Sports Marketing Machine Podcast 143 - The Experience Shift: How to Make Fans Choose You Over Everything Else
Dec 20, 2025
The landscape of sports marketing has dramatically shifted post-COVID, with fans prioritizing experiences over mere transactions. Jeremy Neisser highlights how restaurants reinvented themselves and offers valuable lessons for teams. The explosion of the experience economy emphasizes the importance of creating shareable moments that capture attention. Social media now acts as a critical driver for purchasing decisions, especially for Millennials and Gen Z. By focusing on experiential marketing, sports teams can cultivate urgency and revenue without relying on discounts.
AI Snips
Chapters
Transcript
Episode notes
The Post‑COVID Experience Shift
- Post-COVID consumers shifted spending dramatically from products to experiences, not back to pre-COVID habits.
- Forbes data shows experiential spending grew over 60% since 2019, fueling the experience economy.
Restaurants Reinvented With Shareable Items
- Restaurants reinvented menus with limited-time, weird, and shareable items to drive attention and sales.
- Jeremy cites Chili's viral mozzarella-stick "cheese pool" as a concrete example of social content boosting revenue.
Experience As The Core Marketing
- "The experience is the marketing" became a core restaurant strategy to drive organic social sharing.
- Visual, meetable, and shareable moments now function as primary marketing assets.