145 - Where I Was Right & Wrong On My Marketing 2025 Predictions

In this episode, Jeremy Neisser reviews his previous predictions for sports marketing and fan engagement for 2025, assessing where he was right, where he was wrong, and what the implications are for 2026. He discusses the impact of AI and personalization, the shift towards membership models, the rise of short form video, the importance of user-generated content, and the challenges of holistic attribution. He also delves into the complexities of Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) in sports, donor engagement strategies, and the significance of focusing on fan quality over quantity.

Key Themes Covered

• AI & personalization (where it works and where it doesn’t)
• The continued shift from season tickets → membership models
• Short-form video becoming the backbone of ticket marketing
• Why creative is now the targeting
• The messy reality of attribution
• NIL’s impact on ticket sales and sponsorships
• Donor engagement at scale
• Why fan quality matters more than fan quantity

Takeaways

• AI and personalization are crucial for sports marketing success.
• Membership models are replacing traditional season tickets.
• Short form video has become essential for engaging fans.
• User-generated content builds trust and engagement.
• Holistic attribution is challenging but necessary for understanding marketing impact.
• NIL has complicated the landscape of college athletics.
• Donors seek meaningful engagement beyond transactions.
• NIL platforms need to simplify for small market teams.
• Focusing on fan quality leads to better outcomes than quantity.
• Auditing marketing strategies is essential for future success.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction and Self-Audit of Predictions
01:01 AI and Personalization in Sports Marketing
03:54 Membership Models and Fan Engagement
05:46 The Rise of Short Form Video
08:04 User-Generated Content and Micro Influencers
09:28 Holistic Attribution Challenges
13:11 Navigating Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL)
16:31 Donor Engagement and Experience
18:54 NIL Platforms and Market Scaling
20:20 The Importance of Fan Quality Over Quantity
22:13 Conclusion and Advice for 2026

Links Mentioned in This Episode

• Episode 95 – 12 Marketing & Fan Engagement Predictions for 2025
• 80/20 Principle (Pareto Principle)
• Sports Marketing Machine Strategy Call

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Transcript

Jeremy Neisser (00:00.542)
Welcome to episode 145 of the Sports Marketing Machine podcast, the podcast to help sports teams sell more tickets and grow their fan base. I'm your host. name is Jeremy Nizer. About a year ago, I released an episode called 12 Marketing and Fan Engagement Predictions for 2025. That's episode 95. I'll put a link in the show notes. And today I'm going to go back and audit myself.

How was I on those 12 marketing fan engagement predictions? Was I right? Was I wrong? I'm going to go through all of them, some that I was directionally right on, but messier, all that good stuff, and really the reality of where we are today and where we're heading for 2026. So I'm just in this episode, just going to share where I was right, where I was wrong on those 12. And then the next episode, which will come out later this week, will be my 12 predictions for

2026. Let's get to it.

Jeremy Neisser (01:14.754)
The 12 predictions from 2025 episode 95, like I said, I will put a link in the show notes. Let's talk about the predictions that really went well. Number one, AI and personalization. Right idea. I was absolute slam on dunk on this one. Wrong timing on a part of it, but I was the right idea. So one of my first predictions was hyper personalization through AI.

Sending the right message to the right fan at the right moment conceptually Absolutely, correct, and I am still bullish very pumped I absolutely 100 % believe this will continue to be the trend and continue to be how brands will distinguish themselves versus other brands and stand out in a very crowded market so conceptually I was absolutely correct 100 % where I was

perhaps a little bit early and where that personalization shows up best. where it actually works, the AI and the personalization side, personalized emails, the post game bounce backs, retargeting based on attendance behavior, absolutely slam dunk, I was correct. And the AI side of this is that a lot of the stuff you can kind of organize and help have AI help you with. So I was right on that.

Where I didn't hit the mark here was kind of the in arena in park portion of that kind of thought here prediction the real-time seat level AI Messaging not because it's a bad idea It's because the Wi-Fi app adoption point-of-sale integrations all of that if you think about that all of that stuff still lag behind some teams are doing

You can order from your seat, you can scan or you can order from their app and you can buy things. But the same process that you walk up to buy something at the concession stand is the same today as it was 10 years ago. 15 years ago, you run your credit card. A lot of these arenas and ballparks are going cashless, but that process is exactly the same. So that point of sale integration, that's still lagging behind us. Wi-Fi in arenas and ballparks.

Jeremy Neisser (03:38.646)
It's pretty good. It's not lightning fast as some of us are expecting like our homes honestly some of our homes are just Blazing fast but the Wi-Fi and those so not a bad idea the takeaway for teams right now though is that Personalization works best before and after the game not during because you simply don't have the Infrastructure to be able to support it. So if you're trying to be like Amazon inside your stadium

or arena, hey, you're early, that's great, fantastic, but if you're doing it in email, ads, and follow up, you're spot on, you're right on time, marvelous. So great job, I'm gonna pat myself on my back with that one, so great. All right, number two that I feel like I hit for sure, membership 2.0, the one like spot on bullseye that I got here. I predicted that the continued decline of traditional season tickets and the rise of flexible

Membership style access will continue and I was right spot on this one this this one age beautifully monthly pricing Flex plans access to plus perks There's even several new companies out there that allow fans to use tickets almost like that membership model, right? Teams that are now reframing season tickets as membership saw lower friction higher entry rates

and better language for casual fans. Remember, when you confuse people, you lose people. So they changed their language around it, their copy, so that it was a lot more about clarity. The reminder and the point that I drove home on this specific prediction was that people don't want commitment. They want options without guilt. And this matters because memberships don't just sell tickets. They build a pipeline.

So the reality for 2026 is memberships outperform season tickets. If you can see me doing air quotes in language, psychology, and conversion. So memberships will outperform season tickets and language, psychology, and conversion. right. Number three, I think I hit this one pretty well, but maybe missed the mark anecdotally on this one. So short form video.

Jeremy Neisser (05:59.598)
I might've underestimated this, honestly. So I said short form video would dominate. Well, I was right, but I wasn't just right. It became the backbone of really some of the modern ticket marketing. mean, TikTok's rise is off the charts. How many people are consuming videos on TikTok? How many people are consuming reels on Instagram and shorts on YouTube? It just continues to rise. So short

form video will continue to dominate but it became like the backbone for a lot of teams and their ticket marketing short form video warms an audience pretty quickly lowers your paid ad costs signals intent to algorithms people are watching a 15 second video or a 10 second or 20 second video right the big shift that I saw with teams that they realized is that the creative is the targeting now

which was like mind blowing for a lot of teams as we started to dig into this, the creative. You don't find families with interest-based targeting anymore. You find families by showing families in your creative, having fun at your game. boy, that sounds like a no brainer, but we had been trained to run our paid ads to target. need families, I need this, but in your imagery, in your creative, you're showing families

It, creative that you put into meta, they're going to show it to the people who are just like the people in the images. Right? So if you're putting like information about doing a family outing, like they're, get it right. Teams that struggled in 2025 didn't necessarily have a media buying problem. They had what, what I would kind of coin is a content velocity problem.

Number one, couldn't create content fast enough. And number two, they weren't very specific on some of the content that they were putting together. They were just throwing spaghetti against the wall and hoping to see something stick. All right. Uh, one that I feel like, uh, if, if this was a one out of 10, one being completely missed, 10 being slam dunk, I think this was a six or a seven UGC and micro influencers, quietly powerful, absolutely marvelous.

Jeremy Neisser (08:17.506)
This wasn't flashy, but it certainly worked. Teams that really leaned into utilizing fan content, local creators, turning those organic moments and putting some momentum behind it with ad dollars, saw better engagement and better trust because they were using UGC, which is user generated content and micro influencers within their community to help build momentum and promote what they have going on during their games.

Because fans don't trust ads. Fans don't always trust ads, they're bombarded with ads all day long. They trust people that are just like them. So if there was a mom who is also a realtor and she's talking about taking her family to the game, more moms are going to resonate with that because they trust people who are just like them. So if you boost

I'm team content, you're kind of renting attention a little bit, but if you're spending some marketing dollars to really boost fan content, you're borrowing the trust and I feel like that's honestly a better way for you to go. So if this was a one out of 10, one being terrible, 10 being spot on in my prediction, I'd say this was a six or seven. absolutely. All right. Section number two here is where I was right, but reality, it was absolutely messy.

holistic attribution. Conceptionally, I was correct, organizationally hard. If you ask general managers, operations folks who are in charge of revenue, revenue driving people who are in charge of an organization, they're going to say, hey, what did Facebook drive me this month? Or what did TikTok ads run me? Or what did display ads get me? Like, conceptionally being able to show that it would

be very hard to just show that in many cases because, and I've brought this example up numerous times, it's like this pack of &Ms that you walk past or at the grocery store. How many times do you walk past them until you pick them up and buy? So I predicted the death of single channel attribution. And I feel like that absolutely happened. But what surprised me was how long it took organizations to emotionally let go of that

Jeremy Neisser (10:40.526)
Concept exactly what I just said is well how much did Facebook make me this month or how much did display ads or how much did this right like It took a long time for organizations to let go of that concept of single channel attribution and Really take a look at it holistically and if you think about it How teams were thinking about it is exactly how the channels want you to think about it like Facebook when you give Facebook $500

It wants to show you that, I turned your $500 into $2,000. I'm going to take all the credit in the world for it. So Facebook always wants the credit. Same thing with Google Ads, Display Ads. Same thing. They want to be able to show you that, I drove X. I'm the best. Give me more money. That right there in itself, if you're thinking about single channel attribution, you're caught up in an absolute mess that you

you really need to zoom out of it. I was partially right, but teams that really are trying to put these dashboards together are reporting about this, aren't thinking about it holistically, like all of it together, because it's just like those M &Ms at the grocery store. How many times do you have to walk past them before you buy them? Or another example, a fan

Is as at work and they're driving into work and they hear a radio ad about your team and then they go on their lunch break and they're scrolling Instagram and they see an ad for you then they open their email later today and they get an email from the team then they're driving home and they see the billboard about your team in the game and then finally they come home and they buy tickets well who gets credit for that sale was it the billboard because it was last touch or was it the radio because it was first touch like

There's it's so messy and I think the more teams wrap their head around this idea of multi touch attribution rather than single touch attribution that they're going to completely change how they market and promote themselves because they think about touch points and impressions rather than what one channel did in a vacuum versus another one because I guarantee if you turn off your Facebook ads, it's going to hurt.

Jeremy Neisser (12:57.74)
your display ads or if you turn off your display ads it's going to hurt your email marketing all of its tied together because that's how we as a fans that's how we shop so alright before before I kind of move to the next one here teams that stopped asking what ads sold tickets and started asking what mix what marketing mix created the fan or the ones that win alright next one here

Name image and likeness NIL and athlete synergy right direction Complicated execution. I said NIL would bleed into ticket sales merchant content that happened but not cleanly from a compliance perspective NIL is absolutely messy. So if you're in college athletics like kudos to you if you've got part of this figured out but NIL

And the landscape of where it is right now, where NIO was name image like this, we can use you to promote ourselves. It's now turned into pay for play. I'm going to pay you X amount of dollars for you to play on my sports team. Like it is completely different than what was actually proposed versus what's actually happening right now. And it is an absolute mess. So those of you who are in college athletics and you're dealing with this, like

God bless you because it is an absolute mess. I have all the sympathy in the world for you What I also noticed is NIL dollars had started been pulling from sponsorship dollars So I noticed that a lot of team sponsorship dollars are down, but their NIL dollars are up Which I guess winning solves all the problems So if you're throwing money towards players and you want them to win and they win your sponsorship dollars will eventually go up But anywho revenue

the side of this, that's all messy. The tracking of this for NIL and having sports teams use a name image likeness, these athletes to be able to help promote stuff, like, conceptually, great idea. How do you track it? Absolute mess. just, it's an absolute mess how you would do that. There's definitely some education gaps. When I have conversations with teams who think about utilizing student athletes to help promote some specific games,

Jeremy Neisser (15:20.184)
Like they understand NIL to an extent, but I think that it's not as widely understood of how and where you can use name image likeness to be able to help you sell more tickets. Where did NIL work best though? And this is the part where I hope you take a takeaway from this. NIL works best when athletes were treated as creators. They're sharing.

that they're getting ready for going out to the game, to throw out the first pitch, to sign autographs, and they're excited about it, and they're promoting it. So when athletes are treated as creators, that's when you get momentum, not as if they're a walking billboard. So teams that won weren't just trying to sell jerseys or merchandise through athletes. They were letting the athletes sell with the stories that they create around it, right?

So they're talking about coming to the game. They're excited. They're pumped why they're coming to the game. That's what worked. Not like, Hey, where this Jersey's pose in this Jersey, we're going to take photos and use that on social media for us to be able to help sell more tickets. Another one where I felt like I was like half right donor and experience based engagement. I'd say if this was a one out of this was a five, six. So donors want more than just transactions.

We all know that there is I mean this is about as obvious as it gets specifically in the college athletic space Donors want more than transactions. They want access they want meaning that was spot-on 100 % that will never change and and that will always be what that is But the friction showed up operationally scaling experiences for donors is hard You can only do so many meet-and-greets and so many pregame postgame

Events or pregame chalk talks and what have you you can do only so many of taking donors on trips, right? So you have to continue to think about what else can we do to scale? Experiences that is very hard and your staff time is really hard as well I mean that really truly matters the teams that succeeded kept it simple. They created repeatable clear and easy to deliver experiences

Jeremy Neisser (17:44.438)
Some are just as simple as the ones I just said, pregame, postgame events, opportunities to go on trips, opportunities to do different things. Like those who did those things at the very minimum, I mean, they succeeded, but the ones that were trying a whole lot of different things and it was operationally really hard on the staff and took up a lot of time. They learned the hard way, what worked and what didn't like they scaling experiences for donors is very, very,

very hard and I'm actually trying to line up a couple podcast interviews with guys in college athletics that are in that space to really unpack how do we talk to donors in a way that gets them excited but also try to scale experiences and what's working and what isn't. So stay tuned for some episodes coming up later this year about that.

where reality kind of slowed things down. were kind of the ones that out of the one out of 10, these were like three, four on my list here. NIL platforms scaling to small markets. This one, I was just optimistic. I thought NIL, Name Image Likeness platforms, there would be more platforms that would allow you to scale to small markets. The demand is there. The platforms exist, but really the adoption lag behind because

too many tools, too little clarity. And in reality, staff time. I think that's the hardest thing in the world for a lot of specific college athletics and your small market sports teams is staff time. You only have so many hours in the day and there are so many things to do. And in all reality, like we know that these platforms are out there. We know we have the ability to really kind of test the waters. We know we probably could, but on the priority list,

That's really far down. be told, that's really far down. Doesn't mean it won't happen. Doesn't mean that it doesn't, it's not something that they want to do. It just means that it's got to be for teams to be able to do it. It's got to be boringly simple. And I don't think these platforms that are available right now have made it so boringly simple that teams, specifically college athletics, could be able to use these or even

Jeremy Neisser (20:05.742)
your small market sports teams, your minor league sports teams. and this next section here, and I didn't realize this until I went back through my 12 predictions was the biggest takeaway. didn't realize that I was predicting. And this is the, the, the through line that I didn't fully see at this. Like this is the one where I alluded to and talked about, but I didn't really fully see it fan quality.

Matters more than fan quantity that theme night That theme idea rather the theme about this really shows up everywhere from membership ladders from average order value growth How do you get someone to go from spending $30 to $60 like buyout nights and talking about the caution of getting sponsors to cover buyout nights and fans come in for free

Talking about the idea of instead of discounting you're creating better bundles like a lot of episodes that I did specifically the second half of the year around these topics like my Black Friday idea talked about adding more to it the bundle where sports teams did a mystery pack and it took off like a rocket the the buyout night where the sponsor sponsors that never gets in for free and I kind of

warn you about that. Like these are coming from teams that are actually doing these things. So it really told me that fan quality mattered more than fan quantity. We spent years trying to chase more and more and more, but 2025 taught us to chase better, better fans, better experiences and better lifetime value. So.

lot of great things from my 12 predictions for 2025. Some spot on some kind of missed the mark and a few are to be continued, I suppose. All right. So if you're planning 2026, here's my advice before I get to the episode later this week, don't chase trends audit them, really understand what's actually taking pace. Ask these questions. Did this actually make me more revenue? Did this improve

Jeremy Neisser (22:28.674)
the fan quality, did it improve the experience? Did it scale with our staff? Are we putting more work to do on our staff without scaling up some of the things that we're trying to accomplish? Because the teams that win aren't the ones trying to do everything. They're really doubling down on what actually works. Not the ones trying to do it all. They are doing what actually works. I'm gonna put a link in the show notes.

about the 80-20 principle when 80 % of the work or 80 % of the outcome comes from 20 % of the work. I'm going to put that in there because it might be a mind shift for a few of those. So I'm going to put a link in the show notes about that theory and kind of that concept. So I'll put that in there. But takeaway here, if this episode sparked an idea or made you rethink something you're planning for next season,

Be sure to share it with a GM, external relations director, or someone in revenue producing, or a ticket sales director, because you never know, like as they think about ideas for next year, this might spur an idea or two. But, I always offer this, if you want pressure tests, strategy, or some ideas before your season starts, you know where to find me. Pop one over to sportsmarketingmachine.com and schedule a call. Looking forward to seeing.

you and hearing all about the great things that you are doing this year in 2026. Stay tuned because my 2026 predictions will be coming out later this week. Until next time.