Maybe you know a Ted Lasso superfan who flew to London because they wanted to see the locations from Apple TV’s soccer-centric dramedy in person. Or you heard about someone making plans to go to Paris to squeeze some of this summer’s Olympics viewing in between plenty of wine and Eiffel Tower selfies. Either way, it seems like sports are the reason behind a lot of leisure trips these days. 

The research backs it up. In Infillion’s new report, “The New Sports Fan,” one of the trends we had an eye on was the rise of “sports tourism” – planning a vacation, often an international one, around seeing a live sport. While 26% of sports fans in our survey said they’d be open to traveling outside the country to watch a favorite sport or team, that number rose to 35% for millennial sports fans and 47% for Gen-Z sports fans. When we broke this down by income level, there was no real distinction. In other words, taking a vacation to see a team play isn’t something that is exclusively the domain of wealthy sports fans.

Sports tourism is a thing. And brands should be taking action. But how?

What’s behind sports tourism?

There are two major factors that seem to be the primary contributors to the rise of sports tourism in the U.S. The first is that American sports fans are now increasingly becoming fans of sports whose fan bases and major competitions have historically been overseas. This is happening in large part due to the availability of these sports on streaming media, giving American viewers easier access to the likes of Premier League soccer, Formula 1 car racing, and Major League Cricket. Fan bases are developing in turn – and they’re excited.

In Infillion’s research, which used our Phonic AI-based voice survey technology, this came up over and over again in voice responses. You can read some of them in our full report. But overall, these fans of once-niche-in-the-U.S. sports – both longtime fans and newcomers – are newly willing to make a trip out of seeing the game in person. Don Steele, a New York City resident and lifelong fan of North London’s Arsenal FC, says he’s now taken three different jaunts across the pond to see the team play. “As special as the games are, there is something magical about the walk from a tube stop to a stadium with the other fans, walking by (and going into) the pubs along the walk, buying scarves that relate to the team’s histories, and of course hearing songs you can only faintly understand on TV,” Steele explains. “The atmosphere is truly second to none and I always feel uplifted by the experience.”

American sports go for destination games

The second factor at play in the rise of “sports tourism” is that American sports leagues are increasingly looking to international audiences for growth. (That ad about football in Ghana during this month’s Super Bowl was not a coincidence.) The NFL has been playing games in Europe for several years, and a few teams like the Jacksonville Jaguars – whose owner also owns a Premier League soccer team – have built up sizable overseas fan bases. So has the NBA, where a high number of foreign-born players have drawn followings in their home countries, and some teams like the Brooklyn Nets regularly play outside the U.S. That means opportunities to see a favorite American team play abroad can be the catalyst for an international vacation.

New York City resident Tanya Giles, a diehard Buffalo Bills fan, learned that the team would be playing a game in London, “thought it was the perfect opportunity to visit London with my family and support my team,” and booked tickets. “Even though the Bills lost, it was a highlight to my year,” she recounts.

For San Diego-based soccer fan Kara Fitzpatrick, sports tourism is a lifestyle. She flew to France to watch the U.S. women’s national team play in the World Cup finals in 2019, and was ready to do it again in 2023 in Australia, except that the U.S. team was unexpectedly knocked out early. “It’s an easy win-win: cheering for your team on the world’s biggest stage, and visiting a cool place at the same time,” she says. “It also feels good to support small businesses and local restaurants. In between game days we take small side trips to other parts of the country to get the most out of our time there.”

But sports vacations don’t have to go halfway around the world. Monisha Longacre, an Atlanta resident, knows fellow Atlantans who have already booked tickets to Ireland to see Georgia Tech face off against Florida State in college football’s ACC season opener in Dublin. But her own itinerary currently points to Las Vegas. She and her family are hardcore followers of Louisiana State University’s football team – they regularly travel to see the team play, and this year there’s a Labor Day Weekend game in Vegas against the University of Southern California.

“As soon as we got the 2024 schedule and saw they were playing in Vegas, we all made it a priority to go together,” Longacre says of her family. But they’re planning to do much more than just watch the game; it’ll be the first trip to Las Vegas for her two children, both of whom are now over 21 and can now legally gamble and drink alcohol. “They are excited to experience the full breadth of ‘Sin City’ now that they are of age, so to speak.”

Sports tourism, indeed, is a big part of Las Vegas’ recent draw as a sports hub, from the Formula 1 Grand Prix to the recent Super Bowl LVIII: People are more likely to fly in for a game in an exciting resort destination, and they’re also more likely to plan additional entertainment activities like dining and live music while they’re in town. Who wouldn’t want to check out a show at the Sphere, after all?

So, what can brands do?

Knowing that sports fans, especially younger ones, are increasingly interested in making a vacation out of a big sports event, brands with an interest in can see U.S. broadcasts and stadiums as an outlet for getting these passionate audiences interested in a sports-themed trip abroad.

If we’re using the Super Bowl as a bellwether for marketing to sports fans, travel brands that advertise there tend to be as mass-market as they get – booking platforms, airlines, and cruise ship companies – without a specific pitch to sports fans. Travel and tourism bureaus rarely pop up in the heavily scrutinized ad lineup; 2018’s Crocodile Dundee trailer fake-out for Tourism Australia was very much an exception to the rule. So there’s not much of a “playbook” for marketing to sports tourists. But a couple of easy tactics can get the creative juices flowing…

• Go where the fans are. This may seem painfully obvious, but it really does make a difference to catch sports fans when they’re likely to be at their most rapt attention. And that can mean when they’re watching a game. The younger sports fans who are most likely to want to travel to watch sports are also the most likely to pay attention to ads in sports stadiums (62% of millennial fans and 67% of Gen-Z fans say they often notice which brands sponsor in-person games). Consider making a play with dynamic stadium advertising, like Infillion’s InStadium.

   

• Think omnichannel. Even though sports fans are often eager to take a vacation to see their favorite team, advertising a vacation in a sports arena isn’t like advertising 2-for-1 pizza slices if the home team wins. It’s a bigger purchase and requires more thoughtful consideration. That’s why it’s smart to retarget fans with dynamic display advertising once they’ve seen video ads during a broadcast game or digital billboards during a live game. Continuing the message can help them realize they’ll be in for a real adventure.
• Emphasize what else fans can do. On a similar note, for many sports tourists, a trip abroad to see a game is a big investment. That means prospective travelers will want to get the most out of it. Offering a special package to fans that includes several days in their favorite team’s surrounding city, or playing up the entertainment and dining options in the local area, can help spark ideas for creating a truly bucket-list experience.

And you don’t have to be a travel brand to get in on the action – nor do you need a scheduled game to get the eye of sports tourists. Just ask Jameson whiskey, which made a whole campaign out of the idea of bringing the NFL to Ireland.

Want to reach sports fans through streaming video, live stadium advertising, and more? Reach out to Infillion, and we’ll kick things off.

Super Bowl LVIII saw the return of many familiar faces as most brands played it safe – dropping teasers the week before, reviving classic campaigns, or enlisting celebrities with broad cross-generational appeal in order to grab consumer attention during those precious 30 seconds. 

But of course the first Super Bowl to be played in Las Vegas had an ace up its sleeve – The Sphere. Vegas’ newest landmark – a 367-foot-tall dome-shaped arena with an enormous LED screen on its exterior – put on quite a show for brands throughout the entire Super Bowl week and made out-of-home marketing the unexpected MVP of the night.

NFL sponsors had exclusive access to purchasing ad spots on the Sphere. With that came the chance to create an unforgettable spectacle that amplified their Super Bowl campaign across its powerful 360 degree displays, making it visible from almost anywhere on the Strip – not to mention all over social media. 

The year’s best campaigns combined all of those tactics – releasing teasers early to generate excitement, leveraging nostalgia to grab attention, and making a splash with The Sphere’s unprecedented OOH canvas to create a winning playbook. 

Let’s take a look at some of the best plays in each category of the night: 

Taking advantage of the buildup to the Big Game.

The days of secretive Super Bowl ads are long gone, with many brands releasing teasers or even their full Super Bowl spots in the days and weeks leading up to the game. Comscore found that 88% of adults ages 18–49 saw at least one 2023 Super Bowl ad on YouTube, compared to the 68% who said they saw it on linear TV.  

This year, some brands played it straight and simply released their spots in full in the lead up to the game. That’s not a bad way to get as many eyes as possible, but with so many other brands taking advantage of the lead time and creating unique, memorable campaigns to build anticipation for the final ad, just releasing the full content in advance feels like a lost opportunity. 

The full roll out for the CeraVe campaign appears to be the early winner of the night. The brand recruited over 450 influencers to start generating buzz and conversation for their campaign “Did Michael Cera create CeraVe?” for three weeks leading up to the Super Bowl.  

When asked about the campaign by AdAge, Charlotte Tansill, president of Ogilvy PR, Social & Influence, North America had this to say: “We could have just done the TV spot with Michael Cera and CeraVe but we saw an opportunity to do it in this first-of-its-kind way, where the narrative really rolls out over a three-week campaign and you’re sort of following the beginning, the middle and the end over time, as opposed to it all needing to happen within the commercial itself.” 

This lesson harkens back to our learnings from years past – that people don’t remember ads unless they are part of a campaign. 

And it looks like it paid off for CeraVe – they just won the Super Clio for the campaign.

Rebooted and Reloaded: The value of iconic campaigns  

Many brands decided to lean into the familiar and reboot, revive, or relaunch famous campaigns from years past to generate buzz and excitement around their brand, while playing into well-known, sometimes decades-long campaign themes and tactics that viewers are more likely to instantly recognize.

Leaning on the familiar has proven to be a smart move in this oversaturated and overstimulated environment. In 2023 a report from System1, a research firm that measures advertising effectiveness, found that the strength of brand recognition for Super Bowl ads has declined. The average percentage of consumers that recall a brand from a Super Bowl ad has dropped from 85% of viewers in 2020 to 83% in 2023. By comparison, the brand recall score for everyday U.S. ads in 2020—81%—rose to 85% this year.

The Budweiser Clydesdales returned, as did the Coors Light Chill Train, with a cameo from LL Cool J. The E*TRADE babies were back – this time playing pickleball. 

Sometimes, brands don’t need to reinvent the wheel. A great campaign is bound to remain a great campaign – and reviving it for the Super Bowl can be a key to success. 

“Can You Sphere Us Now?”

The biggest impact of all though was the Sphere. The NFL took full advantage of this new modern marvel and announced a deal with Sphere Entertainment to project custom Super Bowl content on the Exosphere throughout Super Bowl week. 

These projections were seen everywhere – on social media, from fans, and throughout the entire broadcast as key moments, score updates, and incredible animations were projected across The Sphere in stunning animation. 

Paramount broadcast full trailers for their newest releases like Mission Impossible alongside commercials for Paramount+ and the Clydesdales continued to make their return and proclaimed Budweiser “The King of Spheres.” 

Even brands that didn’t run an ad during the Super Bowl itself – like Adidas, which is an NFL partner but was not an advertiser in the game – could get in on the action with Sphere ads. This drove home that a well-designed out-of-home marketing campaign can go further than a single Super Bowl spot – and is a key component of a brand’s strategy today. (Advanced digital out-of-home can gain scale on social media if it’s eye-catching enough – like Infillion’s InStadium activation for Netflix last winter.) 

But no campaign embodied each of the themes of the 2024 Super Bowl better than Verizon’s campaign with Beyonce. 

Verizon stated that they set out to “transform the Las Vegas skyline and showcase the network NFL fans rely on in a way that only Sphere and Verizon can.” Their custom helmet animation definitely achieved that as it spun around, revealing the iconic Las Vegas skyline while promoting that Verizon is the network Las Vegas and the Super Bowl relies on. 

But they didn’t stop there. Verizon enlisted one of the biggest names in the music industry – Beyoncé – to help them out. Beyoncé fans quickly caught on to Verizon as they released teaser imagery featuring iconic Beyoncé easter eggs and hype began to build around what the commercial would be announcing – with many thinking it was teasing a residency at The Sphere. 

When the commercial did finally air, it was one of the highlights of the night, and even included The Sphere itself. The ad saw Beyoncé trying to “break the internet” at Verizon through a number of stunts including “riding a horse on The Sphere” and ultimately ended with her releasing brand new music. Fans will still have to wait and see if Beyonce will be performing in The Sphere, but this is one campaign that “Can’t B Broken.” 

Overall, the night saw a lot of familiar favorites return with a new spin, thanks to the incredible potential of The Sphere opening up a whole new host of creative possibilities not just in Las Vegas, but in an advertising industry where brands can now think much bigger about their OOH strategies. 

Sports fans have always been a coveted audience for advertisers. Viewers are famously engaged and deliver the rapt attention that brands crave, and brands sponsoring teams or games can get a goodwill boost from supporters. One study after another has shown that sports fans are more likely to pay attention to commercials, that they look favorably upon brands that sponsor their home teams, and that this receptivity is growing rather than shrinking.

For years, sports had stayed relatively analog as the rest of the world went digital, which meant that brands could stick to tried-and-true tactics. The Super Bowl still drew the enormous, multi-demographic linear TV audiences that advertisers craved, and its high-impact commercial spots continued to command both enormous media spend and peak consumer attention. Broadcast and cable channels maintained a strong hold on the rights to air professional leagues and championships.

But sports were inevitably going to be hit by the digital revolution. As a generation of fully digital natives reached adulthood, marketers needed to contend with the fact that sports fans had been transformed, too. From the sports they want to watch, to how they want to watch them, to the auxiliary content and experiences they want to consume around sports—to use an old cliche, it was a whole new ballgame.

Infillion is an advertising technology company that is built for the connected, always-on consumer. And our past research has shown that consumers now live in an era of “constant consideration,” one in which they’re absorbing media at a near-nonstop rate, and in which it’s more important for a brand to stay in touch with them so that the decision to purchase can happen at precisely the right moment for that individual. These insights have helped us shape our strategies for clients to meet this new consumer reality.

Which led us to the question: As the overall consumer has changed, how has the sports fan changed?

We decided to find out. In “The New Sports Fan,” our latest research report, we asked people who self-identify as sports fans to let us know what they’re following, how they’re following it, and how brands can best integrate into the fan experience.

Among the findings:

• It was a long time coming, but live sports have firmly embedded themselves in streaming video. 46% of sports fans say they’re watching more sports on streaming than they were before 2020.
• While marketers have been frustrated for years over Gen-Z’s weakened affinity for live sports, the right way to look at it is that this younger demographic is choosier about how they watch. 47% of Gen-Z sports fans say they’ve canceled a streaming subscription over a change in the live sports offering, compared to 29% overall.
• Women’s sports are catching up to many men’s sports in popularity, with 32% of sports fans saying they enjoy watching women’s volleyball and 26% saying they enjoy watching WNBA basketball. That puts those sports on par with men’s soccer and hockey, and men’s NCAA basketball.
• Younger sports fans are more likely to say they want ad-free options (73% of Gen-Z compared to 60% of sports fans overall) when they want sports on streaming. But they’re actually more enthusiastic about brands that find relevant ways to integrate into their favorite sports. 76% of them say they like seeing their favorite teams and athletes in ads, compared to 58% of sports fans overall. And 65% of Gen-Z sports fans say they are more likely to buy products or services that support their favorite teams, compared to 51% overall.
• With the NFL playing games in Europe, and overseas soccer teams gaining substantial U.S. fan bases, the concept of “sports tourism” is booming – especially among younger fans. While only 26% of sports fans overall say they’d take an international trip to watch their favorite sport, that rises to 47% among Gen-Z fans.
• The Olympics are prime real estate for reaching female sports fans, who our research found are 25-30% more likely than male sports fans to tune into the quadrennial games.

“The New Sports Fan” is available for download here.

There are few audiences more captivated and engaged than live sports fans – they’re excited to be there, they’re less likely to be distracted by work or other priorities, and that’s a huge opportunity for brands to get in front of them. But brands also have to understand the strategies and philosophies of the marketers for the teams and arenas whose fans they want to get in front of.

At Infillion, our InStadium product helps connect brands to flighted advertising opportunities in 97% of the pro and college sports stadiums in the U.S., and we understand how important it is to grasp the priorities and nuances of sports team marketers. That’s why we were excited to sponsor the AMA’s Atlanta chapter’s event “Marketing Is A Team Sport,” a sold-out panel that featured leadership from all of the city’s major sports teams – Melissa M. Proctor of the NBA’s Atlanta Hawks; Adam Zimmerman of MLB’s Atlanta Braves; Ryan Mucatel of MLS’ Atlanta United FC and the NFL’s Atlanta Falcons; and Morgan Shaw Parker of the WNBA’s Atlanta Dream.

Here are four key insights from the panel event.

Marketers for professional sports teams need to accept a lack of control.

As moderator Joe Koufman, founder and CEO of Setup, pointed out: “sports marketers have absolutely zero control over their product.” They don’t have any say over whether the team wins or loses, or who gets drafted each year – the closest they have to an influence over the team’s performance is that higher revenues can mean the ability to draft better players.

How do they best grapple with this? The panelists agreed that it’s all about getting to know the ethos of a city. Get to know who the fans are, and what they want. Listen, learn, talk, and engage – and remember that sports loyalty is deeply emotional. People plan their weddings so as not to miss major football games, for example.

In other words, it’s not just the players who are in charge; it’s also the fans. And this, too, isn’t entirely rational and measurable. Several panelists pointed out that when it comes to content marketing, the “community” content – publicizing outreach to different cultural groups in a city, or local community service on behalf of a team – is often the lowest performing social media content that the team’s channels publish. But it’s that content that means the most to the niche groups they connect with.

Commercial real estate and retail are now key parts of sports marketing strategies.

While sports team marketing leaders have to contend with the fact that they can’t control how well their teams perform, they often have some additional assets that other CMOs don’t. While typical revenue sources for teams have been ticket sales, merchandise, media rights, and sponsorships, commercial real estate is now emerging as a new revenue stream and marketing platform. Stadium space is now regularly booked for conferences and other private events, in addition to concerts and music festivals, when teams aren’t playing.

And gone are the days of stadiums surrounded by parking lots on the outskirts of city limits. In Atlanta, the in-development Centennial Yards project is anchored by several sports arenas and will feature apartments, hotel rooms, and retailers. This isn’t just a revenue source – it’s also a key platform for fan engagement, providing an opportunity for teams to be a bigger part of local life and recreation even when they aren’t watching a game.

Pro sports marketing was always seen as old-school – but data is changing everything.

Just as how TV sports were seen as slow to make the jump from linear TV to streaming, marketing live sports was historically seen as more analog than other sectors of the industry. That’s changing fast. Teams now have “chief technology innovation officers.” AI chatbots are used to drive ticket sales. Brand opportunities in sports arenas are now more flexible and dynamic than traditional full-season sponsorships and naming rights – Infillion’s InStadium, for example, brings branded 3D video and augmented reality experiences to pro and college sports venues.

Then there’s the sheer amount of data that marketers now have. Data allows sports team marketers to know more about their audiences, and also to get closer to the “holy grail of marketing” – reaching consumers with something they didn’t know they wanted. Meanwhile, fans are accustomed to personalized, customized experiences and that extends to what they expect from their favorite sports teams.

The sports landscape is also changing like never before.

Just days before the panel, the ownership of the Atlanta Falcons and Atlanta United announced that it had acquired a team in TGL, the new arena-based golf league that aims to bring the sport to a new generation of fans. TGL is moving incredibly fast; there is not yet a media distribution strategy, several teams in the league have yet to be announced, and yet the first season kicks off in just a few months.

Women’s sports, too – like the WNBA – are growing fast. The WNBA announced a new capital raise last year, and at the midpoint of the 2023 season, viewership was up 67%. What we think of as pro sports is changing, and similarly, the idea of what constitutes a “sports fan” is changing, too. Marketers are learning how to reach more diverse audiences, to tell authentic stories of their players and fans on owned media channels, and to consider themselves stewards of a community, not just a team.

The key trait marketers need in this fast-moving environment? Curiosity.

Infillion’s InStadium is the easiest, most flexible way for brands to get in front of highly engaged live sports audiences. Learn more about it here.