3 Tips For Live Sports Marketing With Programmatic

Streaming live sporting events often attracts some of the largest TV audiences in the US. Millions of viewers tune in to watch their favourite teams, which makes live sports marketing an opportunity to reach a broad and enthusiastic audience.  

While it’s still possible to watch live sports events through traditional TV channels, many viewers are ditching their cable subscriptions and watching live sports through connected TV (CTV) instead. 

From the NBA to the NFL, viewers are now tuning into streaming services to catch prime-time games live. In 2021, approximately 57.5 million viewers in the US watched digital live sports content at least once per month, a figure that is projected to rise to over 90 million by 2025.

Read on to learn how you can leverage programmatic advertising to tap into the marketing benefits of live sports events. 

Keep Track of the Most Popular Live Sports Events 

Sporting events are broadcast to audiences all over the world so that viewers who can’t be in the stands themselves can join in the excitement, too. 

Knowing which sporting events will be drawing audiences, and when they will livestream in 2023, will keep you on top of your live sports marketing strategy. 

Major Sporting Events in 2023 

We’ve compiled a list of the most impactful live sports events below. This will help you to plan your marketing efforts throughout the year!

Sporting Event	Time of Year
Super Bowl	February 2023
Daytona 500	February 2023
Kentucky Derby	May 2023
Formula 1	Year-Round
NHL Stanley Cup	June 2023
US Open Golf	June 2023
NBA Finals	July 2023
Wimbledon	July 2023
Women’s World Cup	July – August 2023

Get to Know Live Sports Audiences

Watching a big game brings people together. From living room Super Bowl parties to gathering in a local pub to watch over drinks, there is a sense of community amongst sports lovers. 

When your brand shows up to root for a football team, you have an opportunity to reach a dedicated and passionate audience. Understanding who that audience is will enable you to find alignment between your brand and their interests. 

To discover who the live sports audience is, you can conduct market research and analyze industry trends, and leverage that research to create customer profiles. Then, with a programmatic approach, you can personalize your ads so that they speak to the sports fans you’re trying to reach. 

3 Sports Marketing Strategies for Programmatic 

1. Engage Audiences With Connected TV Advertising

Traditional TV can be prohibitively expensive, especially for small or mid-size agencies. Connected TV (CTV) advertising is more cost-effective because it provides access to the open internet, and enhanced targeting and inventory selection. 

Connected TV is the term describing any type of TV that is capable of streaming digital video, including smart TVs and devices that facilitate the delivery of streaming video. CTV advertising delivers ads through these digital streaming channels. 

By leveraging CTV for live sports marketing, you’ll reach engaged viewers who have made the active choice to watch the programming. And, they don’t have the option to fast forward or skip any ads.

2. Reach Receptive Viewers With Contextual Targeting

Rather than targeting ads based on user behaviour, contextual advertising targets ads based on the environment in which an ad appears. Your ad is placed based on the content that a user is consuming at that time, which means you can reach users who are in a specific frame of mind. 

For example, if you’d like to advertise game day snacks to consumers who will be watching the Super Bowl, you can leverage contextual targeting to ensure your ads appear alongside Super Bowl coverage, like blogs and articles. Or, align your ads with fixtures or game results to reach users who are super engaged with sports. 

Contextual advertising is a cookieless targeting tactic that ensures ads are relevant to the page on which they appear, making it a perfect method to reach engaged sports fans.

3. Use Geotargeting to Find Relevant Audiences

Geotargeting is a targeting tactic that enables you to deliver ads based on a user’s location. You can target by country, state, US county, city, or zip code, or leverage a list of addresses or latitude and longitude coordinates to reach your ideal audiences. 

Leveraging geotargeting enables you to target and retarget consumers that pass through specific locations. To reach sports fans, you might set the radius around brick and mortar sporting goods stores, stadiums where fans attend games, or pubs where fans gather to watch.

Get Started With Live Sports Marketing

With viewers increasingly turning to streaming as a means to cheer on their favourite teams, there’s no better time than now to leverage digital channels to reach the live sports audience. 

CTV advertising, contextual targeting, geotargeting and DOOH are all effective strategies for reaching sports fans with live sports marketing. 

Want to know more about live sports marketing? Request a demo to learn more about StackAdapt.