A Charleston billboard advertising case study in out-of-home advertising, community awareness, and what happens when Charleston can’t miss you.

In the spring of 2026, the Charleston Battery made a decisive investment in billboard advertising across the Charleston market. The result was a franchise first: a sold-out regular season home opener, a nearly 57% surge in second-game ticket sales, and over 7.4 million impressions delivered across six strategic placements. This case study breaks down exactly how Adams Outdoor built the campaign, why the creative strategy worked, and what the numbers mean for any live entertainment brand trying to fill seats in a competitive market.

Meet the Charleston Battery

The Charleston Battery are South Carolina’s premier professional soccer club and one of the longest-running teams in American soccer history, playing continuously since 1993 and competing in the USL Championship, the second tier of professional soccer in the United States. Home games run March through October at Patriots Point Soccer Stadium in Mount Pleasant, where the Battery brings pro-level play to one of the most scenic stadium settings on the East Coast. Tickets start at just $15, making it one of the most accessible live sports experiences in the Lowcountry. Come matchday, the experience goes well beyond the final score. Fans can expect fireworks, player meet-and-greets on the pitch after the whistle, family activities, and the kind of electric atmosphere that makes the Battery far more than a soccer game. They are, as the team puts it, a festival with soccer as the main attraction.

The Challenge: Building Awareness in a Crowded Market

The Charleston Battery entered the offseason amid significant change, with a refreshed roster that sparked plenty of conversation among supporters eager to see the club’s next chapter unfold. At the same time, the Battery continued to tackle an ongoing challenge: standing out in a crowded sports market and ensuring the Charleston metro’s 800,000 residents recognize that a professional sports team proudly calls the city home.

The Battery’s front office tackled that challenge head-on with a market-wide billboard campaign, delivering a franchise-record result and a compelling case study for live entertainment brands looking to drive attendance.

The goals heading into 2026 were direct:

• Drive awareness that the new season was beginning and rebuild community excitement after a turbulent offseason
• Sell out the home opener on March 7th, a milestone the Battery had never achieved in a regular season game
• Sustain attendance momentum past the opener into the second home match, historically the weakest-performing game on the schedule
• Grow the fanbase by reaching first-time attendees, particularly families in key Lowcountry neighborhoods

Phase One: How a Digital Billboard Campaign Put the Battery Back on Charleston’s Radar

Starting February 25th, ten days before the March 7th home opener, Adams Outdoor launched a digital billboard campaign across the Charleston market. The strategy had two layers: hyper-local digital placements in Summerville and Daniel Island to reach family audiences where Battery fans live, and high-volume interstate digital boards along I-26 and I-526 to intercept commuter traffic at scale. The five-board package delivered 797,726 weekly impressions, nearly 114,000 per day, running 24 hours across all placements.

Digital billboards aren’t just bigger versions of static signs. They’re a dynamic creative platform and for a campaign built around building buzz and then converting it, that flexibility was the whole game.

The first creative rotation featured player-forward imagery and the message, “Pro soccer is back in the Lowcountry,” using faces, energy, and simple brand awareness to reestablish the Battery in Charleston’s daily visual landscape before asking fans to take action.

On March 2, five days before the season opener, the creative shifted to game-date and fireworks messaging, turning an awareness campaign into a direct attendance driver and creating urgency among audiences already familiar with the Battery from their daily commute.

That ability to shift messaging mid-flight is one of digital out-of-home’s most underutilized advantages. Static boards build presence. Digital boards build presence and then pivot to close the deal, all within the same campaign, on the same faces, reaching the same audiences that have already been primed.

Phase Two: Ravenel Bridge Billboard Puts the Battery in Front of All of Charleston

Immediately following the opener, Adams placed a large-format static bulletin at the base of the Ravenel Bridge, one of the highest-traffic locations in the Charleston market, generating 264,858 weekly impressions. Featuring the Battery’s “Be Part of It” creative, the landmark board remained up through the club’s next two home matches, delivering daily visibility to commuters, families, tourists, and prospective fans.

More Than Media. Creative Expertise Included.

When brands partner with Adams Outdoor Advertising, they gain access to the Adams AdLab, our award-winning in-house billboard design team offering complimentary creative services to all Adams clients. With decades of combined out-of-home experience, the Adams Outdoor creative team specializes in designing billboard campaigns that capture attention, communicate instantly, and drive results. Their deep understanding of what works at highway speed is built into every campaign at no additional cost.

The “Be Part of It” campaign was created by AdLab, which specializes in translating strategy into attention-grabbing visuals for audiences on the move. For the Battery, AdLab used player imagery and crowd energy to make the creative feel more like an invitation than an advertisement, creating a sense that fans were missing out on one of Charleston’s most exciting live experiences. That emotional connection helped turn a billboard into a conversation piece across the city.

Billboard Campaign Results: A Sold-Out Opener and a 57% Surge in Ticket Sales

The Battery sold out their home opener on March 7th, the first time in franchise history they had ever sold out a regular season game. Ticket sales were up 22.3% over the prior year.

The second match told an even more compelling story. Historically the weakest draw on the schedule and a game that actually declined in attendance in 2025 surged nearly 57% year-over-year in 2026 with the Ravenel Bridge billboard running. At least 40 new families attended that game and directly credited seeing the billboard as the reason they came. That kind of direct attribution is rare in advertising. And it happened because the board was impossible to ignore.


By the Numbers

Why Billboard Advertising Works for Live Sports and Events

The Battery’s instinct to lean on out-of-home advertising is backed by hard data. A 2025 Out of Home Advertising Association of America (OAAA) and The Harris Poll national study found that nearly 6 in 10 U.S. adults recall recently seeing an OOH ad for a major sporting event and of those, 90% took real-world action, from buying tickets to engaging on social media. The study also found that 99% of fans who attended a game after seeing an OOH ad spent money locally, making billboards a measurable driver of economic impact well beyond the stadium.

See our full story on the impact that billboard can make on Sports here if you want to dig deeper: OOH Sports Billboards Have Major Impact

For a club like the Battery, selling to busy families who make most of their ticket decisions in the final 48 to 72 hours before kickoff, that kind of consistent, unavoidable presence isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s the strategy. Billboards meet fans where they already are: in their cars, on their commutes, crossing the bridge. You can’t scroll past them.

Key Takeaways: What This Means for Any Brand Trying to Fill Seats

• Start with awareness, then build from there. Out-of-home advertising creates the kind of ambient, repeated brand presence that digital channels struggle to replicate. Before someone buys a ticket, they have to know you exist, and OOH does that work quietly, every single day.
• Digital out-of-home (DOOH) formats give you speed and flexibility. Digital OOH lets you adapt messaging in real time, promote tonight’s game, respond to a win, push a last-minute deal. That agility turns awareness into action when it matters most.
• Location is everything. Choose landmark units. When your brand lives on the bridge someone crosses every morning or the highway they take to the stadium, it becomes part of how they think about your city. A landmark placement doesn’t just reach people; it becomes a reference point.
• Design campaigns with your goal in mind. Know what success looks like before you build creative. For sports teams and live venues, that’s often a last-minute ticket decision, so design your messaging to drive that moment. The Battery’s data proved it works, and their continued 2026 investment reflects it.

How the Battery Are Using Billboards for Long-Term Brand Awareness

The Battery are extending their out-of-home investment through November, with rotating digital creative tied to specific game dates, $15 summer ticket pricing, and family-focused messaging designed to sustain momentum through the back half of the season.

As of August 2026, the Battery are sitting at 8-6-3 on the year with a dominant 6-0-2 record at home. A playoff run is well within reach and if the first two home games are any indication, the billboards will be part of what gets them there.

Get Your Charleston Battery Tickets & And Tell Them the Billboard Sent You

Home games run through October at Patriots Point Soccer Stadium in Mount Pleasant. Tickets start at $15, and there’s no better summer evening in the Lowcountry than watching pro soccer with your family under the lights.

If a billboard around town has caught your eye and made you think about going, this is your sign. Buy your tickets, get to Patriots Point, and when you’re there, tell them the billboard sent you. It’s the kind of direct feedback that proves the value of this investment and keeps great campaigns like this one coming back every season.

Get tickets at charlestonbattery.com and help the Battery pack the stands for the rest of 2026. Here’s to a Lowcountry playoff run. ⚽

Ready to Fill Your Seats? Build Your Billboard Campaign with Adams Outdoor

Adams Outdoor Advertising serves the Charleston market with digital and static billboard inventory throughout the region. To learn how out-of-home advertising can drive ticket sales, event attendance, or brand awareness for your organization, visit Adams Outdoor Charleston or contact your local Adams team.