Last year, New York welcomed a new women’s pro soccer team in Brooklyn FC, which just wrapped up its inaugural season competing in the USL Super League.
The league, which is officially called the Gainbridge Super League following an April naming rights deal with the insurance company, sits at the top of the United Soccer League, a North American pre-professional and professional men’s and women’s soccer organization that’s been around since the mid-1980s.
But the Super League and its teams are new, and Brooklyn FC has some stiff competition when it comes to capturing the attention of New York sports fans—or even just New York women’s soccer fans. NWSL team Gotham FC plays across the Hudson in New Jersey, and Brooklyn FC plays on Coney Island, neither location of which is particularly convenient for many New Yorkers, especially those without cars.
Tom Lyons, global CMO of Brooklyn FC, has aspirations to eventually turn the team into a “globally recognized” brand, he said. But first, Brooklyn FC needs to foster fandom in its home borough.
“The paradox of Coney [Island] is that it’s not that easy to get to, but that once you’re there, it’s pretty magical,” Lyons told Marketing Brew. “We feel like we’ve started to get people out to Coney who hadn’t been to Coney in a long time.”
(F train)ing season
How is Brooklyn FC convincing New Yorkers to take a trip to the end of the line? The team ran ads on the F train in the two weeks leading up to the first season of the Super League, which kicked off last August, plus a month after that. The F isn’t the only subway line that goes to Coney Island, but it runs through neighborhoods where many of the teams’ fans are based, according to ticket sales data, including Park Slope and Downtown Brooklyn.
The team’s ads have gone beyond the MTA and have run on Meta platforms and the radio; Brooklyn FC got an additional marketing boost via a homepage takeover on TeamSnap, a league management app for youth sports.
During its first season, Brooklyn FC sold over 1,000 tickets per game, according to Lyons, with the exception of one midweek game with poor weather in March. It’s an audience that “looks pretty good” in Maimonides Park on Coney Island, where the team plays, so “we’ve been really happy with that” number, he said.
On a bench in Coney Island
Once fans get to the park, Lyons said the team is focused on creating game-day experiences that keep them coming back for more, including theme nights and DJ sets, the latter of which he said has been particularly helpful for setting the vibe at the stadium. People can hear the music from outside, which sometimes leads to walk-in ticket sales, and some fans have stuck around during weather delays thanks to the sets, he said.
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Lyons and his team are also focused on merch as they grow the brand. There’s a team store on Coney Island and online that currently offers mostly clothes with the team name on them, but the team is introducing other items like coffee mugs, water bottles, and keychains, Lyons said. Brooklyn FC merch is also available at the Pelé Soccer store in Times Square—if it’s not sold out, that is.
“Anything that spells out Brooklyn FC sells out really quickly,” Lyons said. “The team barely existed, and it’s selling out.”
Lyons suspects the merch may be popular even among people who haven’t been to a game thanks to the Brooklyn branding. For that reason, he said, the team is also trying to get some of its merch in New York airports to take advantage of those who want to rep a place they recently visited.
“People who buy the NYPD sweatshirts from the airport don’t work for the NYPD,” he said.
Go with the flow
As for sponsorships, it’s still early days, but Brooklyn FC has a front-of-jersey sponsor in Liquid Death, and “everybody answers our call,” Lyons said. That doesn’t mean every CMO is ready to make a deal. In an inaugural season, it can be hard to build up an audience big enough to meet what many marketers are looking for, and it also takes time to gather fan data—although Lyons said the team has made strides on that front during its inaugural season.
“It’s not a charity, so I sort of respected and understood where they were coming from,” he said. With that said, he is optimistic about additional interest ahead of the team’s second season. “I think there’ll be a revisit with all those brands now that we have real data and real audience insights,” he said. “Even outside of our ticket sales…we’ve done incredible merchandise sales that really speak to people’s desire around the brand.”
Heading into a World Cup year in 2026, the team is making some other big moves to boost its brand and capitalize on casual interest in soccer. Brooklyn FC is introducing a men’s team in the USL Championship league next year, and the club is also looking to partner with other local organizations, like Nathan’s Famous and the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce, for some potential cobranding initiatives, Lyons said.
“When the men come on and the World Cup is happening, how are we [going to be] a voice for global soccer while the World Cup is happening around the Brooklyn area?” he said. “We want to be really big, global soccer citizens and advocates as a team. We think that’s a much faster straight line to being a big brand and therefore attracting really good players.”