How to Advertise in Sports: Your Playbook for Global Impact

Whether it’s your brand on the pitch, ringside, courtside or plastered across a global icon’s Instagram – sports advertising is where passion meets performance. Here’s how to get started.

Why Sports Advertising Works

Sport is universal. It cuts across borders, generations, and cultures. It’s emotional, tribal, and deeply personal. And that makes it an unbeatable vehicle for brand storytelling. Whether you’re a challenger brand or a global powerhouse, sports can amplify your message in ways few other channels can.

In this opening article of our “How to Advertise in Sports” series, we’ll explore the key ways brands enter the world of sport – from official partnerships and headline-grabbing activations to ambassador-led campaigns. We’ll also look at the benefits of each route and how to pick your play.

Subsequent articles will dive deeper into specific opportunities like the Premier League, F1, NBA, and more – and we’ll update this guide with those links as we go.

1. Partnerships: Aligning With the Rights Holders

At the top of the playbook are official partnerships – the one-to-one relationships brands form with rights holders: football clubs, racing teams, national federations, governing bodies, or even major international tournaments. These are the “official” deals, like Floki x Nottingham Forest, Qatar Airways x FIFA, or DAMAC x Chelsea FC.

These partnerships are often multi-faceted and can include:

• Branding Visibility: Shirt sponsorships, perimeter boards, broadcast backdrops, and digital overlays.
• IP Usage Rights: Logos, player images, team assets – all licensed for your marketing.
• Hospitality & Access: VIP suites, meet-and-greets, training ground experiences – perfect for clients or internal incentives.
• Fan Engagement Tools: First-party data, email access, competitions, and community campaigns.

It’s not just about slapping your logo on a shirt – it’s about leveraging that connection to create 360° marketing campaigns that drive awareness, credibility, and loyalty.

💡 Tip: A good partnership is built like a campaign platform. What content will you create? What rights can you activate? What audience are you targeting and where?

The scale is flexible:

• Smaller brands may partner with second-tier clubs, up-and-coming leagues, or regional teams.
• Global players may aim for front-of-shirt deals in the Premier League, Serie A, or NBA.

Because these are negotiated directly, there’s huge room to shape the scope. Want to include Asia-focused digital rights only? Done. Want to activate across F1 paddocks, club home games, and ambassador social feeds? That’s possible too.

Bottom line: Partnerships aren’t just a media buy – they’re a long-term brand statement, placing your company shoulder-to-shoulder with the most trusted names in sport.

📍 Need some inspiration? Learn how our multi-layered approach allowed Floki to maximise their exposure with Notts Forest in the Premier League

2. Activations: Making Noise Around the Sport

For brands that want flexibility, speed, and buzz without a long-term tie-in, sports activations are the answer.

Activations are dynamic campaigns that wrap around the sport – not always through official channels, but often just as powerful. These include:

• OOH Campaigns: From airport takeovers and metro domination to citywide billboards timed with sporting moments (like Adidas’s fake billboard at Dubai Frame during Messi’s World Cup win).
• Event Licensing: Using tournament names, logos, and imagery through official event rights (e.g. Paris Olympics advertising rights).
• Venue-Based Experiences: Fan zones, on-site product trials, AR games, or exclusive lounges during events.
• Reactive Campaigns: Timely, social-first creative designed to go viral alongside sporting moments.

Activations are especially effective for:

• Launching a product tied to a specific event or result
• Testing markets where a full sponsorship may be premature
• Building noise fast, especially in digital and OOH channels

And because these aren’t always locked into long-term contracts, they can be highly cost-effective and campaign-specific. You can align with sporting passion, without becoming a full-time partner.

💡 Case in point: During Riyadh Season, brands activated campaigns around Fury vs Ngannou, leveraging the hype without being the event’s primary sponsor. The results? Massive impressions, strong social chatter, and a perfect storm of cultural relevance.

Activations can also dovetail neatly with rights from broader sponsorship deals. Got access to player appearances? Use them for an interactive pop-up. Partnered with a league? Run a fan contest around a live fixture.

Smart brands use activations to amplify core deals or to trial new ideas in high-stakes, high-reach moments.

📍 Want to know more? Explore Riyadh Season’s UK Transport takeover ahead of Fury v Ngannou

3. Ambassadors: Put a Face to Your Brand

Ambassador deals bring the power of personality to your campaign. It’s one thing to sponsor a team – but quite another to have Cristiano Ronaldo staring down the camera with your product in hand.

What to expect from a good ambassador deal:

• Content Creation: Filming, social posts, image usage
• Campaign Longevity: Many deals run for 6–12 months, with options to extend
• Credibility: Instant fan trust, especially when aligned authentically

Selection is everything. Choose ambassadors based on market relevance, following, values alignment, and fanbase overlap. A Tyson Fury campaign won’t hit the same note as a Simone Biles one – and that’s exactly the point.

📍 See Our Global Ambassadors

Why It Works: The Benefits of Sports Advertising

✔ Audience Reach: Global audiences in the hundreds of millions.

✔ Emotional Buy-in: Sports fans are loyal – to teams and to sponsors.

✔ Brand Association: Align with excellence, victory, and cultural relevance.

✔ Multi-Channel Potential: TV, digital, out-of-home, social, experiential.

✔ Customisation: Tailor your approach by region, language, and fan type.

Ready to Get in the Game?

At World Sports Advertising, we help brands plug into the sports world at every level. From global partnerships to guerrilla activations, we’ll tailor a campaign that fits your goals, market, and budget.

👉 Contact Us to start planning your campaign.