Here's a hot take to start your week: most team presidents don't actually know what business they're in. Not really. Not deep down. They know they run a sports team. They know they sell tickets and sponsorships. They can tell you their average ticket price and what the luxury suite package costs. But ask them what need they are actually serving—why a person in their city should give a damn— and you get a word salad about "community" and "the love of the game" that sounds like it was generated by a LinkedIn bot having a moment.

I want to talk about four questions. Not twenty KPIs. Not a six-pillar strategic framework. Four questions. If you run a sports organization—major league, minor league, semi-pro, women's league, whatever—and you can't answer all four with specificity and honesty, you don't have a commercial strategy. You have a prayer.

Question 1: What is your product?

Not "we are the Hometown Whatever-It-Is." That's a brand. What are you actually selling? Are you selling live entertainment? Are you selling attention—eyeballs for sponsors? Are you selling community belonging, the feeling of being part of something? Are you selling a family outing? Because the answer shapes everything downstream. Johann Cruyff used to say that football is a game of solutions, and the solution depends entirely on what problem you're solving. Same applies here. Sports marketing isn't just about selling tickets or jerseys—it's about selling the kind of experiences that keep your fans engaged year-round. But "experience" is vague. What kind of experience? For whom? Scratching what itch? Maslow had a hierarchy—physiological needs at the bottom, self-actualization at the top—and sports live somewhere in the middle layers: belonging, esteem, connection. The minor league baseball world actually figured this out instinctively a long time ago. When minor league teams market themselves, they focus on the family atmosphere, affordable prices, and creative promotions. That's not an accident. That's a team that knows its product is a place to belong cheaply in a town that doesn't have a lot of other gathering options. The product isn't baseball. It's the Tuesday night reason to leave the house.

Question 2: What is your value proposition?

Why should someone buy what you're offering? And I don't mean the corporate version of that answer. I mean: compared to everything else competing for a person's time and money, why you? The data here is uncomfortable. 55% of fans say they don't get relevant communication, and 61% feel priced out of the game they love. That's not a marketing problem. That's a value proposition problem. You've priced your product above what the perceived value is. Full stop. Sports events have become more than just the game being watched, and ticket prices reflect that evolution. NBA tickets have skyrocketed from an average of $30 in 1995 to an average of $218 in 2023. If you're charging NBA prices, your value proposition better be more than "we're the team that plays here." And if you're a local team at any level—ECHL hockey in a mid-sized market, a USL soccer club, an NWSL expansion team —you cannot rely on scarcity or tradition. You have to earn the choice. Every single game.

Question 3: Who is your buyer right now?

This is the one most teams genuinely flinch at. Because the honest answer often reveals that your current buyer is a 50-year-old season-ticket holder whose kids are grown, and a shrinking cohort of die-hard locals who'd show up even if you fielded a terrible product. Teams and leagues may understand how their fans behave inside the venue, but they often lack the data they need to understand who those fans are outside of the sports ecosystem—how they spend, shop, and behave across categories that matter to partners. That's the gap. And it's huge. Unless teams and leagues can prove the commercial power of their audience, their partnership revenue could likely stall or decline. Here's the thing: for Gen Z, loyalty is built around athletes, not teams. They follow people, not organizations. If your current buyer is aging out and you haven't mapped that yet, you're not running a strategy. You're just hoping.

Question 4: Who do you want your buyer to be?

This is the growth question, and it's the one most local sports businesses completely skip. They think growth means selling more of the same thing to the same people—more games, more merchandise, more email blasts to the existing list. That's not growth. That's maintenance at best, cannibalization at worst. Raising prices might yield short-term revenue but risks alienating loyal fans and undermining long-term engagement. Instead, clubs should prioritize expanding their fan base by attracting new audiences, particularly from outside traditional markets. Look at what's happening in women's sports right now as a masterclass in this. Fans of women's sports tend to be younger, more affluent, and more educated than fans of men's sports, making them a prime target for brands seeking to reach that audience. The WNBA didn't stumble into record viewership. Someone asked: who is NOT in our building right now, and what would it take to get them here? The rise of superstar women athletes has led to a surge in fans attending live games, with many teams moving to larger stadiums to accommodate the 55 percent increase in average annual attendance between 2021 and 2024. That is what a commercial strategy looks like. Not a lucky break. Not Caitlin Clark appearing from nowhere. It's the result of identifying a future buyer—women, younger fans, values-driven consumers—and deliberately building for them. The brutal truth for local sports organizations is this: proximity is not a value proposition. Being the team that plays in someone's city is not enough of a reason to attend anymore, if it ever was. In 2025, discovery moved fully into the feed. Loyalty followed content that felt relevant, not just available. Organizations that still operate on fixed schedules or generalized formats are falling behind. So. What is your product? Who needs it, and why? Who's buying it today, and who do you want buying it tomorrow? Four questions. If you can answer them with honesty and specificity, you're doing strategy. If you can't— boy—you've got some work to do.

-a

What's Worth Your Time This Week

Women's Sports Revenue on Track to Top $2.35 Billion in 2025 — Deloitte

Women's sports are a billion-dollar industry and growing fast — global revenue nearly doubled from $981 million in 2023 to $1.88 billion in 2024, with $2.35 billion projected for 2025. The more interesting frame here is *why* it happened: leagues deliberately expanded to new buyer segments rather than trying to extract more from existing ones. The question is whether this is being studied seriously by local sports orgs, or just admired from afar.

Generational Fan Study: Discovery Moved Fully Into the Feed — WSC Sports

62% of fans discovered a new team, player, or league through short-form video, and millennials are the most commercially valuable audience — and the most likely to disengage when content feels irrelevant. This is essential reading for anyone building a content strategy or trying to understand their future buyer. One stat that should keep you up at night: for Gen Z, loyalty is built around athletes, not teams — they follow people, not organizations. If your org doesn't have compelling human stories attached to it, you're invisible to the next generation.

Sports Sponsorship ROI Is in Crisis — Deloitte

Despite the business transformations and technological advances of the last 30 years, sports partnerships are still following the same old playbook. Sponsors want proof, and teams can't provide it because they don't actually know who their fans are beyond the venue walls. 62% of brands say improved data is the key to better partnerships. If they don't see the numbers to prove value, they spend their money elsewhere. This is a direct commercial threat to every team that hasn't invested in first-party fan data. And most local sports orgs haven't.

Women's Sports Sponsorship Growing 50% Faster Than Men's Major Leagues — World Economic Forum

Women's sport sponsorship is growing 50% faster than men's major leagues and is exceeding ROI expectations — 86% of sponsors said their investment met or exceeded expectations, with one third reporting their activations delivered better than expected results. The unlock is audience composition: women's sports fans have a values-first mindset and prioritize brands that demonstrate integrity and social responsibility. That's a differentiated buyer. Brands are noticing. Leagues that identified this early are now cashing in.

NWSL Denver Expansion Fee Hits $110M — More Than Double the Previous Record — Deloitte/Various

In early 2025, the city of Denver paid a record expansion fee of $110 million to enter the NWSL—more than double the previous fee paid by Boston and Bay FC just two years earlier at $53 million. That number isn't just about women's soccer. It's a direct signal that investors believe there is an underserved, high-growth buyer segment that local sports orgs haven't fully unlocked. Who is that buyer in *your* market?

The 2026 Sports Industry Outlook: Venues Must Become Year-Round Platforms — Deloitte

AI is reshaping operations, capital is scaling ownership, sports are converging with media and entertainment, and venues are evolving into year-round platforms. The venues-as-platforms angle is critical for local sports orgs — it reframes the product question entirely. You're not just running 40 home games a year. You're running a community asset 365 days a year. The organizations that understand that have a much richer answer to "what is your product?" than the ones who don't.

PwC: Younger Sports Fans Are Price-Insensitive, Attendance-Hungry — But Need Unique Experiences

Young fans are seeking unique experiences — the most frequently cited important characteristic when attending a live event — and they are 1.4 times more likely than older fans to attend a live sports event at least once a month. They also spent on average $70 more on tickets than older counterparts. This flatly contradicts the assumption that younger fans can't or won't spend. They will spend — but only when the value proposition is right. And for old folks like me who thought Gen Z was all about free streams, consider this a correction.