Methodology
How these benchmarks are built
- 68 sports organisations
- 10 sports
- 456M emails
- 4.14M SMS
- 23K campaigns
- 10.3M profiles
- email campaigns with at least 100 sends (SMS at least 25)
- clubs with at least 10 campaigns
- Data as of 9 September 2026
Sport mix: Football (30), Ice hockey (24), Rugby (3), Basketball (3), Other (3), AFL (1), Handball (1), Golf (1), Volleyball (1), Squash (1).
Programme sizes: Micro Under 500K — 19 clubs, Small 500K–3M — 25 clubs, Mid 3M–10M — 10 clubs, Large 10M–30M — 9 clubs, Mega 30M+ — 5 clubs.
The benchmark uses anonymised campaign data across Data Talks sports customers. Percentiles compare clubs as individual organisations, while weighted averages are influenced more heavily by larger senders. For the benchmark checker, we use percentile-based comparisons because they give a clearer view of how a club compares with its peers.
The largest programmes in the cohort (30M+ emails a year) see open rates fall from around 52% to around 42% — bigger lists inevitably include more casual and lapsed supporters.
Open rates can be inflated or obscured by privacy features such as Apple Mail Privacy Protection. Treat small differences as directional and read opens alongside clicks.
How to read your result
- Bottom decile Below P10
- In the weakest tenth of the cohort — the first place to investigate.
- Needs attention Below P25
- Below the lower quartile of the cohort — a place to ask questions, not a verdict.
- Around benchmark P25–P50
- Around the middle of the cohort.
- Strong P50–P75
- Above the median and approaching the top quartile.
- Top-performing Above P75, top decile above P90
- Around or above the top quartile of the cohort.
Quick “am I doing well?” cheat sheet
- Open rate
- Over 55% excellent · 45–55% good · 30–45% average · under 30% needs work
- Click rate (CTR)
- Over 7% excellent · 4–7% good · 2–4% average · under 2% needs work
- Unsubscribe rate
- Under 0.15% excellent · 0.15–0.30% good · 0.30–0.50% watch · over 0.50% fatigue warning
- Bounce rate
- Under 1% excellent · 1–3% good · 3–5% watch · over 5% fix list hygiene
- Using SMS?
- Only 44% of clubs in the benchmark use SMS (30 of 68). Among those that do, weighted SMS click rate is 4.85% — higher than the 3.47% weighted email click rate. It is the single biggest untapped channel in the cohort. Click-rate percentiles for the SMS check are drawn from the 22 of those 30 organisations with a measurable click rate: lower quartile 2.55%, median 6.5%, top quartile 9.4%, top decile 21.96%. SMS campaigns need at least 25 sends to be included.
Current benchmark table
Dataset as of 9 September 2026
| Metric | Weighted | P10 | P25 | Median | P75 | P90 | Direction |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Delivered rate Percentage of sent emails successfully delivered. | 90.55% | 92.05% | 93.79% | 95.25% | 97.06% | 98.26% | Higher is better |
Open rate Percentage of delivered emails that were opened. | 42.41% | 34.33% | 43.84% | 52.23% | 62.79% | 74.24% | Higher is better |
Click-through rate (CTR) Percentage of delivered emails that generated at least one click. | 3.47% | 2.09% | 2.78% | 4.67% | 8.48% | 15.14% | Higher is better |
Click-to-open rate (CTOR) Percentage of people who opened the email and then clicked. | 8.19% | 5.25% | 6.66% | 9.37% | 13.83% | 20.97% | Higher is better |
Bounce rate Percentage of emails that could not be delivered. | 2.04% | 0.7% | 1.12% | 1.51% | 1.96% | 2.84% | Lower is better |
Unsubscribe rate Percentage of recipients who unsubscribed. | 0.35% | 0.16% | 0.3% | 0.47% | 0.73% | 1.05% | Lower is better |
Spam complaint rate Published in the benchmark for reference; not collected in this tool. | 0.42% | 0.06% | 0.11% | 0.21% | 0.34% | 0.46% | Lower is better |
Source: Data Talks Sports Engagement Benchmark. Weighted figures treat the cohort as one large programme; percentiles treat each club as one data point.
Reading unsubscribe rate
A higher unsubscribe rate is not automatically negative. Highly targeted or re-engagement campaigns can sometimes generate more unsubscribes while improving database quality, so read it alongside campaign purpose and audience. Across the cohort, engagement and churn together are more telling than either alone: high opens with low unsubscribes is the healthiest pattern, while low opens with high unsubscribes suggests a list being burned.
Caveats
- Revenue is deliberately excluded from the benchmark: local currencies cannot be summed meaningfully across the cohort, so revenue figures are proof points rather than benchmark values.
- ESP-specific channel variants are collapsed into base Email and SMS channels so channels compare consistently.
- Clubs that migrated platforms are counted once, with old and new account volumes combined.
- Weighted averages sum raw counts across the cohort and are dominated by the largest senders. Percentiles treat every club as one data point, which is why this tool uses percentiles.
- Club-level data is anonymised and individual customer figures are not disclosed.
Individual customer data is not disclosed. Figures shown alongside named campaign examples come from approved public customer stories.