Marketing a Sports Team

Marketing a sports team is a bit of a grind.

Talk with a team that has high fan engagement and ticket sales and ask them how much time they’ve spent connecting with their community, and they likely will have lost count of the hours and resources they’ve invested over the past number of years. 

Newer sport teams sometimes get a bit of a boost from just being the new kid on the block. The new WNBA expansion teams are enjoying the thrill of their first season right now. But after a season or two, the natural community excitement can wear off and the reality of the grind required kicks in.

A lot of team owners come from an entrepreneurial background, and feel that gives them an edge when it comes to marketing a sports team. And while yes, it follows a number of marketing strategies and principles that you’d apply to a product or service, at the end of the day, it’s discretionary spending for fans and needs to compete with all the shiny things looking to grab their attention. 

So, how do you market a sports team and build up a strong fan base? What we’ve found, and seen with successful teams, is that there isn’t a silver bullet of “just do this” and the fans will come running. Instead is a well thought out strategy that’s implemented across a wide range of communication channels. 

Who’s your audience?

Typically the first step in developing a strategy is to identify a target audience. With sports teams, it’s a wide net to catch different audiences at different times, and for different reasons to attend. When mapping out your audience, you usually:

• Start with the obvious sports fans for your specific sport;
• Expand to include casual sports fans, who like attending an in-person game or two during a season;
• Then might look at families who enjoy taking their kids or parents out for a different experience;
• Want to include those looking for a fun backdrop for a special event – like a birthday, bachelor or bachelorette party, a date, or corporate nights out

Don’t make the mistake of keeping your audience too narrow, or you’ll miss out on potential connections. 

Then you want to plan a fan experience that will pique their interest and make them brand ambassadors:

• The highest quality of play, coaching and professionalism that you can deliver
• Branding and merch that fans are proud of and want to wear beyond game nights
• In game hosts, announcers, activations and entertainment worthy of attention

Owned Channels

Now you need to get the word out. Let’s start with the channels that don’t cost you anything – your own.

• Design your website to make it easy for folks to come and find what they are looking for, whether it’s game schedules, player bios, getting tickets, media assets, news and updates, and even job opportunities. Update the site at least once a week with game recaps, player updates, special game themes, …. So fans know to come back to stay up to date
• Social media posts and stories are an effective way to share information and build a rapport with your followers. Build out a look and feel for your different types of posts, and create a content calendar with different content types, collab opportunities, @ mentions and hashtags to consistently use
• Newsletters are a great way to stay connected with your closest fans, giving them inside information and offers 
• Build up followers on both social and for your newsletter with special promotions when they tag, invite, and sign up. Link archived editions on your website to give people a taste of what they’re missing

These channels are an effective way to connect, and stay connected, with your loyal fans as well as those who are interested in learning more about the team. Keep going with these during and post season to maintain momentum, share updates, and stay connected with your fans year round. 

We’ll also note that it’s worth the investment in professional photographers and videographers where you can. Quality images from a few key games in a season can have a huge return towards perception of the team as you use them across all of your channels and communications. Plan out a shot list in advance so you know you’ll have what you need, when you need it.

Paid Media

Free communication channels can grow your reach organically but can take much longer to grow a substantial base. Adding in paid media guarantees that your team will be seen and heard. 

• Social media algorithms have reduced organic post reach to only 2 – 10 % of your followers depending on the platform. Paid posts and ads help boost the visibility to not only your followers but potentially new customers that match your audience profile. Platforms like Meta do change up how ads are shown which can impact how best to optimize your ad performance and even the embedded AI tools can reduce your ad effectiveness. Keep that in mind as you monitor ad performance and refresh visuals and copy during your season’s campaigns.
• Radio and digital audio ads can be a fun way to promote your team and build brand awareness. Consider traditional radio stations, streaming music or talk radio digital platforms and podcasts to include in your media mix. Especially over the summer months, listening sessions increase with people outside and on the move. 
• Sportscast coverage is going to reach a captive audience looking to hear the outcomes of their favourite teams. Smaller local sports teams don’t have the same draw as the larger leagues and paid sports coverage can make sure your team’s results are being shared through local media outlets and not up to the discretion of the news editor. Once your team hits critical mass, then you have bargaining power to negotiate more coverage. 
• Don’t rule out Out of Home advertising. Transit posters and billboards can create inventive brand moments that will introduce your team to a captive audience and encourage them to check out a game.

Press Releases

This is another effective way to push content out to a wide range of media outlets. We all know that journalism doesn’t have the resources it used to, and this includes sports reporters. This means that news outlets don’t always have team members who can dig into a team and bring interesting stories to the table. 

• Maintain a consistent schedule. This gives outlets the confidence that there will be a steady stream of stories and not just one offs.
• Share information from a variety of perspectives – the sports lover, human interest, community giveback – you get it. Different stories will appeal to different audiences and give the outlets choice around which stories to publish
• Include other information and assets they may want to build out the story like backlinks, images and video
• Make media related assets easy to find, with a media kit and contacts on your website

Sponsorships & Partners

There can be unlimited benefits of partnering with well established companies and organizations.

• Access to their teams, customers and partners via shared social posts, newsletter features and other communications
• Sponsorships for in-game activations, paid media and other activities that benefit both the team and the company
• Group ticket sales and discounts
• Cross promotions 

And then with all these, you work it. There’s no one and done or set it and forget it marketing approach for sports teams. With some elements, consistency is key to build familiarity and loyalty. That’s keeping things similar each season so people can learn what the team’s all about and what to expect, turning them into lifelong fans

With others, just like a coach or athlete will tweak something until they get it working better, if you’re not seeing results then you should make minor adjustments to fine tune its performance. 

The results won’t come overnight, but with consistent and strategic marketing tactics in play, the team will make gains and each one leads to the next. 

Marketing a sports team is a grind. It’s constant and it’s fast paced, while also requiring patience as momentum builds. And the work for next season starts the day after the last day of the current season. The more on-brand and approved touch points you have, the more you can build awareness and keep it going year round. 

Starting fresh each season makes for much more work, and much more time and money to get the wheels going again.