144 - 13 Marketing Lessons Learned in 2025

The marketing landscape changed fast in 2025—and sports teams felt it in their revenue. In this episode of the Sports Marketing Machine, Jeremy Neisser breaks down 13 real-world marketing lessons that directly impacted ticket sales, renewals, and average order value. No trends, no platforms, no vanity metrics—just the decisions that actually showed up on the revenue report and matter heading into 2026.

Key Topics Covered

• Why buying friction quietly kills impulse ticket sales
• How revenue exposes bad marketing faster than engagement metrics
• Why timing beats messaging when it comes to conversions
• The costly mistake of choosing clever over clear
• How personalization (not tech) drove higher sales
• Why owned channels became the safest revenue engine
• How creative replaced targeting in paid media
• Why familiar offers outperform “new and shiny” ideas
• Bundles vs. discounts—and why bundles win
• The overlooked revenue power of single-game buyers
• How promotions train (or damage) fan behavior
• Why retention quietly became cheaper than acquisition
• How top teams turned marketing into a revenue system, not a department

Episode Chapters / Timestamps

• 00:00 – Why these aren’t trends, platforms, or vanity metrics
• 01:30 – Lesson 1: Buying friction kills impulse sales
• 04:53 – Lesson 2: Revenue exposes bad marketing
• 07:15 – Lesson 3: Timing > messaging
• 09:07 – Lesson 4: Clarity always beats cleverness
• 10:54 – Lesson 5: Personalization as a revenue lever
• 13:32 – Lesson 6: Owned channels = owned revenue
• 15:28 – Lesson 7: Creative became the new targeting
• 17:24 – Lesson 8: Familiarity sells faster than novelty
• 19:20 – Lesson 9: Bundles beat discounts
• 20:17 – Lesson 10: Single-game buyers as a growth engine
• 21:42 – Lesson 11: Promotions train fan behavior
• 23:09 – Lesson 12: Retention beats acquisition
• 25:00 – Lesson 13: Marketing as a revenue system

Call to Action

If this episode sparked an idea—or exposed something you need to fix—reach out at sportsmarketingmachine.com or connect with Jeremy on LinkedIn. And if alignment still isn’t happening between sales and marketing on your team, this episode is required listening.

Why This Episode Matters

The teams that won in 2025 didn’t shout louder or spend more—they reduced friction, showed up at the right moment, personalized their offers, and aligned sales, marketing, and data around revenue. These 13 lessons are your blueprint for turning marketing into predictable ticket sales in 2026.

Links mentioned:

Episode 140: Mystery Park Promo that Sold 700 Tickets

Episode 137: Make Your Black Friday/Cyber Monday Offer So Good! 

Sports Marketing Machine on LinkedIn
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Book a call with Jeremy from Sports Marketing Machine

Transcript

Jeremy Neisser (00:00.43)
Happy holidays and welcome to episode 144 of the Sports Marketing Machine podcast, the podcast that helps sports teams sell more tickets and grow their fan base. My name is Jeremy Nizer. We can all admit the landscape of marketing, especially for sports teams, evolved dramatically in 2025. So many different things to think about.

and how attention is divided and what we are fighting for when we're trying to somewhere tickets. There are 13 key lessons that I have in this episode that you can take and use for 2026. So today's episode, not about trends. It's not about platforms and it's definitely not about vanity metrics. This episode is all about marketing lessons that actually move money and things for you to be able to think about.

that will show up in the columns of revenue, renewals, and average order value. My filter for these 13 marketing lessons, could the person in charge of revenue, GM, chief revenue officer, the external relations director, if they heard this, they would say, yep, that directly affected ticket sales. That's how the filter I used when I came up with these marketing lessons.

So if the answer was no, it did not directly impact ticket sales. It didn't make the cut. So let's get started with our Baker's Dozens marketing lessons from 2025. Let's go.

Jeremy Neisser (01:45.518)
Lesson number one buying friction quietly kills impulse sales so fans the momentum for them to want to attend games in 2025 continued They just stopped tolerating effort and I think I've talked about this numerous times on a few different episodes But it became very evident in 2025 Here's what actually happens from a fan's perspective with the ads that you're running. They see an ad

It could be a promoted ad on Meta, it could be a display ad, could be whatever it is. They click the button that says buy tickets. Then it's a slow loading page. They're forced to create an account. There's an awkward seat map location thingy on mobile. Or they click buy tickets, then they're taken to another page where they have to make another selection, even though they made the selection ahead of time. There's too many clicks. They don't complain.

they don't email support, those fans just leave. That ticket sale is gone forever because you made it too complicated. When fans are looking for something to do, you have to make it super simple for them to be able to buy things. So I know there's only so much you can control on the ticketing software side of things, but at the very least, the process to get them to the ticketing software and the page that they land on for the ticketing software

try to limit it to the most the least amount of clicks that they need I think that's one of the biggest takeaways the number one takeaway that I saw this year is that teams were losing fans to other things competitors the movies putt putt whatever it is for something for a fam family to do on a friday night or saturday night or sunday afternoon they were losing those fans to friction the biggest takeaway for you is

Walk through the process like you are a fan. So if you're running an ad, before you hit go and hit turn it on, walk through the process. How many clicks is it for the fan to be able to get to the finish line to be able to buy something? Is it less than five? Like you have to figure out a way to make it faster. I know you cannot control the clicks on your ticketing software, but you have to make it super simple for them.

Jeremy Neisser (04:10.498)
to be able to click the ad either in email or a social media post or a paid advertising whatever it is to get them on over to a process that's super fast and very low friction right time counts count the clicks screenshot any issues walk through it right this is revenue protection on your end but this is what I noticed number one takeaway is that buying friction how many clicks

It quietly kills your impulse sales and you had no idea. And how we were able to uncover this is really just taking a look at how many link clicks, how many landing page views, how much traffic are we sending to this page, and how many sales are we getting out the other end. So, huge takeaway for you. Buying friction quietly killed impulse sales. Biggest lesson for this one is really just walk through it like you're a fan through that process.

Lesson number two, revenue exposed bad marketing faster than any metrics that you could see. So revenue exposed bad marketing faster than metrics. So in 2025, revenue stopped being patient. You could have, and I saw this numerous times, strong attendance, marvelous traffic, tremendous engagement, and still make less money. Teams

Some teams that I noticed sold out nights on discounts or free nights or in promos that looked incredible on social media But it really destroyed your per cap and it started to train fans to wait the question that some leave some team owners team directors started asking was well Did the campaign perform? It did but it didn't really do what we were looking for. We we got the

The ballpark we got the arena packed we got everything right, but it doesn't help us in the future It really just got people inside of the arena today like we're not necessarily in the business of constantly giving things away and constantly doing discounts, right? Otherwise like you're training your fans to think about your product the specific way and that's not how you wanted to do it if your recap you're sharing about a campaign

Jeremy Neisser (06:33.088)
or a promotion or even that month does not include the number of buyers how much revenue and the average order you're not really measuring your marketing you're kinda narrating what happened so what I noticed is that when you don't make any money it really exposes bad marketing faster than any metrics that you can share so number one you gotta make money

Duh, like I'm not telling you anything you don't already know, but when you're reporting on your metrics to whomever your supervisor is, include the number of buyers, how much revenue and the average order value, how many tickets, what did they buy, how much money did they give you. When you're measuring it this way, you kind of have a really good understanding of the impact of your marketing. Lesson number three, timing.

matters more than messaging. Timing matters more than messaging. This year in 2025, when you showed up, when it mattered more than what you said. So when you showed up mattered more than what you said. Highest converting moments were 72 to 24 hours before a game. They see an ad a day or two before the game and it says, game this Friday, fireworks or giveaway or whatever it is.

Or they see the ad in the morning of the game. That's when fans are buying tickets, right? Teams with average creative but perfect timing beat teams with beautiful, marvelous creative that was sent too early or even too late. Like, as a dad to two little girls, a family of four in our house, like, we don't plan three weeks in advance. We plan Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday for that Friday, and even some cases the day before or the day of.

That's how families are planning. if your target audience is families that you're trying to promote, you have to put yourself in their shoes. When I think about this even more, fans weren't saying, hey, I didn't like your ad. I didn't convert because I didn't like your ad. They were saying, hey, I forgot, or I simply didn't realize it was this week. So build campaigns around decision windows, not your content calendars.

Jeremy Neisser (08:54.528)
When do fans make decisions? When do they typically buy tickets? Use that as your ability to really dig into when you're starting ads, when you're peaking your ads and when they're displaying, when you're sending out email campaigns, some of those things, thinking through that a little bit more, not necessarily your content calendar. Lesson number four, clarity will always beat cleverness.

When you confuse people, you will lose them. This is one of the most expensive mistakes teams made this year. Fans don't want clever. They're okay every now and then with cute, but if you're asking them to buy something, it's gotta be very clear what you are asking them to do. Too many promotions, too much information, overloading them with too much stuff.

It's fatigue. They can't make decisions. So when you're confusing them with 98 things in an email and it's got sponsor information, it's got so much stuff, they don't know what to do. And I saw this time and time again, too many promotions failed because fans couldn't quickly answer. What is this? Is it for me? How much is it? And what do I do next? If a fan had to reread the message that you sent them,

They had to reread it, you lost them. So, if you include family fun night, sure that sounds okay, but if you did four hot dogs, four tickets, four sodas, $60 this Friday, that is a very clear message. There's a whole thing about personalization I'll get to in lesson five, but four tickets, four hot dogs, four sodas, 60 bucks this Friday, like the message is pretty straight forward, pretty clear.

If a fan can't understand the offer in five seconds, it won't convert. Simple as that. Clarity will always be cleverness. And I alluded to it. Here's lesson number five. Personalization continues to become the difference maker in what gets ignored and what gets purchased. Personalization didn't mean some fancy tech in 2025. It meant relevance.

Jeremy Neisser (11:08.97)
A family that attended fireworks last season doesn't need, hey, check out our upcoming games. If you know that they're a family, they're going to want communication around family packages. They need fireworks are back this Friday, family four packs are available, right? Same thing if, if I am looking out for a night on the town and I fall into that bucket because I come out to thirsty Thursdays, like that's the message. That's the different.

the communication that I need to receive. So personalization will continue to be a tremendous differentiator for you in 2026 if you lean into it. Because if you think about how you shop, how you are buying things, you're thinking about things from your perspective.

If someone always came up to you and thought about your perspective, the things that you are interested in and put that in there, creative in the copy, you're more than likely going to be buying that versus things that you just want to tune out. We have so much stuff bombarding us all day long from an advertising perspective that if you are clear and crystal clear and you're speaking to a specific person, a specific avatar,

Based on maybe their information that they've given you, maybe the data that you have about them, or what games that they've purchased for, you're going to get a different result. So the teams that's segmented by past attendance, buyer behavior, game type, saw higher open rights, higher conversion, and more revenue. So my plea to you this year,

is be thinking about personalization a whole lot more. And I'm not just saying in your email blast that you send out, hey, I'm going to personalize it by put dear first name and put the personalization tag. Like legitimately take it two steps down into the rabbit hole here of what are some things that I can see that this person's interested in? How do I categorize and organize my fan bases in different buckets so that I can better give them offers that

Jeremy Neisser (13:20.62)
they are more likely to purchase. So if your message could be sent to everyone, it should not be. Lesson number six. Owned channels became the safest revenue engine. No doubt about it. I think one of the first episodes I ever created for this podcast was all about building your email list and owning your database and growing that. Paid media

got louder and less predictable. There were so many changes on Meta and Display and TikTok ads and all these different places where you could spend your marketing dollars. The one thing that you can control is the list that you own, the own list. So your email list, your SMS, text messages, any fans that are in your CRM based on follow-ups and what have you, right? Teams with clean, segmented databases that are focusing on growing them

one way form or fashion making that first party data your data yours You typically will spend less because they weren't guessing who to talk to they had an audience a captive audience of people to speak to so if you're thinking about 2026 and some goals I would highly take a look at your database and see how many fans are on that and think about ways that allocating marketing dollars or emphasis on

building out your email list and text messages during the season and the off season because it's going to help you make more money. It becomes a snowball. If you have 20,000 people on your email list and you're sending out a message to them that's personalized to them, you're going to create momentum to sell more tickets for your season. So your database isn't a marketing asset. It is a revenue asset. Huge takeaway for teams.

If you don't take anything away from this entire podcast episode, numero uno, top of the list, you have to continue to grow your email database. If you do texting, grow your texting database. Lesson number seven, creative became the new targeting. Targeting options that you probably notice inside of Meta and other places are shrinking. You can't target the local team

Jeremy Neisser (15:42.678)
your competitors fans anymore. I used to be able to do that when I was with the Stockton Ports. I used to say, hey, I'm going to target the Stockton Kings or the Stockton Heat hockey team and target their fans about my opening night and see if I can sell tickets. You don't do that anymore. You can't, right? Your messaging has to do the sorting for you. So you're creative and you're messaging. All of that in one bucket here. Kids running the bases. That will definitely land with families.

Meta is smart enough to look at the image and say, I'm going to show this in front of people that are just like these folks. Beer gardens found young professionals, even though you can do a little bit of targeting in there, let Meta on some of these other platforms do the work to go out and find the people to sell the tickets to. You can give it some guardrails here. Hey, I've just wanted to sell it between 21 to 45 or 52 or whatever it is. Right. But you're creative.

has the imagery of the people that you really want, that's the new targeting because Meta and some of these other platforms can use that information. They see the image, they know exactly what it is and can get it in front of other people. Teams that realize that they didn't have a targeting problem, they had a relevance problem, really skyrocketed their ticket sales. So, big takeaway for you is make different ads for different buyers. It doesn't look the same because a person who comes out

On a Thursday for your dollar beer night is completely different who brings their family out On Sunday for their kids to run to bases I'm using baseball as the analogy here Same thing for hockey too Not all fans are die-hard hockey fans that go to your games Some of them are just looking for something fun to do So stop trying to message to everyone Start messaging to specific people Lesson number eight Familiarity sold faster than novelty

The best performing offers in 2025 weren't very exciting. were familiar. Fans bought the same fireworks nights, the same value packs, the same promotions that they already understood because clarity always sells. Familiarity also creates confidence. Confidence creates conversions and connection. So I'm going to say that again. Familiarity creates confidence. If your fan has already seen, hey, these guys

Jeremy Neisser (18:08.046)
I understand what they are, the clarity around them. get it. It's you buy a ticket, you get a hot dog chip and a drink, whatever it is, right? Whatever that is, right? So when they understand what you've got going on, they will have competence in it. This is something that they're doing. They do often, they don't do one time here or one time there, right? They do this all the time. So familiarity,

Fans are are accustomed to seeing things like this that sells faster than novelty now there one Caviar here and I said it and now a couple episodes ago about these mystery packs That is a novelty thing and it took off like a rocket if you choose to do it this year marvelous But that's a one-off thing and I'll put a link in the show notes for you to be able to take a listen to that episode but for the most part Familiarity will sell faster than novelty

Lesson number nine bundles will beat discounts And this is a comes from my black Friday episode. I'll put a link in the show notes about this one straight Discounts train fans to wait also straight discounts confuse fans Hey, it's 30 % off 30 % off of what like I don't want to have to do math, right? Bundles gave them a reason to act. So instead of saying hey 20 % off tickets teams that

put things in there like we got tickets and parking together here's the package here's the price or tickets plus merch or tickets plus a food credit like when you do these bundles they move faster than asking fans to do math fans felt like they were getting more not just paying less because they understood what they were getting and they didn't have to do mental math right so you add value before you start cutting price

So that is lesson number nine. On the lesson number ten, single game buyers continue to be a growth engine, but oftentimes it's not the emphasis for teams. If you look at your marketing budget as a whole, sports teams as a whole are not very good at converting past ticket buyers. They're really good about going out and finding new ticket buyers. If I'm in your shoes as a marketing director for your team, I'm thinking about

Jeremy Neisser (20:32.238)
How do I try my best to get past single game buyers to come back out this upcoming season? Right? That is a huge thing for you to be thinking through and what you're doing to get them to come back. It is a whole lot cheaper to sell to people who came out last year to come out to your games this year than it is to go out and find new ticket buyers. I can show you data of acquisition costs of finding buyers.

And then what their lifetime value is versus someone that you're going to spend to get to come back out this year. There's got to be an emphasis on getting single game buyers who came out last year to come out this year, not just sending out email blasts. You got to be able to personalize the message to them because the more personalization, the more that you're training them to understand what's actually happening and getting them excited, the better. So even doing some of your own

paid media to them and putting them in their own bucket and then new ticket buyers target in a different bucket like do that because you're going to find it's a whole lot cheaper to get past ticket buyers to convert than it is to find new ticket buyers. I know it's easier to get new ticket buyers 100 % but the past ticket buyers it's going to be cheaper for you. Lesson number 11, promotions train fan behavior. Fans learn quickly.

Too many free nights, they wait. And I saw this a lot, specifically in the summer collegiate baseball, they'll do a lot of buyout nights where the sponsor is spending three grand or five grand to sponsor out the entire ballpark and everyone gets in for free. What that happens is that fans see this and say, well, I'm just going to wait for their buyout nights, so their sponsored nights to go to the game because it's free. they wait, fans will wait. They, you guys offer too many discounts.

Fans will hesitate here, right? Short-term wins for you as a team create long-term pricing problems. every discount needs a full-price re-entry path later. So if you're going to do these buyout nights, limited to only two for the entire year, depending on how many games that you have, too many of those, you're going to train your fans that they're never going to pay full price. Lesson number 12.

Jeremy Neisser (22:55.298)
Remember we've got 13 total lessons here. Feel free to go back and take a listen to all of these as you go through and take notes. If you got questions of these, don't hesitate to reach out. Shoot me an email, sportsmarketingmachine.com and happy to chat through these with you. I'm here to help you sell more tickets and grow your fan base. Lesson number 12, retention quietly became cheaper than acquisition. Selling again was easier than selling new. I just mentioned this.

But I want to reiterate this specifically on the group sale side as well, right? When you are going after groups, getting them to come back out the next year, obviously you're calling them, trying to get them come back out. But have you thought about running paid ads to those folks that came out two, three years ago and see if you could get them to come back out? Because if they were on average a $500 group sale and you've got

maybe 600 to 1000 groups from the last few years that didn't come back out and you're running ads and you convert those, like you're gonna make more money. The second piece of this retention bucket here that becomes cheaper than acquisition is that when you get a single game buyer that comes out to your games this season or this upcoming season, you gotta implement a way to be able to get them to come back out to game two. And that could be a post game email,

Something that's specific to them to get them to come back out to another game If you can get them to come back out to game two or three or four during the year It's gonna be so much easier for you to sell more ticket plans Maybe even season tickets and what-have-you so retention from a group sales perspective and retention from a single game buyer perspective of what you could do to get them to come back out this year

And finally, lesson number 13. Marketing became a revenue system, not a department. This is like a mind blow for a lot of teams because they think about marketing as oftentimes it's creating pretty flyers and posting on social media, but marketing is a revenue system, not just a department. Teams that won didn't just run better ads.

Jeremy Neisser (25:14.956)
They align their sales department with their marketing department. If they have data department, they aligned it with their marketing and sales department and their ticket team. All of those are rowing in the same direction. Everyone's working together. They're having weekly meetings talking about what marketing's doing to promote specific themes that will help group sales, that will help ticket plans, that will help the ticket ops department. They're all working together of how they're communicating to fans to get them to come back out, how they're

educating fans on what to expect to come to the game and then working on fans to come back out to multiple games from a customer service perspective what that all looks like so marketing ticket sales your data and your ticket group sales folks everyone's pulling on the same line and they're all working on the same page the marketing and staffs the staffs in general that work like this where everyone's on the same page

working together are the ones that just blow numbers out of the water because everyone is pulling in the same direction and everyone knows what everyone else is doing. So sales shares objections, marketing adjusts their messaging, data is tracking what's converting. There is no silos. There is no guessing. Revenue becomes predictable when the right hand is telling the left hand what's working, what isn't. So I'm going to say this again.

If the sales and marketing team aren't sitting down and having conversations, sales is sharing objections that they're getting from fans that they're calling about their five game plan or whatever it is. Marketing is adjusting the messaging and adjusting the details on the landing page to be able to buy the ticket plan. If they're not talking to each other, they're running different races. They're running in different directions. They're together.

not siloed there is no guessing revenue becomes predictable because everyone is working together towards one goal one revenue conversation so lesson 13 in my mind is really one of the biggest ones when you talk collectively as your staff if everyone understands what you're working on and having deep conversations about what the salespeople are hearing on the phones what are you seeing from a data perspective what are you seeing from

Jeremy Neisser (27:41.646)
The ad creative and clicks and what's taking place like what everyone is working on the same page You are going to sell more tickets hands down full stop everyone marketing is not a Flyer creator email sender social media posting it's a revenue system It's a revenue department just like ticket sales is just like the ticket offices. It's all in the same. They're all generating

Revenue. All right main lessons from this year that I really want to shout a little louder to you Marketing didn't get harder. It actually got more precise teams that one Didn't scream and yell and dump even more money. They reduced friction they work together as a team collectively to look at the information and cohesively and collaboratively work together to

to market and promote specific things. created packages and bundles that fans got excited about and they spoke clearly about what they are. They weren't using ambiguity. They were very clear in their messaging because when you confuse, you lose people. They showed up at the right moment with the right offer and they talked to the right fans through personalization. If you take one thing from this episode,

Actually, two things from this episode. Always be growing your email list and your text message list. Always be focusing on that. Allocate marketing dollars to it. Always have goals during the year to grow your email marketing list. Number two, fans don't need more options. They don't need more options. They need help choosing what option makes the most sense for them. And if you understand your buyers and your messaging is right and you're hitting them at right time,

This is like shooting fish in a barrel when you put all of these pieces together. So if this episode sparked an idea or exposed something that maybe you need to fix, you've got some questions, feel free to shoot me a message on LinkedIn or on sportsmarketingmachine.com. I love to hear what you're changing, what challenges that you're working through, and if any of these bakers dozen 13 that I just shared with you resonate. And also,

Jeremy Neisser (30:04.558)
If this episode was useful, share it with someone on your sales team or your marketing, because alignment still sells more tickets than any campaign ever will. I hope you have a great new year next week. I'm going to come out with two episodes. I'm going to rehash my 2025 marketing predictions and then share my 2026 marketing predictions and another episode next week as well. So super excited about what 2026 shares for you just

Get out there, keep marketing, keep talking to your team, keep working together, keep thinking through how do we make this easier? How do we help fans choose and make it super simple for them to be able to do business with us? Until next time.