158 - The Theme Night Framework That Actually Works

Most teams are asking the wrong question when it comes to theme nights—and it’s costing them ticket revenue. In this episode, Jeremy Neisser breaks down a practical, repeatable framework for building theme nights around real audiences, not random ideas. If you want your promotions to actually sell tickets (and grow year over year), this is the blueprint.

Key Topics Covered

•  Why “What theme night should we do?” is the wrong starting point 
•  The shift from idea-first thinking → audience-first strategy
•  The 4-part framework every successful theme night must have: 
  •  Clear audience 
  •  Reachable list 
  •  Organizer/advocate 
  •  Compelling reason to attend 
•  How weak theme nights fail (and why they don’t drive group sales) 
•  Real examples of audience-driven nights (Korean Night, Healthcare Appreciation, Bark in the Park) 
•  How to evaluate and score your current theme nights for effectiveness 
•  The role of organizers (coaches, principals, business leaders) in scaling ticket sales 
•  Building momentum: turning 200-ticket nights into 500+ year-over-year 
•  Why specificity beats broad appeal when trying to grow attendance 

Timestamps

00:00 – Introduction: Why most theme nights don’t work
 00:26 – The common mistake teams make when planning promotions
 00:54 – Theme nights as audience strategy (not ideas)
 01:46 – The wrong question teams are asking
 02:16 – Start with audience: the foundation of every successful night
 03:15 – Real-world examples of targeted theme nights
 04:10 – Build the idea for the audience (not the other way around)
 05:07 – The 4-part theme night framework
 05:37 – Defining a clear, specific audience
 06:05 – Do you actually have a list to reach them?
 06:34 – The importance of having an organizer/advocate
 07:03 – Creating a compelling reason to rally a group
 07:58 – Challenges at the minor league and college level
 09:22 – The 4-point filter to evaluate your theme nights
 10:20 – Using momentum to grow attendance year-over-year
 11:14 – Leveraging past success to scale future nights
 12:13 – Why specificity drives results
 13:10 – Prioritizing high-impact theme nights
 14:07 – Continuous improvement and iteration
 15:04 – Final takeaway: audience first, always
 15:34 – Wrap-up and next steps

Core Takeaway

Theme nights aren’t promotions—they’re audience acquisition strategies.

If you don’t have:

•  A clearly defined audience 
•  A way to reach them 
•  Someone to organize them 
•  A reason for them to show up 

…you don’t have a theme night. You have an idea.

Resources & Links

•  Previous Episode: Top 10 Theme Nights That Actually Sold Tickets 
•  Revelocity Sports 
• Episode Page

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Transcript

Jeremy Neisser (00:00.594)
Welcome to episode 158 of the Sports Marketing Machine podcast powered by Revelosity Sports. I'm your host, Jeremy Neiser. I look at hundreds, maybe even thousands of sports teams website all across the country, all across the world, truth be told, to look at promotions, theme nights, groups, things that they're doing to drive more fans to games.

And oftentimes I'll end up a lot more times than not on the promotions page, which is typically the schedule page, that they're talking about the theme nights and the promotions that you have. I see a lot of teams put together theme nights that gets me scratching my head thinking, how are they going to sell tickets to that? Who are they trying to attract with that? So with this episode, I'm actually going to give you a theme night framework. So

If you haven't thought about putting one together or you are working through theme nights or you're brainstorming, this will give you a framework of how to really approach you doing theme nights. Some of the stuff might be like, yeah, Jeremy, no brainer, duh. And other it is, maybe I hadn't thought about it that way, but I hope you're going to take one or two great takeaways from this episode.

because what I'm seeing is a lot of teams are doing it one way, a lot of teams are doing it another, but there's great synergies and thoughts that you can combine that really help you take it to the next level. So let's get started.

Jeremy Neisser (01:46.946)
So let's start with doing it the wrong way first. Why am I starting there? Well, this is going to make sense in just a second. I think there are a lot of teams that are asking the wrong question when it comes to theme nights. They ask, what theme night should we do? That is actually the wrong question. The real question is, what audiences do we want to reach out to?

to attract them to come to our games. This is the same for baseball or hockey or football or soccer, whatever it may be. Because if you don't have an audience that you want to reach out to about coming out for a specific theme night, you won't have a theme night. You just have something that you think is going to work and attract people, but it actually won't work. So I saw a couple of times

on theme nights during the year for some sports teams. Wear your football, favorite football team jersey to the game. Or let's make a deal night. It's like, well, who is that actually attracting? It's really single game buyers that you're trying to attract, but there's really nothing to it. And another team was doing a Korean baseball day. And I asked them like, all right, well, who's your audience? Well, it's the Korean community, churches,

the local businesses those are the folks that I would really like to target for this game whereas let's make a deal night or wear your jersey to the game night isn't really a theme night that's you just trying things and saying you're doing things but you're not really trying to sell more tickets to your game

So today, I'm gonna break through a little bit more of a framework here that honestly should determine whether a theme night even exists. So that's the reason why I kinda started on the negative side of things, and I hate to do that, but really sets the tone for the conversation that we're gonna have today. Theme nights are not ideas. They are audience strategies. Theme nights, sure on paper they look like ideas,

Jeremy Neisser (04:10.092)
and you're brainstorming, but it's really an audience strategy. How am I going to get this group of people to come to my game? If you start with the idea first, let's do 90s night, let's do mystery night. You've already lost because now you're trying to find an audience for an idea instead of building the idea for the audience. I'm going to say that again. You build an idea for an audience. Like

Bark in the ballpark is bring your dogs to the game. They have an audience. Korean night at the ballpark is I have an audience of the Korean community and I want to bring them to the ballpark or the hockey arena or the game, right? So instead of building an idea for an audience, you need to find an audience that you want to go after and you build an idea for them.

So let's work through some more of the frameworks here. Before you ever approve any theme night, you need to have four things. Number one, a clear audience. Not just fans, not just families. You need to have a real targeted audience. Teachers, nurses, dog owners, Korean community, youth baseball community, a cultural community, whatever the audience is, that is what you have to start with.

You can't name the audience in one sentence, then stop. Seriously. Is your working through your theme nights? If you can't name the audience for that theme night that you're working on, then stop. Just throw that theme night idea away. There are lots of different places where you can find theme night ideas. Spinzo and I did an episode several,

Several months ago and I'll put a link in the show notes where you can go back and listen to the top 10 theme nights from last year. And these were the ones that actually drove tickets sales. I'll put a link in the show notes so you can take a listen to that one. But it all started with having a clear audience. Number two, a buildable list. Can we actually reach these people? Because teachers sound good, but do you have school contacts? Do you have email lists? Do you have relationships?

Jeremy Neisser (06:34.57)
If your sales team does not have a list to go after, that's not a theme night. That's a, I hope we can reach these people and hope doesn't sell tickets people. Well, unless she's on your sales team, but hope doesn't sell tickets. Number three, you need someone to organize some of this stuff. You need someone who's going to bring people together because tickets don't magically sell themselves. Sure. You've got someone on your sales staff. It's going to go after it.

but you really need someone to help also help it from the outside because having someone that says, we're going to go to this game, right? That could be the principal, the coach, an office manager, community leader, whatever it is. If you don't have a natural organizer for some of these things, as you put together your theme night, like there's no scale, there's no ability to hit the pedal to the metal to get off and go for it. Right. In that

podcast episode, Spinzo talked about having an apartment complex going against other apartment complexes and selling tickets. Well, it was probably that main person at the apartment complex that facilities manager or the leasing manager helping drive the conversation. They have all the contacts of the people that live there and they're pushing it out and communicating it to you.

to the folks that live there, right? So if you think about it, like it's gotta have someone also helping push it in addition to the sales rep that you have on your team. And number four, a reason to organize. This is actually one of the ones that I think is most overlooked. Why would someone actually coordinate an outing to come out? Not just attend, but organize it. Like it's the recognition for healthcare at night. Maybe it's the

for participation for like a performance group coming out or a shared identity for a heritage night. It's a Korean community like I mentioned earlier, right? Or some sort of perk or experience. There's no reason to rally people behind it. They won't. I do see a lot of the nights are single ticket driven specifically at the major league level where it's, Hey, this is Hello Kitty Day. You can buy a ticket.

Jeremy Neisser (08:56.5)
And as part of that, you get this free shirt or whatever it may be, and you're in a specific section, and we're doing X, Y, and Z. That certainly works at the Major League level. But you and I were at the level where we're grinding and working hard to sell more tickets to our games, because it doesn't come as easy as it may be for the Texas Rangers or the San Francisco Giants or the Detroit Pistons or what have you, right?

We're grinders, we're working our tails off. I'm not saying they're not grinders at that level, but it's a little bit easier, a little bit different than selling at the minor league level or the summer collegiate level or even at the college level as well. Right. So you really need someone to rally behind it, to help coordinate it, to help push it for you. Right. So here is the filter that I really need you to walk away this episode with when it comes to planning your theme nights. Number one.

Do you have a clear audience? Who is your target audience for this theme night? Do you have a list or can you acquire a list or can you get a list somehow? Number three, do you have someone that can help spearheaded an organizer that may be able to help champion this theme night that you can go out there and start running with it? And number four, is there a clear reason why people are rallied behind it, right? Is it a recognition or the participation or some sort of

Experience a perk that you have going on at your facility your arena ballpark or what have you right? Like you have to have those four things there to really have a truly blow the top-off theme nights honestly because At that point when you have those four things right? It's not just a theme night. It's not just something you post on social media in in in social media

to helping drive some of these things, right? You actually have the foundation of how to turn this theme night this year into something that consistently grows year after year. Cause that's truly what you want. You don't want a one time theme night that you do this year that you're just like, I tried that last year and what have you. You want it to grow.

Jeremy Neisser (11:14.286)
because you're ultimately driving the car towards having more and more sellouts. So if you can start off just using that Korean, Korean example that I mentioned, starting off and they sell 200 tickets this year and then they come back and say, Hey, I got some great ideas of things we can do next year. Great. Fantastic. And then next year, the 200 turns into 500. Like now you are on to something because it's a whole lot easier to go out and sell 500 tickets.

to someone who bought it before then have to go find a whole bunch of other people to buy 500 tickets. So I hope you understand kind of the momentum that you're creating with these theme nights because the more intentional you are about planning and organizing and really having a target audience in mind the better results you are going to have. So instead of doing football jersey night where the audience is

No one really, because when you're speaking to know everyone, are essentially speaking to no one. There's no list, no organizer, no reason. Whereas healthcare appreciation night, the audiences, healthcare workers, hospitals, departments, administrators, there's a list. There's could be organizers in there. There's a reason that's the difference here from you're running. Hey, let's make a deal versus.

having an actual theme night built out with guardrails and thoughts and intentionality and creativity on what you're trying to accomplish and you have people interested and you're doing things that really attract an audience. So here's what I want you to do. If you're in the planning phases, so if you're in college athletics and you're starting to work through some planning for next year,

or you're at the end of the hockey season, you've got your schedule and you've already started to brainstorm for next year, right? Go to your theme nights one by one and score them one to four. How many of these actually have all four of the things that I've talked about? If they don't, like, what do they have? If they have all four, they get a four. If they only have one, they get a one, right? And then you list them out in order of like,

Jeremy Neisser (13:39.266)
These are the ones that have all four of the things that Jeremy's talking about. These are the ones that only have one. When you prioritize the ones that have four, you're really going to see those take off like a rocket. If they only have one thing, I want you to reconsider what you're thinking through here because those nights aren't truly going to drive the revenue that you're hoping for because at the end of the day,

You want to create an exceptional experience at your games that fans definitely want to come back for and are fired up to come back for. So prioritize the ones that have all four of the things that we've talked about before. They have a clear audience and opportunity to get a list or you have a list and organizer, maybe a few and a real true reason for them to want to come out. And then,

Go from there. If they only have one of those things, like you really need to put some elbow grease into figuring out how to get the other three items on the list or grow them to get to that point or truth be told scrap them. Come up with other ideas. The most creative people that I've ever met are the people that work in sports because they're constantly thinking and they're constantly working on different ideas to get people to the games.

so that they can experience what a truly amazing atmosphere it is to come to your games. So I'm going to leave you with this. Don't start with the theme. Start with an audience. Because if you don't have an audience, you don't have a theme night. You just have some random idea. If you found value in this episode, take a moment to pop on over to Spotify.

Apple and leave a rating or review or more importantly share it with someone who's just like you someone who's trying to sell more tickets and Grow their fan base until next time