Interactive advertising: Redefining sports engagement for a new era of viewers

New interactive streaming technologies are transforming the way consumers experience live sports, creating new opportunities for advertisers, media companies, rightsholders and leagues.

This article was published on WARC 6th of Dec 2024:

As the digital revolution transforms media consumption, advertisers face the daunting challenge of engaging an increasingly fragmented audience. In a world dominated by streaming and multi-platform media, brands must engage with viewers – particularly millennials and Gen Z – through innovative interactive technologies that reach them in new ways.

Brands need to rethink how they connect with consumers. Engaging viewers at high-impact moments during the broadcast of live sports events presents an ideal way of capturing today’s consumers, with close to three-quarters (74%) preferring ads relating to the content they are viewing, research from Integral Ad Science shows.

The evolution of advertising in sports

Interactivity has emerged as a game-changer, enhancing fan engagement while presenting entirely new advertising opportunities. One pivotal advance is the interactive graphical overlay, which seamlessly integrates images, charts, statistics and advertising into the viewing experience. The technology enables advertisers and sponsors to place their brands at the most relevant live sports moments, enhancing brand impact, recall and calls to action.

Interactive overlays are not intrusive as they are designed to blend seamlessly with the viewing experience with player and game stats, on-demand instant replays, real-time polls, instant trivia, live betting odds and other elements delivered via over-the-top (OTT) streaming.

They can appear during key moments – think football goals, baseball home runs, or basketball three-pointers – enhancing the excitement of live sports while providing sponsors with premium advertising real estate. This capability resonates with all demographics but is particularly effective for younger generations, digital natives brought up on social media, who value interactivity and tailored experiences.

A new type of advertising

During a high-profile live game, ads can be tailored to local markets or even individual viewers. This precision targeting ensures that brands deliver relevant messages while driving higher engagement and conversion rates – delivering far greater value for the advertiser.

On the media owner side, interactive ads don’t just engage better – they deliver significantly higher returns. Compared to traditional digital advertising, the cost per thousand impressions (CPM) for interactive overlays can be three to four times higher, and these ad revenues are additive.

Delivering value to sports owners and rightsholders

For the sports rightsholder, a single interactive campaign, running over multiple “monetisable moments” during a game can generate impressive revenues. For a broadcaster with 100,000 concurrent viewers, monetizing 10 key moments with a $45 CPM could yield $45,000 per game. Over a full season of 75 games, the revenue potential soars to over $3.3m.

Across the multitude of sports, teams, leagues and media companies worldwide, this could translate into hundreds of millions of dollars currently being left on the table.

Reshaping the viewing experience

What most sets interactive advertising apart is its ability to enhance – rather than disrupt – the viewer’s experience.

For example, a sponsor might overlay its branding on a graphic showing the player stats brought up by a viewer after their favourite star made a pivotal play. Viewers not only consume the ad but also engage with it, creating a deeper connection between the brand and its audience – with the result being they stay longer, engage more, and are more receptive to advertising.

For instance, using Ease Live’s interactive solution alongside partner Play Anywhere’s Clearinghouse revenue management platform, the Spanish football league LaLiga and its participating broadcast partners achieved a 25% increase in viewership duration through interactive features – with 30% of first-screen viewers engaging with the content and 78% of second-screen app users through smartphones and mobiles.

Likewise, Austria’s Servus TV, a Red Bull Media House company, saw 62% of its audience engage with interactive content during its coverage of the Euro 2024 football championships, including 56% participating in real-time polls.

Future implications

Interactive advertising is not just a technological innovation – it’s a strategic imperative for the sports industry.

By embracing it, advertisers can engage audiences in ways that align with modern consumption habits. For consumers – particularly Gen Z and millennials – it represents a more immersive, personalised way to experience live sports. For broadcasters, leagues, and teams that fail to adopt interactive advertising, there are financial implications. Every season without interactive capabilities represents millions of dollars in lost revenue.

At a time when the lines between broadcasting, streaming and even social media continue to blur, interactive engagement around live sports events represents a clear way to stay ahead of the game.