Bridging the CEO vs. CMO Gap in Sports Tourism

PUSH Marketing - Volume 6, Issue 2

In sports tourism, the potential for measurable growth and engaged fans and visitors is immense. However, the divergence of goals between CEOs and CMOs often hinders this potential. By aligning their objectives, both destinations and event rights holders can unlock significant opportunities for success.

In the past, a marketer’s job was clear: understanding the athlete, the team staff, and the visitor. Doing so then delivers the right message, converting them to register and book travel. But today’s sports tourism marketing landscape is far more unpredictable. They jump between social media, streaming, registration platforms, and ticketing and travel sites before deciding whether to register and attend an event. Trust in advertising alone isn’t enough; proof through authentic experiences, peer reviews, brand loyalty, and content-rich storytelling is the new currency.

In 2025, American households are more price-conscious and deal-driven than ever. Whether it’s a family considering the cost of a week-long baseball tournament or a fan deciding between a collegiate football game and the U.S. Open, the demand for more value from advertising spend is clear. This shift underscores the urgency and importance of delivering high-quality marketing campaigns.

C-Suite Expansion

This complexity has fueled the growth of specialized leadership roles on all sides of sports tourism, whether it be destinations, event rights holders, or industry partners. Newer positions, such as Chief Revenue Officers, Chief Experience Officers, and Chief Digital Officers, are all claiming pieces of the visitor journey. For destinations, this means marketing becomes divided between visitor bureaus, sports commissions, facility operators, and team and event owners. For event rights holders, it’s split between athlete or team registration, ticketing, sponsorship, broadcast, and visitor experience.

This division of labor has created a growing CEO vs. CMO gap. CEOs may feel they understand marketing today; however, many CMOs disagree that their CEOs truly get it. This disparity has been growing each year. In sports tourism, this often translates into under-leveraged campaigns, fragmented brand messaging, and missed opportunities to tie economic impact directly to marketing ROI.

Do Not Sideline the CMO

As in other sectors, sports tourism CMOs are finding themselves pulled away from strategic planning when they are not at the table during conversations around growth plans or event calendars. Without their voice, the athlete and visitor experience can easily be overlooked. This results in less cohesive branding, inconsistent messaging, and reduced repeat visitation.

Mismatched Metrics

Another blinding challenge is that marketing success in sports tourism is at the mercy of platform-specific KPIs. These include social media reach, ticket click rates, livestream engagement, or hotel booking conversions from a campaign or third-party platform. These, of course, are important, but they don’t always translate to the metrics a CEO and board prioritize, like net revenue, event-related hotel nights, or membership growth.

So, what’s the result? CMOs are talking about sold-out youth soccer tournaments, while CEOs want to know how those tournaments moved the needle for the destination’s lodging occupancy. If they don’t see eye to eye, alignment is impossible.

Closing the Gap

Within the industry, the most successful destinations and rights holders put growth-oriented CMOs in positions of actual influence. Over the decades, we’ve seen that when organizations unite under a single leader responsible for both revenue growth and visitor experience, they see climbing growth rates. In sports tourism, that leader is often the CMO, but only if they can bridge the gap between marketing metrics and outcomes. For instance, successful CMOs have implemented data-driven marketing strategies, collaborated closely with the finance team to calculate tourism marketing ROI, and actively participated in strategic planning meetings.

To accomplish this success, it requires a solid partnership with the organization's C-Suite. When finance teams endorse tourism marketing ROI calculations, marketing gains credibility at the board level.

Insights into Action

The CEO vs. CMO gap in sports tourism can diminish when approached strategically. CMOs must embrace roles as designers of growth, not just storytellers. CMOs should not only be responsible for crafting compelling narratives and engaging content, but also for designing and implementing strategies that drive revenue growth and improve the visitor experience. CEOs must welcome them into the earliest stages of organizational, event, and project planning, recognizing the value of their strategic insights and data-driven decision-making.

For destinations, this means including your marketing team when bidding for events, so they can design the narrative that wins the rights holder’s vote and the athlete’s interest. For event owners, it means letting marketing support and help shape the athletes’ and spectators’ journeys from the first impression to the final whistle.

When marketing strategy and business objectives align, engagement soars, economic impact grows, and both sides (destination and rights holder) win. This alignment can lead to increased event attendance, higher visitor satisfaction, and improved brand perception, ultimately contributing to the long-term success of the sports tourism industry.