At Brand Innovators’ Marketing Leadership Summit during SXSW London, I joined a panel with colleagues from rEvolution, Chipotle and the ECB to talk about the relationship between sport and culture and what it means for sports marketing today, particularly for brands trying to build deeper connections with consumers.
One idea kept resurfacing throughout: sport creates moments. Culture creates meaning around those moments.
It sounds simple. But when you pull on that thread, it changes how you think about where the real opportunity for brands actually sits.
Culture is people
We tend to talk about culture as though it exists separately from people. It doesn’t.
Culture is people. It’s the collective expression of our values, passions, identities and behaviours. If brands want to show up authentically in culture, they first need to understand the people creating it.
More than two thirds of the world’s population identify as sports fans. Football alone is followed by over half of the global population. That’s not a niche. That’s the mainstream.
Humans haven’t changed
Thousands of years ago, people gathered around fires. Then villages, churches and town halls. Today we gather around athletes, creators, artists, influencers and sports teams.
The platforms have changed. The need has not. People don’t simply seek content. They seek connection, identity and belonging. That’s always been true and it always will be.
Why live sport still matters
Sport remains one of the few experiences capable of bringing millions of people together in the same moment. Historically, it was appointment viewing, which concentrated audience attention into a single match, event or moment.
But that’s no longer the whole story. There’s far more storytelling around the sport now than there ever was, and that changes everything for brands.
The product used to be the match. Now it’s much more.
When I think about how fan behaviour has shifted, the clearest way I can describe it is this: the match used to be the product. Today, the product is everything around it.
The athletes. The rivalries. The documentaries. The podcasts. The social content. The creator ecosystem. The conversations. The communities.
All of that creates a genuine opportunity for brands to build deep, meaningful engagement with fans across media environments that are less expensive and less competitive than the stadium, the live broadcast or the match itself.
The great expansion of sports storytelling
We are consuming more information than at any point in human history.
Digital platforms, streaming services, social media and creator networks have fundamentally changed how sport is experienced. Fans no longer wait for the next match. They live inside an always-on narrative.
In many cases, the cumulative audience consuming content around a sporting event now exceeds the live viewing numbers for the event itself. The event has become the spark for a far greater media opportunity, spanning storytelling, sponsorship and advertising inventory that brands can meaningfully associate with.
Why this changes the opportunity for brands
For decades, the most valuable place for a brand to participate in sport was within the live moment itself. That remains true for some. For everyone else, a much larger opportunity has emerged.
For everyone else, a much larger opportunity has emerged.
A blue ocean now exists around sport: within the content, communities, conversations, creator ecosystem and culture that surrounds it. Whether that’s streaming, gaming, retail, forums, YouTube or Netflix, each of those environments represents additional content and value for brands to buy into.
The most effective brands are no longer simply buying visibility around sporting moments. They are identifying authentic, ownable roles within the stories that sport generates every day.
The future of sports marketing
The future of sports marketing isn’t about choosing between the moment and the story.
The moment creates emotion. The story extends attention. The culture creates relevance.
Sport creates the moments. Culture creates the meaning around them. And increasingly, that’s where the biggest opportunity for brands exists.
