What are the key performance indicators (KPIs) for sports marketing success?

Impressions, attendance, social content consumption... all good stuff. But, you need to build sports marketing KPIs around driving to your business goals. The more aligned you are with your business goals, the more successful the sports partnerships. Sales growth is great and any way to attribute sports marketing strategies to that growth will be a big win. Also consider measuring increased employee engagement (measured by retention and satisfaction surveys), community impact (measured by money donated, families helped, trees planted...), organic growth (measured by account growth from those hosted), brand awareness and consideration increasing can also be impactful. Net net, use sports to hit the goals your boss wants you to hit.

Your goal defines your metric. Sports is great for brand exposure at scale, but it also offers opportunities for call to action as well. The rule of thumb I generally work with is to ask brands whether they are seeking cognitive (brand awareness), affective (brand preference) or behavioural (subscribe to a service or download an app) outcomes. Based on that, ideally look at metrics like how many people were watching and if you have a TG, how much of that audience was within your TG. It also helps to know how much time your brand was exposed for (on air visibility- broadcast or as ads) and looking at “brand lift” stats (if awareness went up). It's about what these numbers tell us about our audience's behavior and preferences.

KPI's should be specific to impacting the particular problems the company is trying to solve. There is no one set of measures everyone can use. However most KPI's fall into either brand (awareness, relevance, attitude, consideration to purchase etc) or commercial (lead generation, sales, loyalty etc) categories. For the most part, sports marketing is far more effective when working with brand KPI's than commercial ones.

Something I see often is folks getting stuck on vanity metrics when evaluating reach and engagement... yes, growing your followers or email subscribers is important, but if they are not interacting or doing anything with your content/ materials, you are still not reaching your goals. Build a strategy that is push/pull - if you focus on pulling your audiences back into your channels, the growth will come. And even if it does not, if you have a more active and engaged base, that will lead to revenue and other elements that are key to success over a number.

If you want your KPIs in sports marketing to be successful, then you need to ensure that they follow the SMART criteria, which are - Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound. In other words, when formulating a KPI, ask yourself the following questions: Is this KPI Specific enough? Can you actually Measure it? Is it realistically Attainable? How Relevant is the goal to your organization? What is the Time-frame for achieving this goal? The top KPIs are - Social media (brand awareness & engagement), Ticket sales revenue, Sponsorship revenue, Fan loyalty and retention, and ROI on marketing campaigns (paid & organic).

One missed opportunity in sports sponsorships is a lack of #SEO skills on both the brand side and the property side. An understanding of SEO is not just critical for digital marketers, sponsorships professionals and sports marketers should have them too. On the brand side, build opportunities to link to your website from your partners site (especially your highly trafficked partner sites) directly into your sponsorship agreements. Not only do you create inbound traffic to your site, those inbound links are creating link juice and helping your page rank higher in SERPs.

This is the next step in your relationship with your audience as a sports organization or sports sponsor. Many activities tick the box of awareness or brand building, but what happens next? This is a step that needs to be easy and desirable. Why should they interact with your organization versus a player specifically? There are ways to incentivize engagement, whether it's gamification or even just the chance for fans to feel heard, but in either case, there should be a reciprocal action from the organization that rewards this behavior they are seeking out from fans.

Engagement is the best way to identify the effectiveness of sports marketing campaigns. Define clear KPIs for each campaign and define "Engagements" for each. For example - Views for Videos Shares for Posts Likes and comments for LinkedIn User generated content for PR ETC This was it will be easy for the marketing team to manage and understand the impact of each campaigns

According to Deloitte, 60% of fans say a quality year-round fan engagement experience would make them more likely to interact with a team. And doing so even just *once-a-week* in the off-season could result in a 140% increased spend across tickets, concessions, and merchandise the next time they're at a game. I reference this piece of data a lot to remind myself that fans *want* to love our teams, all we need to do is *show* them we love them back, even in the simplest of ways! It's a huge ROI, a long-term relationship builder, and a contributor to lowering fan acquisition cost.

Engagement and interaction are indeed vital KPIs in sports marketing. It's fascinating to see how digital and in-person interactions are both essential yet distinct in their contributions to overall success. For example, during the FIFA World Cup, Adidas effectively balanced social media campaigns with on-ground events, resulting in a significant increase in brand visibility and product sales. This shows how a well-coordinated strategy across different engagement channels can lead to impressive outcomes.

Depending on who you are, "loyalty" from sports marketing means different things, so let's look at the two main groups here: The team (or athlete). If you're the team, you can earn and try to build a powerful, powerful loyalty. You are the story. You are the thing. Fans sometimes bind their own identity to you. It's a rare, rare thing, so cultivate it and don't screw around with it. The sponsor/partner. You are not the thing. You are standing next to the thing. Don't forget that. They are the sun and you are basking in their light. This can be extremely valuable if you find ways to present yourself the right way and STICK BY the team or athlete long enough. That's when it matters.

Building loyalty and advocacy is an ongoing process that requires dedication, consistency, and a genuine commitment to fans. By creating a strong bond between the team or athlete and their supporters, a lasting relationship can be cultivated. In sports, specifically, you cannot buy fans. The real supporters join a team or an athlete by faith, by bond. Its something like an innate instinct, a priceless connection that sometimes it cant event be explained. So this make things even harder, how do you achieve such KPIs? From my perspective, it requires a strategic and comprehensive approach such as: personal connection, fan engagement, community involvement, consistent communication, membership programs, winning culture, fan-generated content.

Creating loyalty and advocacy among your audience is crucial for long-term success. It's about fostering a deep connection that goes beyond a single transaction. When you achieve this, you'll have a dedicated fanbase that not only keeps coming back but also actively promotes your brand to others. Measuring customer retention, lifetime value, net promoter score, and brand sentiment gives you valuable insights into how well you're doing in this area. High retention rates and lifetime value indicate that your customers are satisfied and loyal. A strong net promoter score means they're likely to recommend you to friends and family. Positive brand sentiment on social media and word-of-mouth is a clear sign of advocacy.

In sports marketing, key performance indicators (KPIs) should be focused on impact. That can be measured in two ways - how much brand metrics move, and how much revenue is generated. The former can be gauged by tracking things like reach, fan engagement, such as social media interactions while the latter can be tracked through metrics like ticket sales and sponsorships. For example, a typical marketing campaign might aim for a 25% increase in merchandise sales and strive to double the engagement rates on digital platforms. These KPIs not only provide a financial snapshot but also reflect how effectively a campaign reaches and resonates with audiences, guiding strategic adjustments to ensure a substantial market presence.

The ultimate goal for me as a sports marketer is to ensure that the demand of tickets to watch matches at the stadium is higher than the capacity. It is a good problem to have as that will also allow those who did not get access to watch the game in stadium, become a viewer on TV/streaming service and thereby increase viewership to add to broadcast revenues. Imagine the Yellow Wall in Dortmund, the Kop at Anfield (Liverpool) or the Chiefs' fans in Kansas! The fans are loud and the demand for tickets is so high. The Taylor Swift impact on Kansas City and NHL in general is also a major example on how such demand can be created.

It almost always boils down to revenue and impact. Ultimately, an organization can't exist without making money, though how they do so -best- can vary by company. It's important to define where your strengths are as a team and organization, then determine if that is sustainable. Is your CAC low enough that you're not spending exorbitant amounts to lure each customer? If it's high, what parts of your process are most and least successful, and most and least expensive? Do you need to invest in skills training for employees to improve on some metrics, or do you need to hire new employees? Or is there a different business model that may play more to the organizations existing strengths?

Here's what I call the Master Metric when it comes to marketing live sports events: Revenue Per Seat. Take all the revenue for a game or season and divide it by the number of "seats" you had the opportunity to sell. This gives you an extremely complete metric for your marketing effectiveness. It's better than grosses alone and far more accurate and telling than Average Ticket Price. Using this metric with discipline is a real competitive advantage too.

In the end the key measurement is revenue. Reach and KPI’s on engagement are great. But they all lead down one road to revenue. Your 2 primaries are ticket sales and partnership sales. Ticket sales being up is more money. Engagement numbers up means more opportunity for larger partnerships