Occam

23.03.2026 10:40 Last year, nearly all of the top 50 telecasts in the US were connected to sports. The 97th Oscars, SNL 50th, a 60 mins interview, an episode of The Floor and 67th Grammys were the exception. #27 was “NFL Weather Delay,” turns out we will watch anything with sports in the title. 😊 Sport is the last bastion of people watching live TV, and together. That is why streaming giants are getting into acquiring sports telecast rights. It is unsurprising then that marketers have been rushing into all sorts of sports advertising. Sponsorships of teams, dresses, balls/bats/cars/horses/sideboards/back panels for interviews. Running expensive paid media ads. Naming stadiums. And, more. At some point, a smart Sr. company leader asks: Look, I’ve enjoyed the hospitality suite, I’ve loved shaking hands with Tom Brady, and my mother-in-law thinks I’m da bomb for getting her into the clubhouse at Augusta National. But for $38 million dollars in marketing, is it doing anything for the business? Darn. Consequences. 😊 Let’s answer that question today. How to measure the impact of “Sports Marketing.” This blog post was published as Premium edition #497 of my newsletter. Each week, I share actionable insights and hidden patterns to stay at the bleeding edge of Marketing, Analytics, and AI. Sign up for TMAI Premium to accelerate your career trajectory. Prologue. It is critical to appreciate that all laws of marketing apply to sports marketing. If your paid media creative and “story” gets lost in the 1.2 seconds of attention on TikTok, the same happens to your logo on the sports car/t-shirt/back panel etc. In fact, in those situations since the purpose of watching is the game, you get even less attention. If spike and silence is the kiss of death for your normal marketing, it is exponentially worse for sports – getting the halo from the sport / player being transferred to your brand takes 5x more spike and sustain . If frequency of 3/User/Week is the sweet spot for normal marketing, with sports the “organic placement” is going to get ignored. You still need to get a frequency of 3/U/Wk to persuade for xy weeks. It will come from sports marketing with good old paid media . If an occasional normal marketing post by your “massive global” influenceris a waste of money as it gets barely any reach via Organic Social, expect the same to occur with your sports stars carrying your water bottle on to the court or making an occasional post about their sponsor Atlassian. If launching small pop-ups and boutique events has little business impact in normal marketing, beyond the few attendees, your hospitality tent at the Kentucky Derby or luxury suite at the SF Giants stadium will make your CXO and attending clients happy, those few clients might buy more/renew the SAAS contract, but there is little scale. If you follow my advice re optimal measurement below, you’ll discover this “dirty little secret” of sports marketing: Budgets allocated to sports marketing are best thought of as budgets allocated to developing creative. When sports marketing delivers business impact, it will all come from Paid Media Amplification of that creative – over years . Because many, many, many brands struggle with creative and storytelling. + Creative is responsible for 60% to 70% of all brand marketing success. = It can be super profitable to hand over your creative and storytelling to sports, inherit your brand values from the sport/athlete. Make this decision consciously. Understand the implications. Then.. MAKE SURE to ask for a ton of money to put paid media behind this creative – and the MMM will prove incremental profitability. I guarantee it. Higher Order Bits. My sports marketing measurement playbook consists of five distinct levels of sophistication: L5, pre-basic, to L1, gold standard. My “Impact Intelligence Score” will rate how smart/informed the company is about business impact at each level. Scale: 1 to 10. I’m going to use a made-up company, CloudPixel sponsoring the San Jose Earthquakes . Level 5: The Opening Gambit: Vanity. Speed of Impact: Superfast. Every brand starts here. Sadly, far too many stay here. L5 is the land of Big Numbers. They look very impressive on their slide decks . At this level, you are measuring activity, not outcomes. L5.1. Social Media Engagement. You’ll measure the best social media metrics: Conversation Rate. Applause Rate. Amplification Rate. Reported by each social platform. For your company’s organic posts or the sports team/athlete’s organic social posts. Bonus points for measuring sentiment in conversations. Unless you are doing something wrong, this activity should happen immediately, you can measure it just as fast, and often all the data is free. Tip: It is a good idea to establish measurement windows to start to get a sense of decay rates. Establish baselines, and see how the future is against that. L5.2. Sponsorship Recall. Nearly all decent sized sports sponsorships will come with my nemesis, the “Ad Recall” metric. Post-exposure surveys typically ask fans which brands they remember as sponsors – hopefully they say CloudPixel. Surveys could be at stadium exits, online on community sites, or via the Earthquakes CRM/newsletter sample. Tip: Often these surveys use an aided approach, which lowers signal quality. Are you aware the CloudPixel is a sponsor? Ask for unaided measurement. Split by “exposure intensity” , and identify deltas. L5.3. Earned Media Value. EMV. Also called: Ad Value Equivalency. AVE. The biggest fav of agencies selling you sports marketing packages. The biggest “con.” Software counts every appearance of the CloudPixel logo/name anywhere, for any number of seconds. That “placement” gets multiplied by the most expensive ad you can buy. You get told: Hey, all those placements would have cost you $72 million if you bought ads. EMV assumes all exposure is good exposure, ignores the quality and relevance of the audience, the lack of a dedicated marketing message, and the hyper-cluttered environment. Hence, EMV is widely discredited by major marketing associations . Tip: Stick to one vendor for consistency , and, obviously, track trends over time and report deltas. Level 5 Impact Intelligence Score: 1/10. No causality, no financial linkage, low signal quality, low decision readiness. We measure inputs, activity, are we visible, exposure, yada yada yada. We are literally measuring the noise. There is little to indicate if it is good noise, if there is any value. Certainly, measure it in the first few weeks of the campaign. In week five, move to L4. Level 4: Quest for Brand Impact. Speed of Impact: Months. First step toward understanding human impact, via a major upgrade… True test vs. control measurement of brand impact! No pre-post! For our CMO: Did sponsorship shift what people think and feel about CloudPixel? L4.1. UBA Lift. Unaided Brand Awareness is a challenging metric to move. It is a long-term revenue positivity driver. An effective sports marketing program should be able to move it. Even if it takes time to move. L4.2. Consideration & Intent Lift. When you report this, your CFO will lean in! You are in the top three brands, next time I’m in the market for SASS software. You are my #1 choice, next time I make a purchase. Powerful, no? Hard to move. Deliciously proven medium-term revenue impact. The methodology to measure L4.1 and L4.2 are the same: Our traditional brand tracker type survey instruments . Exposed consists of people who demonstrably saw our sponsored content – either the broadcast itself, highlights, our paid ads amplifying the sports creative, etc. Control will be similar people who were ideally not exposed or only minimally exposed. Relo Metrics, Nielsen, Kantar, are among the vendors we can use. Tip: Use propensity score matching to ensure that the test and control groups are truly comparable. Instrument variables to account for external factors . Six to nine months in, start to segment by audience type . Leven 4 Impact Intelligence Score: 4/10. Causality some, financial linkage low, signal quality medium, decision readiness, low. Whie self-reported intent ≠ actual purchase behavior, still there is a ton of science in measuring perception shifts, and the causal impact specifically of sports marketing. L4 measurement is even more helpful for B2B companies, with extremely long or complex sales cycles. Start measuring in the first quarter of the sports marketing program and then keep a periodic pulse going for test of the five years of investment. In a handful of quarters, you’ll be ready to move to L3. The Journey Continues. Achieving level 4 will get you into the game, but to truly get to proving to your CFO, your Board, that your Sports Marketing investment is delivering a profitable impact… There are three more levels to nirvana… Level 3, “The Heart & Mind Influence”, gets to insights into compounding brand advantage. Level 2, “The First Digital Trace”, helps you identify to financial outcomes driven. Level 1, “Show Me THE MONEY!,” ensures you prove the ultimate: Incrementality! L3, L2, L1, are covered in detail in TMAI #498. If you are a Premium Subscriber and can’t find that edition, or a new Premium Subscriber, please email me for a copy. Bottom line. Sports marketing can be immensely effective – even transformative. Ex: Rolex and tennis. With Level 5 measurement, you can tune creative and activation to ensure your $$$ are spent on getting you visibility. With Level 4, you get to prove to the CMO that her choice to invest in sports marketing is proving initial hints of something actually valuable: foundational shifts in the Big 3 Brand KPIs. Stop sponsoring in the dark. Turn the lights on. PS: Special Bonus: A podcast version of the Sports Marketing Playbook! The post Sports Marketing Measurement Playbook. appeared first on Occam's Razor by Avinash Kaushik.