Hosting and marketing a health, wellness, or sporting event is no small affair.

From coordinating sponsors and vendors to making sure there’s enough water on site, you’ll have a lot of balls in the air.

But without enough attendees, your efforts are futile. But don’t despair. There are many ways to market a sports event.

In fact, sports and event marketing — the strategies you engage in to sell tickets and occupy seats at the event — go hand in hand. Promoting sports events is just as important as the activities in the event itself.

At Eventbrite, we’ve been lucky enough to help millions of creators plan and manage their events and have supported many sports events.

So, we’ve pulled our expertise together to deliver powerful marketing strategies you can put into action right now, each with expert tips from the Eventbrite team of event professionals.

Crowd-pleasing sports event marketing strategies

1. Design a professional “home field” for your upcoming event

2. Expand your reach by partnering with a relevant athlete or creator

3. Get involved in your online sporting community

4. Make sure your sports event is visible on relevant platforms

5. Help attendees share their excitement for your sporting event

6. Create long-lasting memories with event merch

7. Get more eyes on your event with an Eventbrite ad campaign

What makes marketing a sports event different? 

Although you can apply most marketing principles to sports events, there are some specific differences you should know about:

1. Allegiance: Fans of sports teams and athletes are often motivated to attend specifically to show their loyalty and support their side. 

2. Promoting healthy practices: Sports events are not just entertainment (though this is a component). Often, they improve health and well-being, meaning you’re also allowing attendees to create a better and longer life.

3. Serving a greater purpose: Some sporting events (like charity fun runs) support higher purposes, meaning you have a fantastic opportunity to connect with your audience on an emotional level. 

4. Creating community: Sports and wellness have a huge community-building aspect to them. People who attend such events often share a common interest or even life philosophy. Tap into this when marketing a sports event.

As events grow, so too does the number of moving parts in action at any one time.

A week-long event might include social media advertising and on-the-day engagement (like managing negative comments), athlete spotlights/features and interviews, and even event live streams.

A lot to keep in mind, we know.

So, to help you nail it, here are a few powerful strategies to make your sporting event successful.

7 crowd-pleasing sports event marketing strategies

Sports event marketing is often an ad-driven affair.

Statista notes that sports advertising is growing so quickly that they expect ad spending to double between 2023 and 2027.

But there’s more to sports marketing than just running ads. 

a screenshot of Statista's notes for sports event marketing
(Image Source)

1. Design a professional “home field” for your upcoming event

Regardless of the other strategies you use to promote your event, you’ll need an inviting and motivating event landing page to which you send potential attendees.

Today’s most ambitious independent event creators use Eventbrite to host events and manage ticket sales. 

Our dedicated event marketing platform helps you design compelling email campaigns, engage your audience with automated workflows, and provide personalized recommendations to potential attendees.

Check out this youth tennis event by California Councilman Daryl Supernaw, hosted on Eventbrite.

A screenshot of a sports event marketing on Eventbrite.

Here, the event creator used their Eventbrite landing page to describe what will happen at the event and what to bring (and what not to bring).

It’s their one-stop landing page for all event details.

But hosting your event on Eventbrite doesn’t just give you a place to send people. It also helps you attract new attendees by showing up more often on Google searches, which helps people find your event more easily.

💡 Pro Tip: Provide as many details on-page as possible to minimize questions and help sell more tickets. Mention what to bring, what’s provided, information about parking, and more.

2. Expand your reach by partnering with a relevant athlete or creator

Sharing your event on social media pages is a start, but it will only get you so far. Your posts will only reach those who already follow you on that platform.

But as an independent event creator, especially if this is your first sports event, you may not have a large audience.

A powerful way to expand your reach is by partnering with an influencer, local athlete, or popular creator in the sports industry to reach a wider audience and create meaningful connections.

By simply having that person share your event page through their channels, you’ll access their audience and get in front of far more relevant eyeballs.

💡 Pro Tip: See if your influencer can create some custom content, like a short video recommending people attend, to help boost engagement and leverage a little social proof.

Expand your reach with social media

Hand holds mobile phone with Instagram log-in on screen

3. Get involved in your online sporting community

This one is a longer-term play, but it’s one of the most important aspects of working in the sports events arena:

Establish a community.

Look for relevant social media interest groups to engage with to promote and talk about your event.

Take this ski and snowboard event by 70X7 Foundation:

A screenshot of a sports event on eventbrite

The event organizers could search social media platforms like Reddit and Facebook to find groups relating to skiing and snowboarding in California and Nevada, two states near where the event is.

Reddit is packed with strong, active communities across various sporting interests. Here are just a few examples:

You don’t want to post and ghost here. Set your sights on becoming part of the sporting community. Engage in group conversations and gain a bit of social equity while subtly pointing people back to your event page.

For instance, you might jump on a comment thread asking about kids learning to ski, provide some friendly advice, and then point them back to this youth-focused event.

Some other great ways to connect with sports and wellness enthusiasts on social include:

💡 Pro Tip: A simple question in social groups can go a long way here. For example, “If I shared a promotional code with you, would you share this event page with your friends and family?”

4. Make sure your sports event is visible on relevant platforms

Social media drives around 25% of ticketing page views, so it’s a valuable strategy you don’t want to neglect.

To ensure your efforts connect, however, you’ll want to ensure you’re active on the right platforms for your event demographic and location.

Amanda Masick, Director of Marketing at Event Solutions, shares some helpful advice here:

“Each social platform has a different demographic and this can even change from location to location. For example, Facebook is the social platform of choice in my hometown for adults 30-65 whereas TikTok is popular with the younger generation (47% of users are under 30). And then there are always new platforms, like Threads, that you always need to watch for. And those with new features gaining popularity such as Youtube Shorts. A very careful analysis of your target audience will help you choose the right platforms”.

Use analytics platforms like Eventbrite’s event data analytics to understand the demographic makeup of your target audience so you can promote ads to the right people.

With this data, you can build lookalike audiences (groups of people who share similar characteristics) when advertising on platforms like Facebook.

This will ensure your ads only get seen by the people who are most likely to attend, maximizing your return on investment from your ad budget.

💡 Pro Tip: Use retargeting ads (ads that are served only to people who’ve already viewed your event page) to double down on social advertising and re-engage interested potential attendees.

5. Help attendees share their excitement for your sporting event

To spread the word about your upcoming event more widely, you need to recruit your audience as marketers.

In other words, you want to motivate them to share your posts and your event page. Asking them to do so is a start. But it helps if you tap into why they’re interested in your event. Do they feel an allegiance to one of the teams or athletes? Is there a meaningful cause behind your event that connects with your audience on a deeper level? Leverage these characteristics that are unique to sporting events to motivate followers to share.

And if all else fails, you can always bribe them with a giveaway or a raffle! 

A screenshot of a sports event
(Image Source)

💡 Pro Tip: Make sure there’s something in it for both the sharer and the receiver (like a discount code for each person). This will motivate attendees to share your event and encourage those who see it to sign up, too.

6. Create long-lasting memories with event merch

Sports event merchandise (think t-shirts, caps, reusable cups, and giant gloves) is a powerful way to let attendees take home a piece of their experience in physical form. 

Not only is it a great way to make a little extra revenue on the day, but it’s also a one-two-punch marketing strategy:

1. You can use merch to drive ad campaigns and/or feature it in your ad creative

2. It serves as brand marketing for years to come if attendees wear it in public

💡 Pro Tip: Combine strategies 5 and 6 by offering free event merch to motivate sharing an event invite with friends.

7. Get more eyes on your event with an Eventbrite ad campaign

There’s a lot of competition in sports and fitness events.

A large hockey match might be the only one on that night, but if you’re promoting something like a yoga class, attendees often have more than one option.

One way to stand out is to use sponsored ads on Eventbrite, where your listing appears at the top of search results.

A screenshot of a promoted ad on Eventbrite

Note the little ‘Promoted’ icon, which denotes this event is a paid ad.

With Eventbrite ads, you can select your ad budget and duration, choose a campaign objective (like impressions or traffic), and measure and monitor success in a reporting suite.

💡 Pro Tip: Set your ad targeting parameters wisely. For a weekly yoga event, for example, you might target “Yoga Oak Brook” rather than Chicago more broadly to target local attendees.

Get help promoting sports events today

Sports, wellness, and fitness events are unique in the world of event marketing.

Rather, you’re creating and marketing experiences that connect on a tribal level with attendees, bring out empathy, promote a better quality of life, and much more. It’s something your attendees will take away and have with them forever.

Not bad for an event.

So, if you’re committed to creating memorable experiences for more attendees, look at Eventbrite’s event marketing platform, which has tools to host, promote, advertise, and ticket your next sports event.