After keeping them at arm’s length, sports brands are opening the door to creators

The event was a first for the PGA. But it’s not the only sports media player making moves to include more creators in their marketing strategies. Italian soccer club Juventus broadcast an August preseason clash via several creators’ channels, while NBC added 27 creators to its Olympics coverage plan.

For Wandell, the Creator Classic hit several beats. Golf participation has risen 30% the U.S. since the 2016, according to the National Golf Foundation, especially among women and golfers playing off-course. Wandell, who attributed the participation increase to changed working patterns in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, said he wants to capitalize on that growth.

“People are working from home more, they’re in the office less. And they can play nine holes at four o’clock in the afternoon much easier than they could prior to Covid,” he said.

This growth in golf has coincided with the rise of golfing content on YouTube, where a range of creators and amateur players have built up considerable followings. The success of a February creator-only tournament staged by YouTubers in Arizona, the Good Good Desert Open — which attracted 800,000 viewers, per The Athletic — showed Wandell and his team that there was merit in staging their own event. The PGA worked with media company Pro Shop, in which it also holds a minority stake, to put the event together as a test that will market the end-of-season Tour Championship in Georgia.

“It should put a bunch more eyeballs on that golf course, on that tournament [and] on Atlanta,” Wandell said.

The YouTube stream of the Creator Classic held the attention of more than 80,000 viewers watching live, while at the time of this article’s writing, the stream had garnered 920,000 views. It was also broadcast on Roku, ESPN+ and Peacock, among other streaming services.

Engaging audiences

“I think they’re trying to be more progressive … partnering with where the attention is right and where the engagement is,” said Chris Jones, managing partner of media agency Markacy. “For an advertiser, that’s interesting because I can access a new [demographic] that wouldn’t be as likely to tune into a Sunday afternoon PGA Tour event on CBS.”

Grace Duncan, strategy director at youth-focused publisher and content studio Screenshot, added, “YouTube and TikTok have really shown that creators can engage audiences in ways that traditional media cannot.”

Earlier this year, Screenshot produced a brand campaign for rugby apparel maker Canterbury. Though it involved women’s rugby players, at the campaign’s center was a series of video podcasts featuring rugby podcast “Black Girls Ruck” host Anne Onwusir discussing links between the sport and fashion.

“Brands, especially in the sports world, need to adapt their broadcast models to include creators,” Duncan said. “That can drive higher engagement and reaches a demographic that traditional legacy media is going to miss.”

Italian soccer club Juventus has been doing just that. The Turin team established a Creator Lab in 2023 and has been working with creators to reach younger audiences, most of whom are found outside Italy and are less likely than their older peers to watch soccer on linear TV.

Mike Armstrong, chief marketing communications officer at Juventus, said the question facing the club was this: “How do we build a global model for content that’s going to appeal to a very diverse, very international fan base?”

In response, he said that “everything we’re doing now is through a creator lens.”

This August, Juventus broadcast a preseason friendly game across broadcasters Dazn and Sky, as well as through digital channels including its own YouTube channel, the YouTube channels of creators Céline Dept (35.8 million subscribers) and TiaTia (1.24 million subscribers), the TikTok live channel of Brazilian creator Adonias Fonseca (3.6 million followers), and, in Italy, the Twitch channel of Luca Campolunghi (157,000 followers).

Reach and engagement over media rights revenue

Rather than the terrace perspective familiar to soccer watchers, Juventus positioned the creators invited to the August event pitch-side, or behind the goal posts, to offer alternative perspectives that showcased the stadium atmosphere as much as the on-field drama. In aggregate, the preseason match garnered 500,000 digital viewers — five times the size of the audience generated for last year’s preseason friendly game.

According to Armstrong, the club negotiated broadcast rights with Dazn and Sky Sports to account for the split distribution. The approach meant “sacrificing” media rights revenue, he said, without providing specific figures, though Armstrong added he considers the tradeoff worthwhile if it helps increase Juventus’ global fanbase.

“We knew we were going to sacrifice a little bit of revenue, but we were willing to take that risk to see what the upside was from a reach and engagement perspective,” he said.

Sports publisher Footballco is also making greater use of creators in its content output. The company recently developed Front Three, a soccer-themed YouTube channel that features creators rather than soccer journalists, and focuses on off-field content rather than highlights or game analysis. Since the channel launched a year ago, it’s grown to 400,000 subscribers.

“It’s all based around that sentiment that people want to participate,” said Xabi Sanchez, executive head of video at Footballco.

So, why has it taken so long for clubs and league organizations to embrace creators? According to Luke Barnes, EMEA president of specialist influencer agency Influencer, it’s mostly because the sporting establishment is playing catch-up.

“It takes time for these large rights holder organizations to pivot their approach to such fundamental changes in content distribution and consumption,” he said.

It is a practice that’s likely to spread, though. “Even the clubs or federations or leagues that are late to the game, they’re starting to come around to understand the extreme value of being liked on social media,” said Sanchez.

Wandell said that, although the Creator Classic is a “test,” the PGA is keen to repeat the event. “Our hope is that there might be a model to do potentially more of these in the future,” he said.