Advertising Week Briefing: Marketers are taking the athlete influencer opportunity seriously

By Sam Bradley • October 9, 2024 •

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The lines between influencers and athletes are overlapping — and marketers are taking notice.

Brands see sportspeople as a means of reaching engaged, focused fan communities — particularly amid rising interest in women’s sports, college sports and an expanding name, image and likeness (NIL) industry. The topic was a conversation point across at least eight panels on Tuesday at this year’s Advertising Week New York.

“Brands are starting to value women’s sports closer to what they should be,” said Nicole Jeter West, co-founder of creative agency Vanguard Maven Group on the panel “Owning the Game: Scoring Big in Women’s Sports.”

One of the primary ways that attitude change is playing out? “Athlete storytelling,” to borrow a phrase from Catherine Marquette, director of sports marketing and collegiate partnerships at Under Armour. Speaking at “The New Change Makers” panel, she told audiences that college sportspeople could put a “face” to the company’s product ranges in key areas, such as basketball or football. “We view it as an opportunity,” she added.

Athletes parlaying their sporting success into commercial impact is hardly new. But several trends have converged in recent years to make the personalities behind sporting moments more attractive to brands than ever before.

First of all, the creator economy has matured — advertisers have largely shed the last decade’s caution when working with TikTokkers or YouTubers — and expanded, to the point where it’s absorbed much of the old business of celebrity. Years-long associations between brands and athletes (such as that reportedly inked this week between Adidas and soccer starlet Lamine Yamal) are now exceptions to the new rules of brand partnerships.

As such, athletes and creators are now “operating in very similar ways,” according to Sophie Berman, head of talent and influencer at Havas Play UK. Brands now view athletes as “access points [for] reaching a vast and diverse audience,” she added.

Secondly, media fragmentation means that live sports are left as one of the few remaining pillars holding up anything resembling a monoculture. Moments such as the Super Bowl, Premier League super Sundays or Thursday night basketball provide increasingly rare opportunities for mass collective viewing. And while the value of media rights deals to take those moments on air continues to rise, the athletes at the center of those moments also find themselves in demand.

“They’ve got incredibly engaged followings… they’ve also got more savvy as to how much their social currency is worth,” Tom Stone, managing partner of influencer and social agency Re:act, told Digiday.

Finally, the rise of women’s sports in the U.S. (particularly basketball and soccer), and the growth of the NIL market for college athletes since the 2021 NCAA v. Alston Supreme Court decision means there’s a growing cadre of young athletes available for brands to hire.

“We’re in the infancy of a brand new industry,” added Darren Heitner, an NIL and trademark lawyer who spoke during the day’s opening sports-themed panel, “Creating impactful brand relationships with student athletes.”

“It’s a completely different world for women’s sports,” said Kirby Porter, chief brand officer at women’s basketball league Unrivaled Basketball, who spoke alongside Jeter West. The growing NIL world, together with the increasing media and consumer interest in women’s sports, had changed the game, she said.

Though investment in influencer activity by brands continues to expand — Publicis Groupe recently estimated $186 billion would be spent on influencer work next year — some marketers continue to worry that audiences are getting fed up with creator-brand partnerships.

The influencer sector had become “commoditized and quite transactional,” said Courtney Scott, vp of marketing at nutritional supplement brand Gainful, who spoke alongside Heitner. But working with college athletes offered her brand a new means of speaking to audiences.

“I’m very focused on finding communities of people who have influence within their community but aren’t necessarily traditional influencer… opinion leaders who lead the opinions of their team, their community, their network are exactly the type of people that we want to build really authentic and deep relationships with,” she added.

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