In my book, Gamechangers and Rainmakers, I explain how the idea of sponsoring sports events became a serious thing at the 1978 FIFA World Cup, after the owner of Adidas and his colleagues came up with the idea of selling rights on a category exclusive basis. The “official partner” was born and for the next 15 years, marketing packages were sold to companies like Coca-Cola and Philips as cheap media buys that delivered millions of eyeballs on the side of an F1 car, front of a football shirt, or around the stadium perimeter.
The fragmenting audiences of the 1990s then gave birth to a new breed of marketeer – led by the likes of Nike and Vodafone – who were fighting in increasingly cluttered markets. They identified sport as a powerful storytelling platform to put some blue water between themselves and their competitors. Think of Nike’s iconic airport advert featuring the Brazilian team in 1998.
The 90s was the decade when sports sponsorship came of age and developed into a serious strategic marketing platform, with the likes of the Champions League and Olympics emerging as premium content for brands to wrap themselves around. Over the past 40 years, the concept of the official partner has therefore powered the extraordinary growth of the sponsorship industry, with Omnicom estimating it is a market now worth over $100bn. The cost of putting your name on the front of the famous red shirt of Manchester United has increased from £500k in 1985 to its current value of £60m per season.
A seismic shift in marketing
Sports marketing is, however, a sub-set of the wider marketing industry – and that’s undergoing a seismic structural shift, with 70 per cent of the $1 trillion global ad market getting hoovered up by Meta, Alphabet, TikTok and Alibaba. While ad-supported subscription tiers from Netflix and Amazon now offer new opportunities for advertisers to reach on demand audiences.
A generation of marketers who grew up talking the language of brand awareness and linear TV are therefore confronted by a rapidly changing media landscape: a digital one driven by streaming platforms, content creators and social media. Hence why the global marketing director of Coca-Cola announced that 60 per cent of his future ad spend would be committed to these channels back in 2023.
There are of course a few exceptions, such as the NFL and NBA, who have invested heavily in their digital future, but most sports properties have made modest attempts to monetise their digital real estate. Instead, they’ve left it to companies like DAZN and Sportradar to figure out the digital play or bundled inventory into media and marketing packages alongside other rights.
“Most sports properties have made modest attempts to monetise their digital real estate”
Sport’s wake-up call
The industry has not moved with the times. And, as long-standing supporters of the Olympics such as Toyota and Panasonic have withdrawn their support, and other sports properties struggle to attract sponsorship, the conclusion has to be drawn that brands are being sold the same stuff they’ve been sold since the 1970s.
Another issue to face up to is that sponsorship has developed into an inflexible marketing channel with fees and assets fixed over multiple years. This has worked spectacularly well for big properties like the Uefa Champions League where demand has outstripped supply, but in 2025 this business model looks dated.
And not only is it limiting to the changing needs of commercial partners, but it excludes categories like travel and retail from investing in sports marketing who think in four-week campaign cycles – not four-year contract terms.
A new vision for the official partner
Moving forwards, the sports industry must learn to think differently if it wants to stay relevant to modern-day marketing and profit from the digital first wave. Which means hitting reset on the idea of the official partner: a pioneering concept that has served it brilliantly but has hardly evolved since Horst Dassler and Patrick Nally came up with it four decades ago.
The good news is that live sport is well-placed to capitalise on digital disruption. In an on-demand world, sport stands alone as appointment-to-view programming.
Sport has a few options. Properties could think about selling some of their inventory on a campaign-to-campaign basis. Smaller sports could unite to create a geo-targeted marketplace that offer brands precision and scale. If I’m a brand targeting young females, I could therefore include a tactical package of netball and women’s football inventory on my media plan. Or, if I’m seeking to reach outdoor adventurers in the summer months I could buy the climbing, skateboarding and surfing package.
“In an on-demand world, sport stands alone as appointment-to-view programming”
Shoppable sports media
Sports content also possesses many of the characteristics needed to evolve into ‘performance media’ – ads that drive a direct response – while new tech enables ads to be served seamlessly into the live production workflow. Messages can thus react dynamically to real-time happenings on the field of play. So, if a goal is scored, betting odds can be changed immediately on LED boards, or if a top speed is achieved then Vodafone broadband can celebrate it through a contextualised pop-up graphic.
Additional media buys could incorporate QR codes, clickable icons and dynamic broadcast graphics. Audi would then be able to promote test drives; Allianz could offer discounts to new customers; and Pepsi could drive product trial through sampling – with these ad placements pushing audiences through to online destinations and marketplaces to buy goods and services. So, if you like the look of Ronaldo’s boots – click on them now and buy them on Nike’s website. It’s shoppable sports media.
Programmatic ad campaigns
This, of course, is precisely how billions of dollars of advertising are currently traded in the digital marketplace. The prize on offer is for sport to earn its place on the media plan of programmatic ad campaigns: a multi-billion-dollar segment of the advertising industry which it presently hardly taps into at all.
We therefore find ourselves at the dawn of an exciting new era. A third wave in the history of sports marketing which will not only move the brand dial but also get the tills ringing.
Liverpool FC has been one of sports digital media pioneers through its work with Expedia. The club has also been open to taking risks in the live space such as the groundbreaking live content capture strategy with Google Pixel that led to that iconic Mo Salah selfie in front of the Kop.
Imagine, though, if that spontaneous moment had been followed up by a shoppable LED and digital media campaign offering limited-edition Pixel 9 phones with pre-loaded LFC content. I suspect the server at the Google online store would have gone into meltdown.
For these kinds of ideas to flourish, the sports marketing business model will need to adapt, and rights holders will need to start thinking very differently. It will also require a move away from the rigid ‘rights for rights fees’ relationship that has been central to the way sports marketing packages have been traded for over 40 years.
Sports leaders, advertisers and their agencies will also need to get comfortable planning campaigns together and sharing data on clicks, shares, quotes and buys. Meanwhile, deals will need to get structured with an element of remuneration linked to hitting concrete targets such as the number of samples shipped, test drives requested, and insurance policies sold.
For many, this idea will be a step into the unknown, discombobulating and deeply scary. However, others will identify the sizeable prize on offer which is the opportunity to claim a share of the $500bn digital advertising market. After all, as the author A A Milne once said: “One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries.”
David Stubley is chair of Omnicom’s sport and entertainment company FUSE, and author of Gamechangers & Rainmakers: How Sport Became Big Business.
