How Birmingham Phoenix Grew Ticket Sales 47% and Hit 7M TikTok…

How Birmingham Phoenix Grew Ticket Sales 47% and Reached 7 Million People on TikTok.

Date

2025

Deliverables

Paid Media

Campaign

Creator

Location

Birmingham

Sector

Sports

Birmingham Phoenix achieved a 47% uplift in Match 1 ticket sales, a 14% increase in total ticket sales year on year, and reached 7 million people on TikTok, while 44% of all sales came from audiences who had never bought a Phoenix ticket before. The campaign that drove it was built around community. A creator-led, platform-native approach that reached audiences through the culture around the sport rather than the sport itself. When the marketing moved from broadcast to community-building, the attendance moved with it.

The results

47%

uplift in match-day ticket sales

14%

increase in total ticket sales YoY

7 Million

TikTok impressions from the creator-led campaign

the challenge

The Hundred is one of the most ambitious audience growth projects in English cricket, a new format designed to appeal to audiences that Test cricket and the existing county structure had not yet reached. Birmingham Phoenix faced the challenge every team in the competition shared: how do you build a fanbase for a new franchise in a new format, competing for attention in a city with established football clubs and audiences who had not historically made cricket part of their entertainment calendar?

Demographic advertising to reach existing cricket fans would find an existing audience. The brief was bigger: find and convert people who were not cricket fans, through marketing that felt native to the platforms and communities they already inhabited.

the approach

We took a creator-first and community-led approach. Rather than building a broadcast advertising campaign, the strategy was to embed Birmingham Phoenix into the cultural communities most adjacent to the club's growth opportunity, through creators who already had the trust of those communities.

Creator partnerships were selected for cultural relevance rather than follower count: people whose audiences overlapped with Birmingham Phoenix's target growth segments, whose content style matched the platform-native, authentic register that converts passive scrollers into active attendees.

Content was built to show the experience of attending a Phoenix match. The atmosphere, the stadium environment, the social dimension of a Hundred match: these are the things that convert someone who has never watched cricket into someone who wants to be at the next game.

The highest attendance increase in The Hundred is a competition-wide benchmark. Every team in the competition was working to grow its audience in the same season. Birmingham Phoenix grew its fastest through a campaign architecture that understood how new sports audiences are actually built: community trust, cultural relevance, and the experience of being there.

The 47% Match 1 uplift is the sharpest proof point, but the 44% new-audience share is the more significant long-term result. Nearly half of all ticket sales came from people who had not previously bought a Phoenix ticket. That is new audience at scale, arguably the hardest and most valuable commercial achievement in sports audience development.

The 14% total ticket sales increase reflects a full-season result. Seven million TikTok impressions generated that reach through creator partnerships selected for cultural fit rather than follower count.

Their breadth of events knowledge translated perfectly to what we were looking to achieve, showing a real understanding of how to connect the city through sport. Their end-to-end strategy allowed us to reach a new and diverse audience across Birmingham and resulted in Birmingham Phoenix seeing the highest increase in fan attendance across the competition during this time period.

Chris Airey

Head of Marketing & Brand

What This Means for Sports Brands

The Birmingham Phoenix campaign is a direct demonstration of Festivalisation of Sports™ in practice. Sports organisations that market the sport reach the people who already follow it and are already engaged. Those that market the experience and feeling, reach the people who are open to attending. The second audience is larger, less competed for and where the biggest opportunity lies.

Creator-led community building is the most effective mechanism currently available for making that conversion. The value is in the trust the right creator holds with the right community, not the size of their following.

The practical question for any sports organisation trying to grow: of the content you published last month, how much of it would interest someone who has never attended one of your events?

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: How do you grow sports attendance through marketing?

Build community before you sell tickets. Birmingham Phoenix achieved a 47% uplift in Match 1 ticket sales, 14% total ticket growth, and 44% of sales from new audiences through creator partnerships that reached people who were not cricket fans. The experience of attending converted them; the community approach got them there.

Q: Does creator marketing work for sports?

Yes, when the creators are selected for cultural relevance rather than follower count. Birmingham Phoenix's creator partnerships were chosen because their audiences overlapped with the club's target growth segments and their content style matched the platform-native register that converts social followers into ticket buyers.

Q: What is Festivalisation of Sports?

Festivalisation of Sports™ is the application of experience-economy thinking to sports audience development: marketing the experience of attending rather than the quality of the sport. Birmingham Phoenix reached 7 million people on TikTok and converted 44% of ticket sales from new audiences by showing people what it felt like to be at a Hundred match, not what the cricket looked like.

Q: How do you reach sports audiences who don't follow the sport?

Through the culture around them, not the sport itself. Birmingham Phoenix reached non-cricket audiences through creators whose content was already part of their cultural diet: people whose communities overlapped with the Phoenix's target audience. The sport was introduced through community trust, not broadcast advertising.