Lacking a major tentpole event like the Olympic Games or World Cup in 2025, sports marketers will focus on the blocking and tackling work of building audiences by targeting sports fans using data and engaging on social media and gaming platforms to build excitement around events.
While 2025 lacks Olympic-sized tentpoles, sports marketers will still look to some large events to draw crowds. The Super Bowl is expected to kick off the year with record ad sales, and the buildup to the Winter Games in Feb. 2026 should provide some oxygen to late 2025.
Drawing audiences to live and broadcast sporting events will require a stronger focus on engaging fans in multiple platforms with interactive entertainment and rich content such as behind-the-scenes content, athlete commentary and opportunities for fans to engage.
“Sports marketers should continue to focus on meeting fans where they’re at rather than just expecting fans to come to them. The landscape for ingesting and interacting with sports content continues to evolve,” said Adam Falkson, VP Business Intelligence for the Detroit Pistons. On the vein, the basketball team just launched Pistons World, an interactive fan experience built on the MeetKai platform. With the increased fragmentation of media “offering fans engaging content to view and interact with should be at the forefront to capture attention, drive interest and eventually drive increased fandom.”
New Leagues, New Opportunities
After the effect of the 2024 Olympics and the surge in women’s sports in 2024, 2025 will be a more challenging year for marketers, who will look for opportunities to add to their efforts in the Big 4 pro sports—baseball, basketball, football and hockey. Marketers will explore opportunities in sports such as soccer, rugby and flag football, which are catching on with U.S. audiences.
Sports sponsorships are becoming expensive, said Nicole McCormack, SVP/General Manager of Brand Solutions at TeamSnap, a youth sports communications platform. For brands that don’t have a budget for Big 4 sponsorships, identifying up-and coming opportunities will become more important to “carve out a bit of white space for yourself in a very cluttered and expensive sports sponsorship environment.”
Sports that have large followings outside the U.S., such as soccer and Formula 1 racing, are expected to gain more attention and ad dollars in 2025. Soccer is particular will see a lift, as the sport gains from the move to Miami of the international star Lionel Messi and the ramp-up to the 2026 World Cup, which will play across North America. Meanwhile, Formula 1 is gaining a following thanks to the popularity of the Netflix series “Drive to Survive.”
“Formula 1 is on fire right now,” said Kate Dzhevaga, CMO & Head of Growth at agency SYMVOLT. “With a whopping 24 races scheduled, brands have a golden opportunity to connect with this expanding audience.” She noted marketers such as Heineken and Pirelli have already benefitted from integrating marketing into the F1 experience, “and you can bet more brands will follow suit.”
The popularity of women’s sports will also continue to grow, after the transformative season that saw women athletes capture the public’s imagination, and marketers will dedicate more budgets and effort to that segment. The WTA, the women’s tennis association, is expected to launch a new brand in the coming year, with a strong focus both athletics and entertainment, as well as the athletes’ impact beyond the court, said Sarah Swanson, Chief Brand Officer of WTA Ventures.
The expansion of a number of pro leagues—such as the WNBA, which is adding new teams in 2025 and 2026, and the National Women’s Soccer League, expansion to 16 teams—and the launch of new leagues such as the Women’s Hockey League and next year’s launch of the Women’s Elite Rugby League, leave a lot of runway for marketers who want to invest in women’s sports. Both the WNBA and NWSL have signed multi-year, multimillion media deals that should attract advertising in 2025 and fuel growth.
“The women’s sports ecosystem is truly at an inflection point,” said Rick Rhodes, Zeno Group’s Global Head of Sports & Entertainment Consulting. “The decisions being made today will determine what the future of the industry looks like in the coming decades.”
Sports gaming is also projected to grow at double-digit rates this decade, with four more states having launched legal sports betting in 2024 and more expected to launch in 2025. Meanwhile, as the practice grows, regulators and the industry will continue to manage the evolution of legal sports gambling in 2024.
Legislators continue to draw rules to provide guardrails for the practice, while marketers develop their own responsibility guidelines. TeamSnap’s McCormack noted a number of sports organizations, such as the PLAY Sport Coalition, are trying to funnel some of the funds from sports gambling back into youth sports, for example.
“I expect to see us continue to focus on making sure that we’re welcoming as many people in as possible, spending the resources to do that well and continuing to make sure that we lead this category responsibly,” said Andrew Sneyd, CMO at FanDuel. “I’m excited that we worked really hard to keep brand marketing off of college campuses in the US. We worked with our partners in industry, to set that as a key rule for the growth in this category. We’re committed to making sure we build this thing the right way.”
Audience-Building Will be Key
Encouraging fandom, via social media participation (from both fans and athletes) and user-generated content, will be a stronger drive for marketers in 2025. To build engagement, clubs already loosening their grip on their intellectual property in order to encourage user-generated content, and experts anticipate that development will continue.
“Stadium attendance has less to do with the sport than it does with what teams and leagues are doing to create a worthwhile experience for fans,” said Andres Cardenas, CMO of Minute Media, parent of The Players Tribune. He compared the challenge to the the film industry’s efforts to drive moviegoers to buy tickets. “Ultimately I believe fans will show up for quality entertainment, a sense of community with fellow fans, connectivity to athletes and a comfortable environment,” he said.
The Olympics provided a useful test case for the athlete as social influencer in 2024; the effect is only going to become more pronounced in 2025, say observers. They note how gymnast Steven “Pommel Horse Guy” Nedoroscik and rugby player Ilona Maher rose to stardom based on social media activity.
“In 2025 we believe there will be pressure to continue to market sport as entertainment, without losing its essence,” said the WTA’s Swanson. “Fans want insight, so social media will remain key to showing the athletes on and off court, creating a direct connection between player and audience. We want to show more authenticity: what their interests are, who their team is, how they dress, how they decompress…and how they react to success and defeat in a genuine, unfiltered way.”
Sports organizations are increasingly focused on helping athletes build their presence outside their sport, and building their personal brands. The decision that gave college athletes freedom to cash in on their name, image and likeness (NIL) has added more fuel to that trend. Basia Wojcik, VP sports at agency TMA noted teams are updating facilities to include production
studios so athletes can create content and expand their personal brands. “Teams are
missing a huge opportunity if they don’t,” she said.
The Taylor Swift-Travis Kelce moment during Super Bowl LVIII last February crystalized the potential of sports and entertainment crossovers, and marketers are taking notice.
“We’ve seen an incredible convergence of sport, fashion, music, entertainment, etc. over the past few years. We believe that will continue to rise as audiences continue to be more engaged with all of the cultural pieces that make up sport,” said Cardenas. He noted there’s been a rise in major brand moments and engagement for events such as the U.S. Open and New York Fashion Week that allow both sport and fashion brands to cross over to a wider, more culturally-engaged audience.
Marketers will have spend a lot of time crunching data and sorting out their options as the sports market fragments even further, say observers.
“There’s a ton of opportunity,” said McCormack. “It makes the job harder because there’s more to consider and more to evaluate, but it’s also exciting that there’s so much more opportunity and so many more ways for brands to get involved.”
