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Sports Playbook for Brands
The Benchmarks Behind Smarter Sports Investments
- Know which audiences to target — See how fan receptivity and conscious sponsor support vary across 13 major leagues, and what that means for where your budget goes
- Benchmark your ad performance — Find out how sponsorship awareness, advertising breakthrough, and brand linkage stack up across the NFL, Super Bowl, FIFA World Cup, and more
- Identify What's Working — Find out which World Cup opening weekend and Final ads broke through and the top brand sponsors for the entire event
Inside this report, you will find:
Which Sports Audiences Are Most Commercially Receptive
Not all sports fans respond to sponsors the same way. MarketCast data shows that NWSL, MLS, NASCAR, and UFC fans are among the most likely to actively support the brands that back their leagues — while NFL fans, the most targeted audience in sports media, rank last. Reach and receptivity are not the same variable.
When Sports Advertising Actually Performs
The NFL postseason outperforms every other phase of the season on ad memorability, brand linkage, and breakthrough — including the Super Bowl. MarketCast tracked ad performance across every phase of the NFL season and six consecutive Super Bowls to show where fan attention is highest and what that means for creative and media decisions.
How Sponsorship and Advertising Work Together
Official FIFA sponsors outperformed non-sponsors on brand linkage by 12 points. But the brands that generated the strongest overall performance used sponsorship, advertising, and in-program placement in combination. The playbook shows exactly how those levers interact, and what brands that activated only one of them left on the table.
Five Principles for Smarter Sports Investment
From defining the goal before choosing the property, to measuring what moved people rather than just how many showed up, the playbook distills MarketCast's findings into five principles any brand can apply to its next sports investment decision.
Ready to measure what your sports investment is actually doing?
Talk to a MarketCast expert about your sponsorship and advertising effectiveness.