The FOX/WBC/ESPN sports streaming merger is the latest in a long line of fragmentation of sports in the media landscape. It used to be easy, Prime Time cable covered the based on ALL of your sport’s needs, with ESPN8 The Ocho needed if you wanted to catch the latest round of the Quidditch World Cup! But as streaming services became mainstream, sports became the battleground for subscriptions and engagement. The consumer decision went from “which cable provider is in my area and the best option for my needs”, to needing to weigh up the multitude of options and permutations in the fragmentation of the sports lumascape. A lumascape which includes options such as Cable Networks extensions  (YouTube TV & Hulu) Streaming only prime time  (Amazon and THF, Netflix and Monday Night WWE Raw and Peacock’s first streaming-only NFL play-off game), not to mention the potential of this becoming fragmentation being even more complex with regional networks like Sinclair potentially launching their own sports streaming service. This compounding fragmentation leaves both consumers and advertisers in a quandary, with consumers asking “where do I put my income to pay for the right services to get my sports fix” and for advertisers, it becomes “where is my next best dollar spent in this fragmented landscape to connect with my target audiences?” As an agency, we need to address these needs/challenges by assessing where do we put my bigger bets of investment/partnerships and how we can create efficiencies in his fragmented marketplace”?

For us, it starts with considering our client base and what the collective need is. Big Pharma and Telecom brands have a vastly different media needs than a regional retailer or a local QSR brand. We consider details such as the consumer profile, geography requirements, and sports fan bases, to name just a few. Once we have these, we are able to identify where we go deep with partnership. As you highlighted this fragmentation of the marketplace means we cannot be everywhere at once for our clients due to the fact that advertisers across the board are mindful of their media budgets in 2024, given the inflationary marketplace driven by the Olympics and especially in local and regional markets by the election, not to mention the fact that sports has the highest CPMs in the marketplace! So, we pick where to go deep in order to extract more value from these partnerships which goes well beyond pure cost! We curate these partnerships to of course aim to lower our clients’ costs through economies of scale via upfront commitments (where possible) but we believe the true value comes more from the unique integrations that can be created for our clients. For example, there is often a requirement to spend on other properties in their portfolio if you want the good stuff. If you want a spot in the championship game, you may have to spend on other properties you aren’t as interested in.  We always explore the level of flexibility with our clients to understand the goal so we can bring various options that might include an ad in the big game or less expensive options that can reach the same audience but in more creative, out-of-the-box ways that can maximize limited budgets – still embracing the sports ecosystem. That out-of-the-box thinking continues as we explore creative ways of integrating our brands into these preferred media properties. Whether this be second screen takeovers or on-show integrations or custom content and amplification through partner talent and IP.  We always look to leverage the full breadth of the value our partners can provide vs going straight to cost only.

In summary, with sports being of the few remaining programming types that garner large amounts of live, engaged audiences, it is mission-critical for our clients that we are not only up to speed with the rapid evolution of this space, but we are creating future-facing partnerships and value knowing what’s likely coming next.  Synchronous viewing and reaching a large audience at a specific moment in time, who deliver high attention and engagement is increasingly rare in today’s fragmented and on-demand world.   The sports eco-system can burn through budget quickly given the complexity and fragmentation, but if you put your clients first to understand their collective consumers viewing behavior, you can deliver truly unique integrated media experiences to both integrate into prime-time moments and elevate your brand above the competition via deeper and richer engagement opportunities.