Sport and merchandising
I connect advertising, data, CRM, e-commerce and the sporting calendar to understand which activities generate sales, loyalty and value for the club.
Sector experience
A sports organisation sells very different things to the same audience: a ticket for one match, a season pass, an official shirt, visibility for a sponsor. These revenues have different margins, timings and constraints, yet they are often managed by different people who never look at the same data.
The calendar decides almost everything. Demand concentrates around fixtures, product launches and renewal windows: a campaign that starts late doesn’t catch up, because the event passes and unsold inventory doesn’t come back.
I have worked in sport with Virtus Roma as well, in a context where community, communication and commercial activity had to coexist. The difference between a large audience and an audience that buys only becomes visible when ticketing, e-commerce and CRM data are read together.
Audiences and roles
People who follow a club are not one audience: behaviour changes, value changes and the useful message changes.
Addressing these roles with one message means speaking to the largest audience while ignoring the one that generates revenue.
Typical behaviourFollows content and results without having made a purchase yet.
Commercial valueA pool to qualify: relevant to sponsors, not yet to direct revenue.
Typical behaviourBuys for a specific match, often close to the date and driven by the fixture itself.
Commercial valueImmediate revenue and the first data point for building a repeated relationship.
Typical behaviourDecides at the start of the season and reconsiders at renewal time.
Commercial valuePredictable revenue and the base for planning capacity and commercial activity.
Typical behaviourBuys shirts, apparel and accessories, peaking on launches, holidays and sporting moments.
Commercial valueMargin varies by category and is constrained by sizes, stock and seasonality.
Typical behaviourIs reached by the commercial activations of the club’s partners.
Commercial valueContractual value: reach, context and attributable actions are what count.
Typical behaviourExperiences the event in the venue, with matchday spending and purchases.
Commercial valueAncillary revenue, measurable only if in-venue data is collected.
Typical behaviourTakes part in initiatives, local activities or supporter programmes.
Commercial valueLoyalty and purchase frequency over time, more than immediate revenue.
Recurring problems
Situations I find in clubs, sports event organisers and businesses selling official merchandise.
Reports stop at followers, reach and interactions, never reaching tickets, orders and renewals.
Ticketing, e-commerce and sponsorship work on separate calendars and goals, over the same audience.
The club knows who already bought, but that data never feeds exclusions, segments or reactivation.
Regular supporters, occasional attendees and store customers all receive the same communication.
Budget pushes products with thin margin, sold-out sizes or stock too limited to sustain the campaign.
Activity begins when the event is imminent or the launch is already running, once demand has largely formed.
Nobody reads how many people come back: every season restarts as if the audience were new.
The total doesn’t separate match, product and segment, so the next decisions rest on intuition.
Fan journey
The path isn’t linear and differs greatly between long-time supporters and people arriving for a single event.
Different behaviours carry different value: a renewed membership and a like are not on the same scale, even when they come from the same person.
Fan journey
Results, content, word of mouth and local presence build the initial pool.
The first commercial contact: a match to promote, a product launch, a membership campaign.
Attention focuses on a date, an opponent, a moment in the season.
Prices, sections, availability, sizes and delivery times decide the conversion.
Ticket, membership or online order: the first real economic data point about the person.
Matchday, shipping and perceived quality determine whether a second purchase happens.
Segmentation, communication and offers consistent with what the person has already done.
Another ticket, a renewed membership or a second order: this is where real value shows.
Commercial ecosystem
Each area produces data the others need. As long as they stay separate, the club pays twice to reach the same people.
Data path
Campaigns on matches, memberships, product launches and sponsor activations.
Ticketing and e-commerce record the purchase, the amount and the product or section.
The CRM merges the roles of the same person instead of keeping separate archives.
Members, occasional buyers, store customers and inactive contacts are told apart.
Email, automation and campaigns built on real behaviour, not on a generic audience.
Sales and segments go back to Google Ads to exclude, model and value audiences.
Excluding people who already bought matters as much as reaching those who haven’t: in short windows, wasted budget can’t be recovered.
Areas of work
Activities differ between a club with its own venue and an organisation selling mainly online.
Systems and data
In sport the data almost always sits across platforms that were never designed to talk to each other.
KPIs
Community metrics describe the pool, not the commercial result: for that you need sales, renewals and margin.
Follower count tells you how many people know the club. It doesn’t tell you how many bought a ticket, how many will come back and what each of them is worth.
Frequent mistakes
Method applied
The phases are the ones I use on every project, applied to the calendar and to multiple revenue streams.
Revenue streams, margins, capacity, calendar, sponsor commitments and internal structure.
Tracking tickets, memberships and orders, with the CRM connected to the platforms.
Where it breaks: demand, purchase journey, availability, pricing or relationship.
Quick work on imminent windows, structural work on data and segmentation.
Hands-on campaign and measurement work, coordination with ticketing, commercial and store.
Verification on revenue by event and product, renewals and margin, not on interactions.
Related
Value tracking by event and product, CRM integration, purchase journey testing and automation.
Google Ads, measurement, CRO and MarTech — Open the pageThe professional path and the contexts I have worked in, including sport with Virtus Roma.
Experience — Open the pageUseful where the club also sells services, courses or packages that start from an enquiry.
Online services and lead generation — Open the pageDirect answers
By planning campaigns around the real selling window of each fixture, separating high-demand events from those that need support, and using the CRM to reach previous attendees first. The section and seat selection journey has to work well on a smartphone.
Campaigns and purchase journeyBy segmenting by product category and reading actual margin, not only revenue. Availability and sizes are a campaign constraint: pushing a nearly sold-out product generates traffic that cannot convert.
Google Ads and e-commerceTicket revenue per match, cost per ticket sold, memberships acquired and renewal rate, merchandise revenue and margin, repeat purchase rate, CRM growth and return by event. Followers and interactions describe the pool, not the result.
How I define KPIsBy bringing purchases from the different platforms into a single customer record, so the same person doesn’t appear as three separate contacts. From there, segmentation, exclusions and reactivation become possible instead of aspirational.
MarTech and integrationsBy separating those who have already bought from those who only follow, and building communication consistent with the last action taken: someone who attended a match needs a different offer from someone who ordered a shirt. Repeat purchase is built after the experience, not during the campaign.
Segmentation and prioritiesBy looking at how much of the audience takes at least one commercial action and what it is worth over time, not at how large it is. A wide pool with low activation is worth less than a smaller base that renews and buys again.
Measurement and dashboardsBy working on the renewal window before it opens, contacting expiring members first and making clear what changes compared with single purchases. Renewal rate should be read by segment: long-standing members and first-year members don’t behave the same way.
How I set prioritiesBy building the plan on the fixed dates of the season and bringing spend forward relative to the event, because demand forms in the preceding days rather than afterwards. Windows are short and non-recoverable: a past event can’t be promoted again.
Planning and budgetBy defining upfront what is attributable: reach, generated visits, dedicated codes, actions taken on a specific page or initiative. Without a shared definition at contract stage, reporting collapses into visibility numbers.
Measurement and reportingBy commercial behaviour rather than declared interest: members, ticket buyers, store customers, inactive contacts and audiences not yet converted. The same person can belong to several segments and should be handled accordingly.
CRM and segmentationEngagement measures attention, commercial results measure money collected and relationships that repeat. They are connected but not interchangeable: a widely viewed piece of content may not sell a single ticket.
How I read resultsBy assigning different cost targets based on category margin and connecting advertising pressure to actual stock. A high-margin product with wide availability can sustain pressure that an almost sold-out item cannot.
Margin analysisTell me how ticketing, store and CRM are organised, which windows shape your season and where you feel value is being lost. The first conversation is there to find the starting point.