tickets in the short term, but rather, “about being good neighbors”, and wanted to extend visibility and friendship to everybody in their community who might care about BYU.

That speaks to what can make this type of outreach difficult for many schools

I reached out to several other schools when researching for this newsletter…some in heavily Latino communities, some not. While virtually every AD, communications personnel or staffer told me they’d love for their institution to do more direct outreach to Latino fans, there are often meaningful challenges.

For one, many departments aren’t properly staffed to do everything they need to meet their immediate marketing and communications needs, let alone programs that might not generate meaningful ticket revenue or sponsorship sales in the immediate future. Carving away time to produce promotional materials in non-English languages, renegotiating broadcast agreements or in community relations, while important, is also time not spent on traditional fundraising, NIL or other work. Not everybody feels they’re resourced enough to plant seeds that won’t grow this calendar year.

I’m also told that non-English language broadcasts can be complicated. Some schools don’t own their radio or broadcast rights, so they’d need their MMR partner or broadcast rights partner to buy into their plans…something I’m told doesn’t always happen. Other schools have told me they aren’t confident they can find the right Spanish (or other language) production talent to operate and sell the event.

There’s also the fact that even in highly Latino areas, lots of senior athletic department staff do not speak other languages. If nobody on staff has the cultural competency and/or language skills to effectivelly do outreach into new communities, and they don’t have the time or money to develop that staff…the outreach probably won’t happen.

But that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth doing

There’s not one way to do this effectively. What works for Fresno State might not be the best strategy for Florida International, Idaho, or Maryland. Different schools don’t just have different budgets, but they’re reaching out to different communities, have different institutional priorities, sponsor different sports, and different media markets.

But in a world where nearly everybody is concerned about enrollment, where attitudes about sport fandom are changing among Gen Z and others, and where demographics are changing across the country, simply doing things the way you’ve always done them isn’t always the right decision for schools. Everybody would benefit from new fans.

Sometimes, you just have to reach those potential fans in a new way.

FloydadaRaider · Aug 5, 2024