Spencer McAnally interned in athletic marketing throughout his four years as a Mississippi State undergraduate student, which meant he did not have to look far to get a feel for what fans wanted to experience at games.
Sports like football, basketball and baseball are broadly popular with MSU students, but it can be a struggle to attract students to watch other Bulldog teams. So McAnally would seek input from friends about what they liked and didn’t like about attending games and what it would take to get them out to some of the “non-revenue” sports.
After receiving a bachelor’s degree in marketing in 2014 and a master’s in sport administration in 2016 from MSU, McAnally worked in athletic marketing at the University of Houston and Clemson University, then returned to his alma mater in 2022 as the Bulldogs’ assistant athletic director for fan experience.
“It’s easy to come to a football game or even basketball, but what would get you to come to volleyball? What would get you to come to soccer? What would get you to come to softball?” McAnally said. “It’s sort of the same as it is now. Kids just want to have fun. I learned that pretty early on.”
McAnally was born in Hattiesburg, home to the University of Southern Mississippi, but raised near Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Despite growing up in LSU country, McAnally never became a Tigers fan — he had an uncle who was an MSU alum, and he attended one or two football games in Starkville each year and occasionally made the trip for basketball and baseball.
By the time he was a high school upperclassman, McAnally knew he wanted to work in sports, even though he did not quite know what that meant at the time. He caught on with fan experience as a college freshman, though, and never looked back.
As an undergrad, McAnally interned with the Liberty Bowl and the FedEx St. Jude Championship golf tournament, both in Memphis, and he spent a summer during grad school interning in athletics marketing at Texas Christian University. His first full-time job came at Houston as the Cougars’ associate director of athletic marketing.
“(It’s a) massive market, massive town,” McAnally said. “Everything that we think about marketing here is probably 180 degrees different there. Here, a lot of our fan base is an hour to two and a half hours away, and there, they’re all within 30 miles. It might take them two hours to get there with traffic sometimes, but it was completely different, even down to what time our games were going to be.”
The two Southeastern Conference schools are the biggest sports draws in all of Mississippi, but the Houston market is saturated with professional teams, plus college teams in other parts of Texas that compete with the Cougars for attention. McAnally — who oversaw marketing and fan experience for volleyball and baseball — had to think outside the box and come up with creative ideas and promotions to boost attendance.
After just a year at Houston, McAnally took a job as director of marketing for the athletic department at Clemson in 2017. The Tigers had just won a national championship in football and would win another in 2019, so that program sold itself, but McAnally was also responsible for marketing efforts in men’s basketball and baseball. He spent five years at Clemson, then took the job leading the fan experience department back at MSU.
“It was always at the back of my mind that it would be cool to come back in some capacity,” McAnally said. “It was about time for me to make a move at Clemson and further my career, and this opportunity popped up and it happened to be the right opportunity. It made sense for me to come back. The fan experience department was in a good place, we were staffed really well. Everything met the requirements I was looking for in my next stop.”
McAnally helped plan MSU’s memorial tribute for Mike Leach after the head football coach passed away suddenly in December 2022, featuring remarks from his former players and assistant coaches. He was also instrumental in planning the introduction for new football coach Jeff Lebby, complete with a red carpet for his arrival at George M. Bryan Airport and fireworks over Dudy Noble Field after his official welcome the next night.
With seven people working under him in fan experience, McAnally primarily oversees the department and delegates assignments for his staff.
Currently, that mostly involves making sure everything will be in place for the football season opener on Aug. 31 as well as keeping track of the other fall sports.
“Football, especially this year, we’re trying to overhaul a good bit,” McAnally said. “We meet weekly and make sure we’re getting things done, getting things checked off as we get closer to Aug. 31, which will be here before you know it. So I’m trying to put my staff in the best place to succeed and making sure we’re pushing the limits when it comes to fan experience.”
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