Borrowing the Playbook: Garnering Robust Arts Engagement Through Sports Marketing Strategies

This major paper examined how nonprofit arts organizations can strengthen audience engagement, retention, and long-term stability by reimagining marketing as an ongoing, relationship-centered practice. Drawing from sports marketing, not as a comparison, but as a parallel cultural successful framework. Sports Marketing has the proven ability to generate sustained excitement, generational loyalty, and year-round connection. By learning from and applying this framework to meet their own needs, performing arts organizations can develop larger and more loyal audiences by adopting marketing strategies used by major league sports. While often viewed as culturally distinct, both sports and arts share a common goal: to cultivate and maintain audiences through visibility, community connection, cohesive identity, and immersive experiences. Acknowledging the significant financial gap between major league sports and nonprofit arts organizations, this research and findings present how low-cost, creative participatory approaches can meaningfully deepen audience connection. With a shift in perspective, this research can equip arts administrators with practical, adaptable strategies that encourage creativity and provide tools to implement new approaches within their own organizations.