By Eric Herd, Head of Sports & Emerging Products, Yieldmo
Don’t look now, but sports leagues and their franchises are positioned to become the next industry powerhouse, much like today’s retail media networks (RMNs).
Franchises, leagues, and athletes now sit atop the same core assets that retailers utilized to create RMNs: first-party data, owned inventory, and trusted relationships with consumers. In sports, this would equate to fandom.
And for marketers, there’s no greater golden goose than fandom. It’s always been a powerful draw because, at its core, it represents attention, loyalty, and emotional investment. In fact, 55% of sports fans reported that promotions from retail brands associated with sporting events influenced their purchasing decisions. Not only are these critical metrics that drive today’s campaigns, but they’re also incredibly scarce in today’s fragmented media landscape.
Live sports have also quickly become the crown jewel of CTV, marking a significant shift from sponsorships that were once limited to physical activations and logo placements. As digital media investment grows, teams and leagues will borrow from the RMN playbook to extend fan engagement and monetization well beyond game day.
The Retail Media Network Playbook
Retailers like Amazon, Kroger, Walmart, and Target have leveraged shopper data and omnichannel experiences to create premium, always-on ad inventory. In doing so, they created an entirely new revenue stream on top of their core businesses.
In little time, RMNs reshaped budgets and shifted power away from traditional publishers. Ads rooted in retailers’ first-party data have proven more relevant, more personalized, and far more profitable.
When you own both the customer relationship and the data, you hold the leverage.
Sports have similar building blocks, including stadiums and digital properties, rich fan data from ticketing and merchandise sales, and advertiser demand through sponsorships. As more ownership groups acquire teams across multiple leagues, the other investments in their portfolios, such as real estate, restaurants, and venues, are not necessarily in the sports world but add value to an RMN play.
Just as RMNs built new revenue streams, sports can extend sponsorships into digital channels, multiplying reach and inventory while deepening fan engagement.
Game Day Goes Beyond the Final Buzzer
As a cultural product, the influence of live sports extends well past the stadium and the game clock.. The 21 hours off the field are disproportionately undervalued and ripe for investment from teams, leagues, media companies, brands, and fans; however, 60% of fans live outside their team’s home market. This means that physical activations and owned and operated channels are only scratching the surface of potential reach.
Sports fans are constantly engaging with their favorite leagues and teams through highlights, following players, reading sports news, or debating outcomes on a near 24/7 basis across digital platforms.
The sophistication of an ad tech platform hasn’t yet caught up to the sports industry. But it’s getting there. And marketers are starting (slowly) to tap into this mindset. Live sports and CTV are an incredible representation of this. Live sports have become the most coveted industry in streaming media today. Advertisers are currently paying a premium for the guaranteed reach in an otherwise fragmented environment.
At this very moment, CTV’s reliance on live sports and the potential of sports as an always-on RMN presents an opportunity to connect sponsorship beyond 2-3 hours of a game and tap into an entire ecosystem of fandom surrounding it.
ROI and the Pressure to Get Points on the Board
As valuations soar, private equity firms have poured billions into professional leagues and teams. Minority stakes are now common, embedding investors deep into ownership and infrastructure. With that comes new expectations: wins and losses matter, but measurable returns matter more. There has never been more pressure put on sports to perform.
Traditional tactics, such as logo patches, naming rights, and in-person activations, are revealing themselves to have limited accountability. Investors expect the same performance metrics and scale delivered in digital media. That shift is already visible in streaming media rights, where buyers demand outcome-based results from premium video. But this is only half of the game.
Sports franchises and their leagues are standing at the same inflection point retailers faced over a decade ago. They need to start thinking like media companies, not just sports properties.
This means allocating partnership activation budgets more efficiently, beyond the stadium. They need to be bolder and multiply owned and operated channels to connect sponsorships to digital channels. And most importantly, they need to bring their partners along to meet fans in the moments that matter most, not just during events but also on off-days and in the off-season.
The franchises that find success won’t just be fielding a team to compete; they’ll become a publisher and media platform in their own right. The blueprint for success is already out there. Now is the time for the leagues and franchises to take the ball and run.
