A conversation with St. Louis CITY SC chief experience officer Matt Sebek

The club executive is tasked with building the club’s fan base through marketing and technology initiatives.

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Matt Sebek felt the hair on his arms start to stand on end. It was the evening of March 25, and St. Louis CITY SC’s developmental squad, CITY2, had just taken the field for its first game on the MLS Next Pro circuit. Although the big league club’s debut in Major League Soccer was still a year away, that night represented a major checkpoint for the fledgling franchise. Sebek, CITY’s chief experience officer, had spent the previous year laying the groundwork for how the expansion team could make meaningful connections with prospective fans. On that night, as more than 6,000 people packed into Saint Louis University’s Hermann Stadium, Sebek saw the future. 

“You had fans show up for a development team and wear our gear,” Sebek says. “There were kids along the sidelines high-fiving players. That was a little taste of what the club has done and how it’s going to be, tenfold, inside our stadium next year.”

With CITY’s inaugural MLS campaign on the horizon, Sebek and the rest of the club’s front office are busy with the final preparations for the team’s 2023 debut. Their hope is to capitalize on the excitement generated by CITY2’s run to the MLS Next Pro Cup, while building a broad fan base through the promise of an unrivaled fan experience.

“We really want to drive this idea of a fully-immersive experience and curate all five senses,” Sebek says. “We have 17 home games to work with, so we’re looking to throw a festival 17 times a year, with food, music, culture, and entertainment. We’re really excited about positioning our 32-acre district that way.”

Sebek recently sat down with St. Louis Magazine to dish on lessons learned from the recent CITY2 season, the team’s must-have app, plans for the offseason, and more.

Now that the organization has had time to digest the CITY2 season, how valuable was the opportunity to stage games and test things in a less intense atmosphere? It really was a sandbox for us. I think, on the sporting side, the team was able to try some things and really make sure that they’re prepared going into 2023 in a way that most expansion clubs are not. On the business side, we treated it as a similar opportunity to learn how to staff games, how to operationalize it, how to market it, etc. There were parts of the fan experience that we trialed to get a reaction from fans so we know what they like and what they don’t like. We feel so prepared going into next year, and feel really fortunate for the opportunity to have those games.

What were some of the fan experience initiatives that generated the most responses? There were two big things. The first is that our stadium will be a cashless and ticket-less venue, and we’re really driving mobile adoption. The CITY2 games allowed us to really test those things. We did 100 percent virtual ticketing from the beginning. Concessions and retail areas were also 100 percent cashless. We wanted to make sure that we were monitoring the fans’ reaction to that, and the speed of service in lines. We were able to monitor all of those things even though they were in two venues that aren’t ours and that we don’t control.

What else drove significant interest? Merchandise. We rolled out a number of different collections throughout the year and monitored what fans liked, and what they didn’t like. Fans came with suggestions for new items, like new scarves they wanted to see. It really opened up the feedback channels for us.

St. Louis has a reputation for passionately supporting its sports teams. What kinds of things were you able to learn about the region as a soccer market? This is the right sport at the right time for St. Louis. Soccer is an international language. It’s very community-driven. Yeah, St. Louis is passionate about sports, but there’s a significant amount of international fans that are interested in us as a club, as well as families that are involved in the game here locally. I also think what we’ve tapped into is a fan base that is excited about soccer, and they’re excited about this idea that St. Louis is a place that is doing a lot of amazing things. So while soccer certainly represents what we do as a club, we can also stand for something a little bit more than that, like food, music, architecture—all of those things. I think we’ve grown the fan base considerably, just because people are so excited about those other aspects.

It feels like brand loyalty is a central component of sports fandom. How has CITY strived to develop that loyalty before playing a single game—or even having a full team? There are two ways that we’ve looked at it. For fans that are already there, such as the ones who placed a ticket deposit, or followed along with our announcements from Day 1, they’re already interested. With them, it’s about deepening the relationship and bringing them as close to the inner circle as possible. I’m born and raised in St. Louis, and the idea that we get to create something here that will be an institution for the next 200 years means something. We really wanted to bring our fans into that by creating a fan experience council and doing workshops that allowed fans to feel like they’re able to put their fingerprints on the start of something special.

What’s the second way? We’ve asked ourselves: How do we create more of those fans? Think of the top of the funnel. For example, we gained some really key insights during our first partner announcement with Purina where we saw a lot of new fans interested in CITY that knew nothing about soccer, but they’re pet lovers. So we started to identify these tangential categories and attributes of fandom. We knew if we set our anchors in pets, music, and food that these things could be magnets. If we could just bring more people in, we’d have plenty of time to teach them about the game. So that’s really how we looked at it, as far as deepening relationships with existing fans and growing new ones.

Depending on who you ask, sports teams—and leagues—don’t have great reputations for developing outstanding mobile apps, but CITY has seemingly made that a top priority. Where did you look for inspiration to create an app that both works well and makes people want to use it? We really didn’t look at any other sports apps. We looked at Spotify, TikTok, Airbnb—these other apps that you use in your daily life to solve problems. That was something that we really wanted to own from Day 1. We wanted it to be a homegrown app. It’s not cookie cutter, or a copy-and-paste product that other sports teams have. We control the user experience and do exactly what we want to do. We went out and hired product people that had spent time in agencies. For example, our lead of digital came from Panera Bread. We’re hiring people cross-industry to do the job we need to do.

What’s the strategy for stressing the importance of the app to new fans? Our first two years were all about content. We have an amazing internal content team that pumps out stuff on a daily basis. Fans are opening that app every day and consuming content and getting closer to the club. For us, we’re driving behavior. If we can build trust with fans that it’s an app worth opening, and that it’s going to work, and it’s beautiful, then we can have higher adoption. If you can achieve that, it really opens up the aperture to do more things. Higher adoption of mobile ticketing means faster lines. Having mobile order-ahead for food means you can spread out how fans order their halftime beer and food. We’ve always had a long-term strategy for how the app was going to play a vital role in the stadium experience. But we had to spend the last two years building trust in the app.

What has been the app’s most popular feature so far? We’ve seen it go through peaks and valleys. When we launched the app, it was during the beginning stage of our stadium construction. A simple thing like the construction cam was well received. There’s an augmented reality feature that allows you to put our stadium on your kitchen table and explore it. When CITY2 started playing, the most used feature was just the player profiles. Fans came to the games and wanted to know who these players were. So the app became a way to learn about them.

Are there any new features that you’re planning to roll out in the coming weeks and months? We’re constantly building new features, big and small, on a monthly basis. One of the things that people love are the badges they can receive for going on different hunts or tasks, or attending different events. Last week, we turned our attention toward food and announced our stadium partners. With each one of those partners, we’re going to do a fan event at their venue and drive people to local restaurants in different neighborhoods. For example, if you went to our event at BEAST Butcher & Block in The Grove, you could earn a new badge. Fans have really loved earning these badges. We also have the ability to give promos or special offers to people who have earned these badges. By focusing on digital, the possibilities we have are pretty limitless.

With the World Cup kicking off next month, how do you plan to leverage all of that attention on the sport and create more interest in CITY? It’s a lightning-in-a-bottle situation. We’re doing our own thing and building momentum in the club, and now you have the World Cup, which will be a topic of conversation in every house across the region. That’s great for us. We want to use that as an opportunity to build on this "Bigger Than Soccer" ethos that our ownership has had from Day 1. Yeah, we’re here and we’re involved in the game, but look at all of these great things we’re doing from the build, itself, to our City Futures program and teaching kids that haven’t had access to soccer in the past. Hopefully, we can identify kids that will be in our pipeline in 10 to 15 years from now. For us to have the World Cup going on at such a vital time in our growth is absolutely a lightning-in-a-bottle moment.

It’s certainly also a momentous time for the team, too, with the upcoming drafts, free agency, and roster construction opportunities. What kind of events can we expect to see in the near future? The stadium experience will begin to reveal itself. We’re creating a fully-immersive fan experience, and we’ll soon be announcing ways that fans will be able to really touch, feel, and see things inside the stadium. We continue to do workshops with fans do define our musical experience, and there will be additional opportunities for fans to put their fingerprints on it. We’ll be releasing new food partners, as well. We announced our team name two years ago, and for us, the first year was about keeping people energized and excited. Now, we’re turning the page and defining a roster with players for people to fall in love with. The next four months are going to be pretty hot and heavy with news updates.

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