Sports media’s rising tide lifts niche ad tech firms

“It’s kind of a wild west,” said Gartner analyst Chris Ross.

“The market is becoming much more sophisticated and [it’s] demanding that every asset is actually measured … when you have World Cup deals that are $100 million, you have to show what it’s driving,” said Jay Prasad, CEO of sponsorship analytics platform Relo Metrics.

Some firms, such as NYSE-listed Genius Sports, are doing very well out of the opportunity. Genius provides data for specialized analytics to sports rights holders and betting firms, while offering the same information to advertisers for programmatic campaigns that incorporate narratives and emotional storytelling. The company, owned in part by the NFL, increased Q2 2025 revenue by 24% to $118.7 million; with a market cap of $3.19 billion at the time of writing, it’s worth more than Havas.

Though the bulk of its revenue has been generated via betting brands (which use its data to calculate real-time betting odds) and sports teams since it was founded in 2016, the company’s been working to expand its brand business in recent years. “We’re expecting our Q3 advertising revenues to be up 60% year on year, and that’s all driven by new advertisers,” said Josh Linforth, chief revenue officer at Genius Sports.

Last week, it acquired fan data company Sports Innovation Lab. And in August, it struck a deal with media agency PMG to grant clients including Nike, TurboTax and Best Western access to its FanHUB platform and ad formats drawing on its sports data.

“Helping our brands bridge the gap between data and activation in the sports world is something we’re really interested in,” said Carly Carson, head of integrated media at PMG. “Working with our brands to be there in those immediate, immediate, reactive moments is a huge priority.”

Genius isn’t the only one. NBA-backed Greenfly, for example, is also courting more brands as it expands. The company provides software that collates and distributes photos and videos filmed during games by official snappers, dispatching them to athletes, teams and brands automatically – which then enables them to create paid and organic media around a given sporting moment much faster. After all, the shelf life of NBA content can be short, given the abundance of games on a near-nightly basis.

“If you really want to connect with a large, substantial, engaged audience, there’s nothing like sports,” said Daniel Kirschner, Greenfly’s CEO. “The whole business is getting bigger, and that puts a lot of demand and opportunity around sponsorship revenue and marketing revenue.”

Like Genius, Saas firm Hudl was established to serve sports teams. The company provides camera software that helps coaches worldwide analyse the performance of their players. It’s since expanded to provide livestreaming capabilities to hundreds of high schools and regional and local sports teams across the U.S.; it also sells advertising against that. In some parts of the U.S., high school football borders on religion and entire towns shut down to root for their teams.

Though it’s pitched as a premium, high-engagement chance to reach grassroots sports fans, it also sells via Google’s DV360 and Amazon’s DSP. This year, it’s worked with T-Mobile as well as Nike, on its recent “Why do it?” campaign. “They want to connect it with small towns in rural America around Friday Night Lights,” said Adam Gouttiere, vp of media at Hudl.

While brands are willing to part with cash for a chance to access mass sporting audiences, they often lack the in-house capability to track the impact of a shirt sponsorship or naming rights. “It’s hard, it’s expensive, it’s complicated,” explained Ross.

And as overall sports investments rise, so too does scrutiny. Sports rights-holders have woken up to the problem – if they can’t prove they’re delivering on their promises, sponsors will move on to another club or league. Clubs like Belgium’s RSC Anderlecht work with WeHave, a start-up providing a data clean room service to clubs measuring the impact of commercial sponsors. The Antwerp-based firm takes first-party data owned by brands, and compares it with data held by clubs on fans; by identifying the size of the overlap between the two groups, it  gives brands an indication of whether they’ve converted any club followers into customers.

Oliver Wolfs, co-founder and CEO of WeHave, told Digiday: “It’s a natural evolution … everything is becoming more trackable. Why not sponsorships?”

Wolfs estimated that 65% of its customers are rights-holders, and the remainder commercial sponsors. Rights-holders gain a means of proving their worth, while brands can trust a third party to mark their homework.

Spun out of contextual targeting provider GumGum back in 2018, ReloMetrics works with rights holders to provide a different means of sponsorship impact measurement. CEO Prasad estimates its clientele is half brands, half rights-holders. The company uses computer vision tech to monitor how frequently (and how visibly) a sponsor’s logo shows up in live sports footage, and estimates the value of that exposure to a brand.

“Media planning is a very large discipline in this world for a reason,” said Prasad. “Well, you can now do sponsorship planning in a way that you couldn’t before.”

As well as measuring the impact of a sponsorship, there’s demand for assistance in putting one to work. Brands like Chipotle often look to CRM activations to double-down on sports media or sponsorship spending, and Optimove has found a niche working with brands to take advantage of the access granted by sports partnerships.

The Tel Aviv-based Optimove provides marketing automation software and CRM services to clients like Tesco Bank, Sephora and Staples for activations targeting sports fans, said Rony Vexelman, vp of marketing. Like Genius Sports, the core of its client base is gambling operators and brands.

To be sure, increased sports investment is also creating opportunities for established ad tech and mar tech firms that serve the broader market. SheerID, for example, provides identity verification services for brands looking to target specific consumer groups, like veterans or university students, with discounts or other offers; Asics and Dick’s Sporting Goods are clients. It’s aiming to tap into advertiser activity around next year’s soccer World Cup, according to Lara Compton, svp of global marketing at data firm SheerID, who believes that the World Cup’s attraction to younger viewers will drive demand for its services among brands hoping to reach college-age shoppers.

“It’s a pretty cool time for brands to begin to engage with these individuals … Verification and life cycle marketing can set these brands up for not only a transactional moment, but a lifetime of loyalty with [them],” she said.

But it’s the new companies that offer marketers the chance to transition away from art and towards science in their sports investments that are catching momentum. “You have to justify the investment,” explained WeHave’s Wolfs.