Sports advertising

Sports marketing allows for brands to align themselves with live events, sports teams, and athletes to reach bigger audiences. This can help your business boost brand recognition with audiences. Sports advertising comes in many formats such as TV commercials, online video ads, display ads, product placement, product promotion, social media marketing, influencer marketing, and print media. The major benefit of advertising during a sports event is that it can expose your brand to a large audience that is watching sports content live, meaning they are a leaned-in and engaged audience.

Additionally, the heightened excitement of sporting events can push brands to develop creative and exciting ads that resonate with viewers, like all those memorable commercials you and your friends talk about the day after a big game. In this guide, we’ll provide sports marketing strategies, tips, and examples that can help your brand start advertising alongside sports content.

Sports marketing is important because it gives brands an opportunity to align with a sporting event, team, or athlete to generate brand awareness and reach a larger audience. With a sports campaign, brands can tap into team or player fandom, excitement, and community.

Based on the partnership, brands can develop relevant content that helps them connect with their target audience through marketing experiences like giveaways, contests, and fan events. Importantly, it allows brands to connect with audiences in real time as they watch their favorite teams play at live events. Nowadays, brands are contending with increased ad noise, selective attention by consumers, and fragmentated audiences across a variety of channels. With consumer attention becoming scarcer, brands need every message to count and stand out, and showing up during a high-profile event—like a big game—can give brands that extra edge.

The world of sports content extends well beyond game days to also include team fandom, fantasy sports leagues, video games, podcasts, and more—meaning there are many places for brands to show up in this space. Sports content continues to grow in popularity every year. In 2022, the sports industry’s revenue reached $487 billion. By 2027, the global sports market is estimated to reach $623 billion.¹

The best sports advertising campaigns start with a marketing plan, which has a clear message, creative assets, and demographic targeting plans. These strategies can include identifying what channels to launch on and analyzing performance. These steps can help a brand take an idea and launch it into a campaign.

The benefits of advertising alongside sports content include showing up in front of a large, loyal, and engaged audience that have the potential to spend. Additionally, advertising with certain sporting events and teams can improve your brand’s perception among sports viewers.

Sports marketing allows for brands to connect with an engaged audience. Here are some examples of ways brands were able to advertise during a sporting event using Amazon Ads solutions.