Send us Fan Mail

Budget season starts the same way at most sports teams: pull last year's marketing number, add a few percent, move on. 

In Episode 181, Jeremy Neisser makes the case for building the marketing budget from the revenue goal backward instead — take your single game ticket revenue target, divide it by four, and start the conversation there. 

He breaks down why four to one is the right baseline (and what it's really paying for), cleans up the ROAS versus ROI confusion that costs teams real money, and argues that a budget that's performing should function as a floor rather than a ceiling. If you're being asked to grow ticket revenue 25% on a 5% budget increase, this is the episode to send to your GM.

KEY TOPICS COVERED
- A ten-second way to set your marketing budget: take your single game ticket revenue goal and divide it by four
- Why four to one is the right planning baseline for direct marketing spend on single game tickets
- Worked examples you can drop straight into a budget conversation: $200K goal starts at $50K, $400K at $100K, $1M at $250K
- Why your advertising line is not your real marketing cost — salaries, CRM, email platform, creative tools and agency fees all sit behind that revenue
- The difference between ROAS and ROI, and why using them interchangeably makes your marketing look better or worse than it is
- How to spot the moment your revenue goal quietly turned into a 10-to-1 or 20-to-1 ask
- Why rolling last year's budget forward with a small bump disconnects the number from the goal entirely
- The difference between a maintenance goal and a growth goal, and why they require different budgets
- What to do when marketing is outperforming midseason and asks for more money
- Why a budget that's producing should be treated as a floor you can build on, not a ceiling you protect
- The measurement and attribution work marketing has to do to earn the right to ask for more
- Why the smaller budget is not automatically the better budget

TIMESTAMPS
[00:00] – The question every team asks when offseason budget planning starts
[01:42] – Why "here's your number" never answers what marketing is being asked to produce
[02:12] – The 4-to-1 rule: $1 in ad spend should target $4 in single game ticket revenue
[03:05] – Running the math backward on $200K, $400K and $1M revenue goals
[04:08] – Why four to one is a planning baseline, not a law of marketing
[05:00] – Your marketing budget isn't the full cost of marketing
[06:28] – Why two to one shouldn't excite anybody, and what four to one buys you
[07:24] – ROAS versus ROI, and why marketers mix the two up constantly
[08:50] – What the four-to-one baseline is actually covering behind the scenes
[09:45] – Applying it to a real team: a $500,000 single game ticket goal
[11:07] – When a team genuinely can hit 20 to 1, and why that's the exception
[12:31] – The $40K-to-$45K trap: rolling last year's budget forward
[13:27] – Revenue goal up 25%, marketing budget up 5% — the math nobody says out loud
[14:30] – Why "do more with the same money" stopped working in a crowded attention economy
[15:51] – Maintenance goals versus growth goals are two different assignments
[16:17] – Midseason: marketing is running six to one and asks for another $20K
[18:06] – The biggest idea in the episode — treat the budget as a floor, not a ceiling
[19:20] – Where diminishing returns actually start, and how to spot them
[20:29] – Earning the right to ask: what marketing owes leadership in return
[21:40] – Attribution is messy, and why that's not a reason to stop measuring
[22:18] – Starting the budget conversation from the revenue target, then adjusting
[23:44] – Why the smaller budget isn't automatically the better budget
[25:10] – Coming next week: how to actually allocate the budget across the funnel

CALL TO ACTION
If this episode helps you frame your next budget conversation, share it with someone in your office — a colleague, your GM, or whoever is holding the marketing number this year. Next week's episode picks up where this one ends: where that money should actually go, and a scorecard for how your allocation stacks up.

QUOTE PULLS
"Four to one isn't the ceiling. It's the hurdle." — Jeremy Neisser

"Your marketing budget shouldn't be an expense you're trying to control. It should be an investment you're trying to maximize." — Jeremy Neisser

"If I can put a dollar in and reasonably expect six back, why am I trying to stop myself?" — Jeremy Neisser

"We start with last year's expenses instead of starting with this year's goals." — Jeremy Neisser

"The smaller budget isn't automatically the better budget." — Jeremy Neisser

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