I’m Worried About The Future of Marketing In Professional Sports
Jack Westerkamp, Co-Founder
I read this article in Ad Age that essentially describes how the role of a Chief Marketing Officer is becoming more and more popular among MLB teams. They make the point that now teams can now use marketing techniques to drive revenue and build their fan base, versus the traditional professional sports model of investing in their roster and trying to win more games to earn the audience.
As a lifelong fan of the Chicago Bulls, I know first-hand what it is like to support a team that doesn’t need to win games to pack stadiums and still have ticket sales. The Chicago Bulls had the highest average regular season home attendance of all NBA teams in the 2023/24 season, with 20,625 fans per game. This was a record-breaking season for the Bulls.
The Bulls were 40-42 last season.
Jerry Reinsdorf owns the Chicago Bulls, and he has owned the team since before the 90s Bulls, which won 6 NBA Titles in that decade. Unprecedented success that packed stadiums every night and had all the star power in the world with the most marketable athlete of all time, Michael Jordan. And I think it’s important to note that Michael Jordan would not be as marketable if he was the 8th guy off the bench.
Once the 90s were over and the Bulls fell back into mediocrity among the league, their ticket sales remained strong. My belief is that Jerry Reinsdorf saw that business was booming, and realized he doesn’t really have to try and put together a good team because people were still buying tickets and supporting the team. Chicago is a top tier sports city with a massive population of people interested in checking out a game.
My worry is that with the rise of innovative marketing techniques to build an audience, the idea of winning might not be the most important thing in the business of professional sports. I think we are a long way from that, but if you have smaller market sports teams more focused on drafting athletes because they have a huge Instagram following, I’d start getting worried.
I don’t want professional teams to lose sight of what the point of their business is. It’s to compete and win games. Call me old fashioned, but I’d rather go to championship parades than sponsored live streams of my backup point guard playing Call of Duty with Jack Harlow. No offense, Jack Harlow. But at the same time, that’s a dynamite way to make money and get attention to the team, which could in theory create a larger budget for the team to get better. But unfortunately, I don’t think that is always top of mind anymore.
So how do we strike that balance of focusing on winning games, but also keeping up with the times to create memorable fan interaction? I think the focus for fan experience should always be driven by the on-field product. It’s like any business. You need to make sure your product is marketable to begin with. And a high quality product in professional sports means a winning team. So you need to invest heavily in tinkering and working on the product. Then, the focus of marketing should be secondary.
But Jerry Reinsdorf doesn’t give a shit, because he knows that he’ll make his money regardless. I just wish he knew how much more money he would make if he invested in a roster that won games. I think the lack of long-term vision is halting any attempt at really creating sustainable success.
I will not allow this rant to go on any longer, but the point is that as a marketer for a professional sports team, you cannot lose sight of the ultimate fan experience: winning games.
- Jack
