How to Choose a Sports Marketing Agency (An Honest Comparison)

I run a sports marketing agency, so read this with that in mind. I've tried to make it useful even if you never hire us.

How do you choose a sports marketing agency for a club or academy?

Start with your calendar, not the agency's portfolio. Write down your next registration window, tryout and camp, then ask each agency what it would build for each one and how it would report on registrations. The right agency talks about your dates and your intake numbers within the first ten minutes.

Then check three things:

1. Do they know how your season works? Tryouts, camps, intake deadlines, and the fact that parents sign the cheque.
2. Who does the work? The person on the call, or someone you'll never meet.
3. What do they report on? Registrations, sign-ups and revenue. If the report leads with reach and impressions, that's the tell.

Should you hire in-house or use an agency?

I think that's the wrong question. The marketing unicorn doesn't exist: one person who plans strategy, films, edits, writes, buys Meta and Google ads, builds landing pages and follows up leads. You're choosing between one hire who'll be strong at two or three of those, or a team that covers all of them.

For reference, Job Bank puts the median wage for a marketing coordinator in British Columbia at $33.65 an hour (2023 to 2024 data). In the US, the Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the median for market research analysts and marketing specialists at $78,760 a year (May 2025). That's before software, ad spend, camera gear and the time it takes to manage them.

A hire can make sense when you have enough steady work for a full-time person and someone senior to direct them. Plenty of clubs do best with both: a coordinator inside who knows the families, and an agency for strategy, creative and ads.

What are the four ways to get sports marketing done?

There are four common options: an in-house hire, a freelancer, a lead-generation shop, or a full-service sports agency. Each one is good at something. The question is which gaps you can live with. Here's how I'd compare them honestly, including the weak spots of the option we sell.

The comparison

My take: most lead-gen offers fill one tryout. What a club needs is a plan for the February registration open, the March camp launch and the fall recruiting cycle. Those are different products.

What should a sports marketing agency actually deliver?

A good sports marketing agency delivers registrations, sign-ups and members, built on a calendar. That means a plan for every window on your calendar, content made from your own training and games, landing pages with one clear form, ads that run in the weeks before each deadline, and a follow-up system so every inquiry gets an answer fast.

The piece most agencies skip is follow-up. Leads come in and nobody follows up, and in my view that's usually the leak, not the ad spend. Ask any agency who owns the first reply to a parent. If the answer is "your staff", ask what they'll set up to make that easy: automatic emails and texts, a simple script, and a weekly count of inquiries against registrations.

We work this way at Coala. Our sports marketing page shows what's in a retainer, and our retainers start at $1,750 CAD a month, and the BC Prep results (400 leads in 6 months at under $7 a lead, 175+ camp sign-ups) are the kind of numbers we report on.

What questions should you ask on the first call?

Ask questions that force specifics: what they'd build for your next window, who does the work, how they report, and what happens to an inquiry after the form. A good agency answers with your dates and your numbers. A weak one answers with its process deck. These ten are the ones I'd ask.

1. What would you build for our next registration window, and when would you start?
2. Who will actually plan, film, edit and run the ads?
3. Have you worked with a program like ours? What were the registrations, not the views?
4. What happens to an inquiry in the first 24 hours?
5. What do you need from us each week, and how fast do approvals need to be?
6. What will the first monthly report show?
7. How do you split our money between ad spend and your fee?
8. Who owns the ad accounts, pages and footage if we leave?
9. What's the minimum commitment, and why?
10. What would you tell us to do ourselves?

That last one matters. An agency that says "you can do this part yourselves" is usually one you can trust with the rest.

What are the red flags?

The biggest red flags are reports built on reach and likes, promises of guaranteed numbers, a team you never meet, and nobody owning follow-up. Also watch for agencies that keep your ad accounts and footage in their name. Any one of these on its own is a reason to ask more questions before you sign.

The list I'd check:

1. Guaranteed results. Nobody can promise registrations. Good agencies set targets with you and report against them.
2. Vanity reporting. Impressions and engagement first, registrations nowhere.
3. No calendar. They want to "start posting" before asking about your tryout dates.
4. Account ownership. Your ad accounts, pixel and footage should be yours.
5. Hand-offs. The senior person sells, then disappears.
6. Generic creative. Stock footage instead of your athletes, your coaches and your gym.

Referrals are lovely, but referrals aren't a strategy, they're luck you can't schedule. The same goes for picking an agency on a friend's say-so. Use the scorecard below anyway.

How do you score an agency before you sign?

Score each agency out of 10 on the ten questions below and add it up. Anything under 70 out of 100 is a no for me. Score your own marketing the same way: if you're at a 6 out of 10, that's fine for a club at your stage, and the right partner should show you a credible path to a 9.

The scorecard

Do this for two or three agencies and compare the totals. If you're a hockey academy, our page on hockey academy marketing shows how we'd plan your intake year. If you'd like to know who we are first, read about Coala Studio.