Growing the Rovers Family

The Roaring Back campaign is about more than just returning to the Championship quickly. We also need to return stronger.

A key part of this is to grow our numbers by creating a new generation of supporters.

The future of the club depends on the size of our support base – the more support, the better the atmosphere for everybody and the bigger the playing budget we can afford. That means we can perform at a higher level, encouraging even more supporters along.

Although we are always keen to encourage lapsed fans to return to Stark’s Park, we’re also looking to encourage new fans along – people who have never been involved with the club, but may be open to it. They may have just moved to the area recently, or lived here all their life but never had a good enough reason to head down to Pratt Street.

Attracting completely new fans is easier said than done. For one, people with no previous connection to the club may feel “outsiders” and need additional encouragement to walk up the ramp for the first time. In addition, they’re currently not connected to us on social media, nor do they likely pay attention to stories about us in the local papers, so even getting in contact with them proves tricky.

For these reasons, we are looking to start experimenting by offering welcome sessions.

The aim of these is simple – to take people in with no previous association with the club and, over the course of a Saturday afternoon, bring them up to speed with our past, explain how the club now works and make them immediately feel part of the Rovers family.

These enjoyable sessions will involve a tour of the stadium, some talks on the history and current set up of the club, some lunch, meeting the manager and some players and getting to watch the game. We will have people on hand to answer any questions throughout.

Hopefully, for some of them, this first visit will turn into a lifelong involvement with Raith Rovers. At the very least, they will have a great afternoon and spread the word.

At this point, we’re looking to run a pilot welcome session at our next home game – on Saturday 25th November when we play Queen’s Park. It will run from 12.30 until 5.15pm.

The session is completely free to attend. All that we ask is that attendees help us by providing feedback at the end, so we can assess the viability of running these regularly.

The main issue we have just now is finding people to take part, so that’s where we need your help. We’re asking for our fans to think about people within their social and work circles that might be interested in attending.

If you know anyone that fits this, please send them to this page to sign up. They can also call Laura or Judith in our commercial department for a chat on 01592 263 514 (Option 2) Mon-Fri 9am-4pm.

Please be quick, though, as we have a limited number of spaces available. Places will be offered on a first-come-first-served basis, with applications closing next Wednesday (22nd Nov). Any applications received after this (or once we’ve reached the limit) will be added to a waiting list. If the pilot session is a success, we hope to run more sessions in the new year.

At this point, we are only looking for people with no previous connection to the club. Depending on how the project progresses, we may run “refresher sessions” for people that attended games in the past and want to get back involved.

Remember – every fan plays an important role in our mission to grow our fan base by creating a welcoming and positive atmosphere on match days to convince new fans to commit to the club. Together, we can grow the Rovers family and see us go from strength to strength in the coming years.

Click here for more information and to sign up for a Welcome Session

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