Pittsburgh Riverhounds Social Media Strategy
Noah Fries
Highmark Stadium, home of the Pittsburgh Riverhounds, with the Pittsburgh skyline in the background
Who are the Pittsburgh Riverhounds?
As anyone who has ever been involved with Pittsburgh in any manner knows, the city is built upon its sports culture and “Yinzers” bleed black and gold. The Pirates, Penguins, and Steelers are some of the most prominent sports teams in their respective leagues, and they are known by their black and gold colors and their passionate fans. Pittsburgh banker Paul Heasley wanted to add a professional soccer team to the mix, and was awarded an expansion franchise in 1998 to take on the city's beloved colors and — hopefully — obtain that same passionate Yinzer fanbase. After starting as the Pittsburgh Riverdogs, a potential lawsuit by a minor league baseball team resulted in the franchise being renamed to the Riverhounds. After calling a number of stadiums home, the Riverhounds have played at Highmark Stadium, a 5,000 seat venue in Station Square along the Monongahela River, since 2013.
Goal and Target Audience
The goal of this digital marketing strategy for the Pittsburgh Riverhounds is simply to increase ticket sales to games, mainly among soccer fans within driving distance of Pittsburgh — here defined as those who live within 50 miles — who don’t currently attend Riverhounds games. A big focus of this digital marketing is on the Gen Z population, which is the demographic that is constantly online and the most affected by marketing on social media platforms.
Purpose of a Marketing Strategy
According to Investopedia, a marketing strategy refers to “a business’s overall plan to convince customers to buy its products or services.” It deals with reaching out to consumers who aren’t currently utilizing a product or service and persuading them to start doing so — mainly through covering of the 4 P’s of marketing: product, price, place, and promotion. Without a proper marketing strategy, there is no way for a business to survive. In our society today, there really is no way for companies to survive without digital marketing, specifically through social media. Social media is the key to success, and is something that absolutely needs to be utilized to its full potential if we want to achieve our goal of getting more fans in the Pittsburgh area to come to Riverhounds games.
How Important is Social Media Content?
Social media content has never been more important than it is in our society today. Check out these blog posts written by my peers that detail how successful digital marketing is in both an overall view and a sports-specific view.
Our Plan:
Employ TikTok trends to connect more with Gen Z populations
Utilize our TikTok and Instagram pages to advertise giveaway and theme nights to put more fans in seats
Have Pittsburgh legends show their support for the Riverhounds, making fans of these figures more likely to attend games
Step 1: TikTok Trends to Attract Gen Z
TikTok has been labeled as the future of social media, with billions of active users worldwide and almost 60% of US users are between the ages of 16 and 24 — right in the Gen Z realm. TikTok is known for its short-form content, with most videos being under 60 seconds long. The popularity of TikTok, along with the propensity for short-form content being perfect for Gen Z populations, has been created by trends that take over the app’s landscape. Not only are videos of these trends found all over the app, Gen Z’ers in our everyday lives are taking part in these trends every single day. This is an obvious market opportunity for the Riverhounds. At the time of writing this blog article, the Riverhounds’ TikTok page has 4,800 followers, but doesn’t get a ton of engagement on their posts. These numbers could both shoot up dramatically if the Riverhounds would focus their attention more on what is trending at that particular time, along with creating better hashtags that agree with the algorithm to get more fans attracted to the content and, thus, attracted to the team itself.
Step 2: Advertising of Giveaways and Theme Nights
The Riverhounds release a promotional schedule every season, with events such as firework nights and $1 beer nights being found throughout the year. The Riverhounds currently do a decent job of advertising these events, but it is nowhere near as prominent as it should be to get fans to the stadium. On their Instagram page, the marketing typically is found buried in a carousel, when it really should be its own post to ensure that more people are able to see it. The same could be said about TikTok — the best course of action would be incorporating the trends described in Step 1 into describing the giveaway nights, resulting in a much larger, younger audience seeing this content and being encouraged to buy a ticket.
Step 3: Pittsburgh Legends Showing their Support
If there’s one thing that Yinzers truly love, it’s their sports teams and their respective icons; for the Steelers it’s Big Ben Roethlisberger, for the Pirates it’s Paul Skenes, and for the Penguins it’s the Big Three of Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, and Kris Letang. Because of the passionate love that Pittsburghers have for the sports culture of the city, having any of these legends support and advertise the Riverhounds would have massive effects on ticket and merchandise sales. The advertising of these icons and their support of the Riverhounds on all social media platforms is the last step of our marketing strategy with the goal of getting new and old fans alike to Highmark Stadium to catch a match.
Conclusion
The Pittsburgh Riverhounds are a professional soccer team in the USL that competes at Highmark Stadium in Station Square. A marketing strategy that involves utilizing TikTok trends to promote the team itself and promotional events, as well as advertising for the team with the support of Pittsburgh icons, will result in soccer fans within 50 miles of Pittsburgh buying tickets and attending games. If this strategy and plan is successful, we will achieve our goal of increasing ticket sales to our games, as well as increasing revenue as a whole.
Citations
2025 Pittsburgh Riverhounds SC Promotions Schedule. (2025, April 3). Retrieved from https://www.riverhounds.com/promotions-schedule-2025/
The Investopedia Team. (2025, March 2). Marketing Strategy: What It Is, How It Works, and How to Create One. Retrieved from https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/marketing-strategy.asp
Shontz, L. (1998). Charleston howls, so Riverdogs become Riverhounds. Pittsburgh Post Gazette, B-3.
https://www.instagram.com/riverhoundssc/?__coig_challenged=1
Backlinko Team. (2023, November 1). TikTok Statistics You Need to Know in 2025. Retrieved from https://backlinko.com/tiktok-users