143 - The Experience Shift: How to Make Fans Choose You Over Everything Else
Sports Marketing Machine Podcast
Why Gen Z chooses experiences they can share
Jeremy explains Gen Z behavior: choosing events seen on social media, not ads or discounts.
The way fans decide where to spend their money has fundamentally changed—and many sports teams are still marketing like it hasn’t. In this episode, Jeremy Neisser breaks down the post-COVID “experience shift” and explains why fans are choosing experiences over products, convenience, and even price. By studying how restaurants reinvented themselves after COVID, Jeremy shows sports marketers how to drive urgency, attention, and ticket sales by turning games into moments worth sharing.
Key Topics Covered
- How consumer behavior shifted dramatically after COVID—and why it didn’t “go back to normal”
- The rise of the experience economy and why experiential spending has exploded since 2019
- Why restaurants leaned into the weird, the wacky, and the visually shareable
- What “the experience is the marketing” actually means for sports teams
- How social media now directly influences purchasing decisions, not just awareness
- Why Millennials and Gen Z choose events based on what they see online
- How attention and urgency outperform discounts and promotions
- What every game needs to have to stand out in a crowded entertainment market
Timestamps
- 00:00 – The post-COVID landscape and the experience shift
- 02:35 – Why restaurants are the best case study for sports marketers
- 05:45 – The experience economy and why attention beats paid media
- 08:33 – Social media as a buying decision, not a branding tool
- 11:51 – What sports teams should steal from restaurant marketing
- 13:30 – Selling moments instead of schedules and discounts
- 15:51 – Final takeaway: how experiences create urgency and revenue
Links mentioned:
- Forbes – Experience Economy Growth Post-COVID
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jefffromm/2023/11/09/gen-z-and-affluent-consumers-are-re-shaping-the-experience-economy/ - Restaurant Dive – Thriving in the Experience Economy
https://www.restaurantdive.com/spons/how-restaurants-can-thrive-in-the-experience-economy/728365/ - Restaurant Social Media Statistics (Discovery → Purchase)
https://cropink.com/restaurant-social-media-statistics - Deloitte – Social-First Restaurants & Revenue Growth
https://www.deloittedigital.com/us/en/insights/perspective/social-media-strategies-restaurants.html - Gen Z & Social Food Trends
https://www.fb101.com/why-84-of-gen-z-are-trying-social-media-food-trends-and-what-that-means-for-restaurant-marketing/ Episode 90: How Chili’s Leveraged User-Generated Content to Driv
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