AI in sports sponsorship: Driving new revenues for teams

In a world where social media posts by athlete influencers deliver almost three times higher engagement than traditional influencers – and on average upwards of a 7x ROI on sponsorship campaigns (iSport Connect) – sports teams have a prime opportunity to monetise their digital content by leveraging AI in sports sponsorship.

The sports sponsorship market is forecast to reach a projected value of almost $108bn by 2030 (statista). In an increasingly competitive landscape, sponsors today crave measurable and authentic ways to connect with sports audiences, recognising the unmatched power fandom brings.

Historically, sports teams have relied on kit branding, pitchside hoardings and matchday programmes to activate sponsor partners. But teams are shifting away from these legacy activations. AI is enabling teams to generate monetisable digital content at scale, providing new sponsorable inventory and increased digital engagement for brands to tap into.

Digital engagement is key

Digital engagement is the foundation of sports sponsorship. The more engagement a sports team generates on its owned properties, the more attractive its audience becomes for potential sponsors.

44% of sports fans today look up stats when watching live games, but before the days of digital content, the stadium itself was the hub of engagement. While pitchside advertising and placements in the matchday programme drove genuine value two decades ago, they’re no longer enough in today’s digital world.

The largest sports organisations are investing in their owned digital experiences beyond matchday. By engaging fans for the full season across the official club app, website, OTT platform and social media channels, teams can create new sponsorable assets to monetise year-round.

Crucially, these channels drive contextual relevance and hold real-time personalisation and data capture potential that offline sponsor activations don’t.

Measurable with clear engagement metrics, these digital assets provide valuable fan data that allows sports teams to increase fan monetisation, sponsor value and even deliver tailored, segmented activations for specific brands within a local region, or for a sponsor targeting a certain age demographic.

Examples of new digital content that sports teams are utilising to increase sponsorship revenues includes:

• Augmented broadcast feeds – thanks to machine learning, teams can deliver stats-driven matchday broadcasts and alternative viewing options, allowing sponsors to ‘own’ a tailored matchday viewing experience or specific moments.
• Augmented audio visual content – From data-driven highlight clips to social media graphics and in-stadia replays, teams can create immersive fan experiences and allow sponsors to tie their brand to moments when engagement is highest.
• Free-to-play games (F2P), widgets, social creative & more – A sports digital offering can include countless new sponsorable touchpoints which drive brand exposure across club-owned platforms.

Using AI in sports sponsorship to generate new sponsorable assets

Premier League team Brentford FC recently leveraged AI to deliver a first-of-a-kind sponsorable category. Partnering with Genius Sports, Brentford FC is presenting brand new sponsorable highlight clips on the big screens inside the Gtech Community Stadium and on social media. Enabled by computer vision technology, the highlights feature data-driven overlays including shot speed and player names, with prime logo placements for sponsor Gtech to drive maximum impact after each goal.

This next-generation storytelling is made possible through AI. By understanding what’s happening in the game by measuring billions of real-time data points based on each player on the pitch, this technology is able contextualise the live game to pair rich tracking data with real-time augmentation to add sponsorable data-driven graphics and visualisations to video feeds in real-time.

Imagine a real-time sponsorable xG metric placed above the goal within an instant replay video or an automated highlight reel including passing distance and a touch map, minutes after a central midfielder’s player-of-the-match performance.

Whether it’s shot power, shot speed, passing distance, player location or a data activation that’s more bespoke (like a line-breaking pass), AI is enabling new sponsorable digital content for sports teams – and it’s already proving a gamechanger when it comes to fan monetisation and sponsor activation for the likes of Brentford FC and Leeds United.

Leveraging AI in sports sponsorship to drive true sponsorship value

The value for brands in today’s world of digital-first sponsorable sports content is clear. Whether it’s augmented highlight clips, stats-driven widgets or free-to-play games, sponsors can drive greater contextual relevance from their sports sponsorship in more powerful ways than ever before.

By aligning the brand logo and message with high-engagement touchpoints and key moments during live matches and across the full season, brands get maximum exposure, better CPMs and increased brand recall. For sports teams, creating new inventory provides new routes to monetise their digital audience.

Benefits to the sponsor of activating within digital content includes:

1. Maximum exposure: Instead of relying on extremely broad placements, brands can “own” vital moments when fans are most engaged, such as goal replays, post-match highlights and social media assets.
2. Unique brand authenticity: What better way to engage fans than integrating with the biggest moments in sport? Brands get much bigger ROI ont their sports sponsorship spend when they’re part of the action.
3. A powerful presence: Every moment in every game is an opportunity for your sponsors. Thanks to the emergence of AI, teams and brands can deliver rich, personalised content to fans in the stadium, on social media and in the official club mobile app.

AI in sports sponsorship: What’s Next?

While offline activations remain today, sports teams have new powerful channels at their fingertips to drive sports sponsorship revenues. AI enables sports teams to product engaging digital content at scale, at every moment during the game and year-round – tailored to each fan segment and international markets.

The result is infinite storytelling opportunities and an exciting new world for brands to maximise their sponsorship value.