Digital Marketing Plan for the Pittsburgh Riverhounds

Written By Pursue Persuade
A picture overlooking Highmark Stadium facing the Monongahela River and Downtown Pittsburgh.

Overlooking Highmark Stadium | Courtesy of Highmark Stadium

By: Zachary Halpert

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Who are the Riverhounds?

Pittsburgh Riverhounds SC is a soccer team in the United Soccer League Championship, the second-highest league within the USL. The team was founded on March 11, 1998, by Belle Vernon native Paul Heasley. Heasley’s dream was to create a team in western Pennsylvania that would capture the character of Pittsburgh and give those aspiring to be professional soccer players someone to look up to, in honor of his son, who began to play seriously in the late 1990s. The dream became reality when the team played their inaugural season in 1999 and ended with a 16-12 record while playing their home games at Bethel Park High School. After selling the team in 2004, the Riverhounds underwent various changes before their current owner, Tuffy Shallenberger, bought them in 2013 and officially made Highmark Stadium their home.

What is the Goal?

As fandom continues to grow for the team, the Riverhounds look to increase their ticket sales even more. Although the 2025 season began just in early March, the average attendance for the Riverhounds has decreased from 5,077 in 2024 to 4,202 in 2025, a decrease of 17.2%. In comparison to the remainder of the league, as demonstrated by the chart below, the Riverhounds are just below league average when it comes to home game attendance. Although it may still be early for the team to worry, they should still get ahead on promoting themselves to increase sales. To do this, the team should look to market to those within 50 miles of Pittsburgh who have an interest in soccer. There are various strategies that the team can use, and throughout the remainder of this blog, I will cover a few options for them.

This table displays the avergae home game attendance for USL teams in 2025 in comparison to 2024 and other teams in the league.

USL League Attendance | Via USL Tactics

Strategies

Strategy I: University Night

Similar to the Pirates, the Riverhounds could add a promotional night for the Pittsburgh universities and others from nearby cities. The Riverhounds have already established a student rush program that allows students to attend home games for just $10. By having a night tailored to these universities, the team could grow their fan base, and it would encourage those who enjoyed their time to buy tickets to other games as well. The Pirates include a pre-game reception, alumni throwing out first pitches, music students performing the anthem, and a hat for all in attendance. For the Riverhounds, they could include a pregame tailgate outside Highmark Stadium for all students to attend that will have food, drinks, and various games for the students to partake in and potentially win prizes. They can also include a special bucket hat for all in attendance to receive upon entrance to the stadium. Additionally, they can highlight the universities more by having a student sing the anthem and honor alumni at halftime.

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Strategy II: Tailor Social Media

With the rise of the importance of social media in sports, as demonstrated by this article from my peer, the Riverhounds must keep up with current trends. The Riverhounds have established themselves across all four major social media platforms: Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and X. Although each platform can attract all demographics, the team needs to understand where the majority of users for each site are coming from and tailor their posts to those demographics. According to Sprout Social, Facebook is the most commonly used social media site in the world, with 3.065 billion active users monthly. Due to this, it makes Facebook an optimal site for the Riverhounds to promote on. The Riverhounds do have to consider the majority demographic of Facebook, which is millennials, Gen X, and Baby Boomers. Due to this, the Riverhounds have to produce content for Facebook that would attract viewers in that age range to their games. In comparison to Instagram and TikTok, which are tied for the second most active monthly users at 2 billion, the posts would have to be tailored to a different demographic, as Instagram’s main users are from Gen Z. If you would like to learn more about how to market to Gen Z, you can read this article written by my peer.

By tailoring posts to the main demographics of each platform, it will enable the Riverhounds to bring in the highest number of fans to their accounts. One example of this would be using the most up-to-date memes for posts on Instagram and TikTok. The Steelers did a stellar job with some of their most recent posts, specifically their post-draft Instagram post. By partaking in posts like this, the Riverhounds will be able to promote their team and brand to those of a younger generation, to build a future fan base, while maintaining their current one. But, if this type of post were to be on X or Facebook, which tend to appeal to an older generation more, it would not do as well. So, the Riverhounds would have to understand this and change the post to something that those generations would prefer. The Steelers also did a good job at this post-draft, as they did not include the Instagram post on Facebook; rather, they posted things that the older generation could relate to, such as this post using the nostalgia of Toy Story to appeal to their audience. To learn more about social media marketing and engagement, you can read this article written by my peer.

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Strategy III: SMS Marketing

The final strategy the Riverhounds can turn to is SMS Marketing. SMS marketing is a growing practice in marketing and is tailored to the younger generation. This marketing strategy allows for a personal connection between the team and the fans, as they can personalize each message to each fan. Not only is it direct and personal, but text messages also have a high interaction rate, with 90% of people reading a text they receive within 3 minutes and 99% of people reading a text within 20 minutes. If the Riverhounds utilize SMS marketing correctly, they could easily reach more than enough people to sell out their stadium for every home game, without spending nearly as much for promotions. There are various other tactics the Riverhounds can use within SMS marketing that will allow them to grow their attendance at home games, these strategies can be read in a previous article I wrote about the topic, linked here.

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Conclusion

Overall, the Riverhounds can look to expand their fan base in a variety of different ways. The strategies I presented above are a great launching point for the team’s marketing and can be expanded upon as they grow in popularity. It is important that they do not try and overdo any type of marketing, as consumers will get annoyed if presented with too much content flooding their feed. Despite this, the Riverhounds must turn to these strategies to bring in more fans as they continue to grow as a franchise in Pittsburgh and hope to expand their fandom across the country.

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