Fans Don’t Live on One Channel. Your Marketing Shouldn’t Either.
By Chris Clark
A fan sees your CTV spot on Tuesday night. On Wednesday, they scroll past a reel of last weekend’s fireworks. On Friday, they search “tickets near me” and buy four seats for Saturday.
Which channel sold those tickets? If your answer is “search,” you’re giving all the credit to the last touch and none to the work that made the fan want to go. That’s how good channels get cut and budgets get wasted.
The fan journey isn’t a straight line
Today’s fan moves between streaming, social, search, email, and the team app, often in the same week. No single channel owns the decision to buy.
We’ve spent more than a decade running digital campaigns for Minor League Baseball clubs, college athletics programs, and live events. The pattern is consistent: teams that plan for the whole journey sell more tickets than teams that optimize one channel at a time.
Give every channel a job
The answer isn’t to be everywhere. It’s to know what each channel does best and build them to work together.
| Channel | Its job | What we watch |
|---|---|---|
| CTV and programmatic | Build awareness in the local market | Reach, post-view purchases |
| Meta and TikTok | Spark interest and capture leads | Engagement, cost per lead |
| Search and Performance Max | Convert fans who are ready to buy | Purchases, cost per purchase |
| Email, SMS, and team apps | Bring fans back all season | Repeat purchases, loyalty growth |
When one channel underperforms, this view tells you whether it’s failing at its job or just doing a different one.
Tracking is what ties it together
A multichannel plan is only as good as its measurement. Clicks and impressions can’t tell you who bought a ticket.
Our sports work started with that problem. We place custom pixels across ticketing pages and connect them to the major ticketing platforms. We add CTV device-level attribution so a TV spot gets credit when a viewer buys later. The result is a clear picture of which channels drive purchases, not just activity. That lets us move budget toward what’s working during the season, not after it.
What it looks like in a tough season
This year, a Triple-A club in the Southeast faced almost everything that can go wrong. Weather wiped out games, including its July 3rd and 4th dates. A major international soccer tournament competed for attention in its market. The nearby big-league club was having a strong season.
We ran a full-funnel plan across CTV, paid social, search, and the club’s new rewards app. Compared with last year:
| Metric | Change |
|---|---|
| Digital ticket revenue | +83% |
| Ticket purchases | +73% |
| Impressions | +17%, at better cost efficiency |
| App installs | Up about 5x in year one |
| Push notification subscribers | Up about 5x |
No single channel produced those numbers. The channels did their jobs together, and the tracking showed us where to lean in.
Engagement matters when it fills seats
Likes, views, and clicks are signs of interest. Ticket sales, renewals, and loyal fans are the outcomes that grow a team’s business. The best digital strategy connects the two.
If you want to know which of your channels are actually selling tickets, let’s talk. We’ll show you how your fans really move from first look to first pitch.
Ignite outcomes.