How to turn the club social media audiences into an actionable fan database

For any professional club, having a qualified and structured fan database is no longer a competitive advantage — it’s a strategic requirement. Understanding supporters, anticipating their expectations, and delivering the right message at the right time are essential to drive engagement, loyalty, and ultimately stadium attendance. But none of this is possible without a reliable, permission-compliant CRM foundation.

USL Dunkerque, well established in Ligue 2 and enjoying strong on-pitch momentum, is well aware of this challenge. Following a 4th-place finish in the 2024–25 season and with the renovation of the Marcel-Tribut Stadium underway, the club is preparing for a significant change of scale. The current capacity of around 5,000 seats will gradually rise to 8,000 in 2028 and to approximately 10,000 by 2030. To support this growth, the club needs a much larger and better-qualified fan database.

Despite having 15,000 contacts on record, only 3,000 were contactable under valid opt-in. For a club aiming to fill a larger stadium, the gap was substantial. This is why USL Dunkerque partnered with Arenametrix to strengthen data quality and activate new audiences.

A clear objective: grow, requalify and activate the fanbase

The club’s ambition is twofold: grow its database by acquiring new contacts, while re-engaging and enriching the profiles already present. Above all, the club needed a repeatable, scalable activation process to support long-term ticketing and marketing performance — especially ahead of the stadium expansion.

A social media activation designed to engage and convert

To launch this new approach, the club leveraged a major moment in the season: the Côte d’Opale derby against US Boulogne Côte d’Opale. As a highly anticipated fixture, it offered the ideal opportunity to maximise reach and engagement.

The activation took the form of a simple, accessible prediction game: fans guessed the final score and the first goalscorer for a chance to win a signed jersey. With nearly 120,000 followers across Instagram and Facebook, the goal was to convert part of this digital audience into fully contactable supporters for ticketing and CRM communications.

The contest was promoted on both platforms through posts and stories on the Wednesday and Friday leading up to the match.

A three-step activation journey

1. Collecting key fan information
   A dedicated form captured essential fields: email, date of birth, postcode — along with an optional ticketing opt-in.
   The goal: enrich supporter data and capture valid consent.
   
   
   
2. Automating a personalised thank-you message
   After submitting the form, each participant received an automatic email confirming their prediction and showcasing a selection of products from the club’s online store — the perfect moment to encourage pre-match purchases.
   
   
   
3. Integrating and qualifying the data
   All contacts and marketing permissions were automatically centralised, structured, and prepared for immediate use within the club’s CRM and communication flows.
   

The club expressed strong satisfaction with the results, highlighting both the quantity and quality of the data captured through this activation.

A scalable model to support long-term growth

Beyond immediate performance, this operation marks an important milestone for USL Dunkerque. It demonstrates that it is possible to capture a portion of the audience of followers on social media and transform it into a solid, exploitable, and structured CRM base to support the club's ticketing and marketing objectives.

The operation is part of a virtuous model: acquisition → qualification → marketing activation → conversion.

As the Marcel-Tribut Stadium expansion progresses, this approach becomes a key lever to secure attendance levels and grow associated revenues. Building on this success, the club plans to repeat and expand this type of initiative, with stronger incentives and additional social ads to accelerate database growth.