All Stars case study, by Liz Steventon, Solihull Blossomfield CC.
We have been running Allstars at Solihull Blossomfield CC since it’s introduction four years ago. If I’m totally honest, for the first year or so we did it because we thought it was the right thing to do. We had fairly low numbers attending and a low retention rate. All Stars was a tool to get a few more junior members, but it wasn’t really a focus for the club. In those early days, we didn’t realise what are powerful tool All Stars could be to build our Junior Section. This is the story of how we changed our approach to All Stars and how that change transformed the junior section at our club.
Two years ago, we decided we needed to put more effort into promoting our All Stars. We turned to social media, as this had worked well for promoting our fundraising events in the previous year. As a result of our social media content promoting All Stars, the numbers of All Stars participants improved and so did our retention rate. By engaging with parents in person and through social media, our retention rates increased by 80%.
From a financial perspective, in the early years All Stars was not a profitable programme for our club as we used paid local and club coaches to run the sessions and the fee the club received was only £5 per child for the full 8 week programme. However, once we started to retain our All Stars and converted them to paying members then it was a different story. In 2019, we signed up 41 All Stars, and because we had reached over 40 participants we received lots of free equipment. In addition, our better retention rates increased the junior membership by 33 children, from All Stars alone.
2020 was the year to forget! Allstars was cancelled due to Covid but, having retained such a high proportion of our 2019 All Stars, the club junior section was still in a healthy place. In early 2021 when the notification that All Stars was happening came from the county board, we were very surprised. We were still in the second lockdown, but we decided to run with it.
In the weeks leading up to the 2021 registration window, lockdown was lifted and outdoor organised sport was allowed to take place. All Stars launch day was looming and we weren’t sure what to expect, but we opened up our bookings without a limit (after all we hadn’t ever had more than 41 children enrolled). The ECB had also increased the amounts they paid the clubs and introduced store credits to enable clubs to purchase equipment from the All Stars shop, so we had nothing to lose.
What a bumper year 2021 has proved to be! Within a week of opening our registration, we had 56 participants and had to arrange for more coaches as we were in danger of exceeding player:coach ratios. We then made the bold decision to open up another session on a different night. When numbers for this second session were reaching 25, we decided to change to a direct link only access, but we were still getting calls asking if friends could join.
The club had never been in this situation before. We didn’t know, had never needed to know, there was even an option to limit numbers or offer direct link only bookings, let alone open up more than one session. We were thrilled. Never had we had such interest in All Stars, our club, or our junior section.
Don’t get me wrong it wasn’t all plain sailing. There were a number of new challenges that came with increased numbers. We now had, for example, 56 cars arriving at once, bringing 56 children plus siblings and parents waiting to sign in each week. The club in general was already busy on Friday evenings and we also had over 80 juniors arriving for their softball cricket sessions just 15 minutes after the All Stars finished.
On a positive note, after the first week the club bar started tapping into the new income stream by serving hot food. Bar takings were also substantially up. The whole club had a buzz about it; junior cricket was back with a bang!
We weren’t out of the woods yet, though. The poor weather and Covid bubble bursts / isolations at the start of the summer played havoc with the sessions, but we communicated with the parents well and decided we would be very flexible with the sessions. We have continued to run sessions throughout the summer and these sessions were included in the All Star price until each participant had taken their eight sessions. This gave families greater flexibility but also importantly meant no one felt tempted to come along if they were isolating or not feeling 100%, and no one missed out if they needed to isolate. I firmly believe this is why we have retained all but two of the 83 participants at the official end of the 2021 All Stars programme. 81 of our 2021 All Stars have continued to attend beyond the original eight sessions and are looking to join the club, taking our junior membership to over 200 children.
We are now running a third 2021 All Stars block of sessions during the summer holiday, following a successful bid for funding from the ECB. We have already got 15 children signed up for that and it only opened last week.
As the junior manager at Blossomfield, the All Stars programme has become easier to deliver over time. I’ve also signed up to a Facebook group called All Star activators which I recommend as there’s lots of useful information, sharing of best practice etc. For example, I have used it to find companies that have been really good for providing medals, certificates trophies etc. The group also offer a mentoring scheme where established clubs can help guide new clubs through what works and what doesn’t. This group would have been really handy when I first took over as junior manager at Blossomfield CC.
Having such fabulous numbers, the more generous fee structure and the store credits have all enabled us to provide certificates and medals for each participant and to “purchase” enough equipment to put ourselves forward to run softball festivals. The festivals in turn will bring more revenue to the club and raise the club profile, ensuring a healthy future not only for the youth cricket section but the club as a whole. We highly recommend that every club, no matter how small, runs All Stars. It’s an amazing way to build your junior section, boost your softball kit, increase food and beverage income, raise awareness of your club, and to ensure your cricket club has regular stream of new young players and a bright future.