Marketing for professional sport and clubs
Audience and yield move together, so the same work has to sell memberships, fill the venue and make the sponsorship renewal easy.
Where the money moves.
The commercial year does not match the playing year. Memberships are sold when the team is not playing, in the window between the last game and the first trial, on the back of a season that either helps the pitch or hurts it. Sponsorship renewals are negotiated earlier again, usually while the previous season is still being packed away. So the audience work has to run through the off-season and through a losing streak, because a club that only communicates while it is winning has nothing to sell in November.
What you can post is not entirely your decision. Match footage sits under the competition's broadcast agreements, clip windows and durations are set centrally, player likeness is governed by the collective agreement, and category exclusivity means a partner's rival cannot appear anywhere near your content. We build the plan inside those limits instead of arguing with them: training, arrivals, the change room, community programmes, the members who have sat in the same seat for thirty years, and the archive, which is usually the most underused asset a club owns.
The ticketing platform holds the transaction, and too often it holds the relationship with it. A usable first party file means reconciling members, ticket buyers, merchandise customers and subscribers into one identity, then knowing who came twice and stopped, who brings three people every home game, and who has never bought anything but reads everything. That file is what makes a renewal campaign efficient. It is also what a sponsor is genuinely buying when they ask about your audience.
Sponsors renew on evidence. Not impressions, which nobody senior believes any more, but reach and composition against their category, activation performance, and where the partner will share it, a commercial signal from their side of the deal. We build reporting a chief commercial officer can put in front of a partner without a valuation report doing the arguing. Restricted categories, wagering and alcohol in particular, carry their compliance position in the same pack, because that is the first thing a partner's legal team asks about.
What we run.
Membership renewal and acquisition
Renewal campaigns segmented by tenure, attendance and seat, lapsed member win-back, and a new member path that begins from the game a person actually attended. Payment plan and pricing messaging tested on a segment before the full send.
Matchday demand and yield
Fixture by fixture campaigns weighted toward the games that need the help, with pricing and package messaging matched to remaining inventory, plus family and group offers timed to school holidays and travelling away supporters.
Content built inside the rights
A weekly production rhythm across training, players away from the game, community programmes, pathways and archive, planned against clip rules and category exclusivity so nothing has to be pulled after it posts.
Sponsorship sales and renewal support
Audience evidence packs, category-specific proposals, activation concepts that make a partner visible without breaching the broadcast agreement, and mid-season reporting written for the partner's marketing director rather than for your own file.
One audience file across ticketing, retail and members
Members, ticket buyers, shop customers and subscribers matched into a single record with consent state held per channel. It makes every renewal cheaper and gives the commercial team something real to sell.
Questions we get asked.
Everything that is not match footage, which is most of the audience opportunity. Training, arrivals, player features, community programmes, junior pathways, the women's team, the archive and the members themselves are club controlled. We confirm clip and duration rules against your rights position first, then build a plan that never needs a takedown.
By changing the reason to buy. Ladder position sells itself, so the year after it does not. The campaign leans on the seat, the ritual, the people they sit beside, the players coming through and the payment plan, and it starts early, before attention moves to another code's finals. Tenure drives the segmentation, because a thirty year member and a first year member need different arguments.
That is usually where the value lands. Audience evidence, category analysis, proposal design and activation concepts feed straight into sponsorship conversations, and in-season reporting keeps a partner informed rather than surprised at renewal. Marketing that grows attention and commercial that sells it should be reading the same numbers.
Carefully, and in writing. Placement rules, timing restrictions and responsible messaging requirements are documented per partner before anything is booked, creative goes through the same check, and the compliance position sits inside the reporting pack. Where a placement cannot be delivered compliantly the partner hears it before the season, not after a complaint.
Also in media and entertainment
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9 services under one team, run against the numbers your business already reports on.
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