• How World Athletics enhanced their hosting strategy and event delivery
• Ways to justify investment through long-term value and legacy impact
• Enhanced analysis methods beyond economic factors

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Case study

Evolving the measurement of sports events

How World Athletics and Nielsen are setting up host cities for success

Download the full study

Case study

Evolving the measurement of sports events

How World Athletics and Nielsen are setting up host cities for success

Download the full study

Introduction

Understand the value of hosting sports events

Nielsen has worked with World Athletics, the sport’s international governing body, on new measurements that provide deeper insights into hosting the 2022 and 2023 World Athletics Championships.

Objective

Assess positive outcomes 

With World Athletics looking to demonstrate the wide-ranging value of hosting its events, the organization turned to insights, data and analytics company Nielsen, whose Event Impact Assessment (EIA) Framework incorporates new measurements to give a more comprehensive picture of the positive outcomes an event can have for a host.  

Challenge

Justify investments in sports event hosting

Hosting a major event such as the World Athletics Championships requires the support of various stakeholders, ranging from local governments and national sporting federations to broadcasters and commercial partners. All have different objectives beyond economic impact alone, whether it be ensuring a positive benefit on society, promoting sustainability, leaving a positive legacy or driving purchases. There is also increasing pressure on securing funding for events. Setting out clear KPIs that can be measured are more important than ever, with hosts needing to be able to justify investment, fine-tune strategy, improve event delivery, and leave a legacy.

Solution

Quantify the success of events

Nielsen’s EIA Framework has evolved to measure the success of events through the lens of five key pillars: attendance, economic, media, social and environmental. It then puts together a holistic impact report that includes a thorough assessment within each area, having gathered information from the local organizing committee (LOC) and rights holder, surveyed athletes and spectators, and applied its own media value data. 

By studying the 2022 World Athletics Championships in Oregon, Nielsen’s EIA framework found that the event provided a total impact of US$237 million across the five pillars. Together with the LOC, World Athletics identified ‘community’ as an area to improve for the next World Athletics Championships in Budapest in 2023 and set clear KPIs, encompassing attendance, social and environmental impact, and inspiring participation.

Key findings

Key findings from Budapest 2023

404,000

Attendance

Seven of the nine evening sessions sold out in Budapest, bringing event attendance to 404,000, up from 150,000 in Oregon. 

$240,000

Social and environmental impact

Environmental initiatives put in place at the 2023 World Championships in Budapest resulted in a reduction of 1,700 tonnes of CO2 emissions–a savings of US$240,000.

77%

Participation

Nielsen found that 77% of spectators at Budapest 2023 agreed that they were inspired to participate in track and field more often, an increase on 41% who felt the same having attended Oregon 2022.

$408M

Total event impact

Budapest 2023 generated US$408M in total event impact across Nielsen’s five pillars: economic, media, social, environmental, and attendance.

Source: Nielsen Event Impact Assessment: World Athletics 2022 and 2023

How it works

With a network of analysts stretching across the globe, Nielsen can transform large data sets into actionable insights, helping clients connect to the audiences that matter most – regardless of sport, league, event or location.

Nielsen Sports has been working with World Athletics since 2019, measuring events including the World Indoor and Outdoor Championships, World Cross Country Championships, Road Running Championships and Relay Championships. The EIA Framework is modular and flexible, meaning it can be scaled down for smaller events and run fully for major championships.

Conclusion

Demonstrate the value of sports events with Nielsen’s EIA Framework

Nielsen’s Event Impact Assessment Framework enabled the host cities Oregon and Budapest to demonstrate the holistic value of staging the events, while also providing a blueprint for future bidders to assess the impact of hosting World Athletics competitions. Using Nielsen’s EIA assessment from Oregon 2022, World Athletics was able to make further positive changes for Budapest 2023. 

Nielsen’s Event Impact Assessment results help us evaluate and continually evolve our events. The framework enables us to understand what worked well, what drove success and potential areas of improvement. We’re already using the data to help identify priority areas for our next World Championships: Tokyo 2025. One of the emerging trends for major events is to improve on sustainability of the events, and Nielsen’s EIA data helps us look at ways of reducing our carbon footprint as much as possible.

Maria Ramos
Director of Brand & Marketing
World Athletics

Want to talk with our team of experts?

Contact us

Want to talk with our team of experts?

Contact us

Want to talk with our team of experts?

Contact us

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Select highlights include:

• The final in the ninth FIFA Women’s World Cup was the first to not feature either the U.S. or Germany.
• The 2023 MLS season was the first in a new, 10-year TV rights deal with Apple TV.
• Lionel Messi kicked off his arrival at Inter Miami FC by scoring a game-winning free kick in this year’s Leagues Cup just six days after his deal with the MLS club was announced.
• The introduction of a pitch clock shortened MLB games by an average of 24 minutes.   
• The NFL Sunday Ticket made its debut on YouTube.
• The Olympics announced four new sports for the 2024 summer games in Paris: Breaking, sport climbing, surfing and skateboarding.
• Sports Illustrated named Coach Prime the Sportsperson of the Year after his first year of coaching the University of Colorado football team.
• The budding romance between Taylor Swift and Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce has amplified the profile of the NFL and its games.

Headlines aside, audience engagement with sports on TV remained a major pastime this year, with fans in the U.S. spending more than 1.7 trillion minutes watching games from the five most-watched U.S. sports leagues. While impressive in aggregate, time spent watching NFL games accounted for 55% of the total.

From a viewership perspective, nothing attracts audiences like the Super Bowl, and the matchup between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles for Super Bowl LVII was the second-most watched game in league history. In total, audiences watched just under 48 billion minutes of the matchup. For context, viewers spent 52 billion minutes in 2022 watching Stranger Things, the year’s most-streamed program. And given the immense popularity of the NFL, playoff and Thanksgiving games accounted for the other nine most-watched games of the year. And what’s more, this year’s Thanksgiving games all attracted significant percentages of viewers who watched away from home.

In addition to satiating the needs of football fans, this year’s NFL games are helping fill the void caused by a lack of new primetime programming as a result of the writers strike. Compared with last year, all of this season’s Monday Night Football games are being aired on ABC in addition to ESPN and ESPN2—making it the only day of the week with one game that’s aired on multiple channels. 

The adjustment has been a boon for viewership, with the games on ABC attracting larger audiences than the traditional primetime programming did a year earlier. The week 4 matchup this year, for example, had an audience of 8.7 million on ABC, compared with an audience of 5.7 million for the two programs that ran at the same time on ABC a year earlier. And the Taylor Swift-Travis Kelce romance is attracting more female viewers.  

Sponsorships deliver significant value for brands

Fans weren’t alone in enjoying the action of the 2023 year in sports. Brands, always eager to partner with opportunities that broaden their exposure with new and existing audiences, continued to benefit from the growing sponsorship opportunities available to them. 2023 was the inaugural year for sponsorship patches on baseball team uniforms, and two of the year’s most valuable brand activations were on MLB jerseys. Across the league, Avnet benefited the most, aided by the fact that its sponsorship involved the Diamondbacks, who competed in the World Series. In total, the top 10 most valuable sports sponsorships delivered more than $259 million in media value¹ for brands in 2023.

Brands aren’t the only beneficiaries of the exposure that media delivers to the sports world. The teams themselves also benefit, especially when it comes to social media. And while the Golden State Warriors have perennially been the leader in social media value, Lionel Messi joining Inter Miami FC catapulted the MLS squad to the top of the list this year. In fact, the average simulated value² of a post for the team was more than twice that of one from the Warriors.

Well-positioned for 2024, the sports industry remains a fixture with a growing fanbase of audiences and brands. The undeniable appeal of sports, combined with audiences’ growing engagement with streaming content, however, has amplified the competition for broadcasting rights—a factor that could affect viewership among casual viewers. 

For true NFL fans, for example, watching every game requires access to several traditional broadcast channels, access to Amazon Prime Video and a subscription to the Sunday Ticket on YouTube. Similarly, New York Yankee fans needed access to broadcast, cable, Amazon Prime and Apple TV if they wanted to see all the action during the 2023 season. True sports fans will typically go where the action is, but holistic sports viewing growth will be tough to come by in an a la carte, game-by-game approach.

Through the lens of the audience, finding ways to ease sports viewers’ transition to streaming will be critical. The way in which ESPN is approaching NHL games is a good example, as it provides access to more than 1,050 out-of-market games from every team on its subscription ESPN+ service, while broadcasting another 100 games exclusively across ESPN, ESPN+, Hulu and ABC. The Apple TV-MLS deal is another stand-out, as it provides a consistent service and experience for nearly all MLS games. Sports remain the biggest draw for TV audiences, but ensuring that they can find the games they want without having to continue adding services and fees will be critical in the long run.

Notes:

¹ Nielsen Sports’ Quality Index Media Value is the calculated media value of the live broadcast exposure received by the sponsor.

²Simulated social media value refers to the value of a post if a team were to sell a sponsorship for it.

The post Tops of 2023: Sports appeared first on Nielsen.

The changes aren’t likely to affect individual team fandom, but the shifts, which are the most extensive in recent history, will affect how teams show up on TV and who will get to see their games.

As with many aspects of the media industry, the audience is the key factor in the conference realignment, much of which won’t take effect until the 2024 season. That’s when eight teams will leave the Pac-12 to join conferences with more lucrative TV deals: Four will join the Big Ten and four will join the Big 12.

Unlike the other Power Five¹ conference members, the Pac-12 does not have a long-term TV rights deal, which has a direct impact on the revenue each member school receives. For example, the Big Ten expects its seven-year deal with CBS, FOX and NBC to be lucrative enough to distribute between $80 million and $100 million annually to each member school. The $8 billion deal is the biggest in the history of college athletics, and it gives the contract holders access to some of NCAA football’s highest-ranked and most-watched teams, including Michigan, Ohio State and Penn State.

Conference membership affects all sports within each member school, but the shifts in recent years have all been motivated by the rights associated with live football games. Based on an analysis of the value associated with each conference’s TV exposure during the 2022 season, the realignments that take effect next year will have a significant impact for the SEC, Big Ten and Pac-12.

The value of TV exposure is clear. One-third of Americans say they’re college football fans², making the league the fourth-most popular in the U.S. (behind the NFL, NBA and MLB). And big teams draw big viewership: More than 17 million viewers³ watched last year’s marquee late-season matchup between Ohio State and Michigan, the highest viewership of the regular season. For comparison, nearly 2.3 million viewers³ watched the Brooklyn Nets play the Philadelphia 76ers in the first round of last year’s NBA playoffs.

While top-ranking teams and storied rivalries will always command national TV coverage, the implications of the conference membership changes will have different outcomes at the local market level. Last year’s week 8 game between UCLA and Oregon (which will both leave the Pac-12 next year) attracted a national audience of 3.34 million³. Once these two teams join the Big Ten, they will expand the conference’s TV audience across the entire country and both coasts.

To better understand how the conference changes will shape local TV viewership beyond individual games, we examined the difference between Pac-12 and Big Ten TV viewing in Los Angeles, Portland and Seattle during the 2022 season. These designated market areas (DMAs) are home to four West Coast teams⁴ that will switch conferences next year.

Due to the size of these three markets, last season’s Pac-12 programming reached 123% more households and 151% more individual viewers than Big Ten programming did⁵. And while the 0.1 difference in co-viewing might seem insignificant at face value, it becomes far more meaningful when you multiply it by the total viewing population of the three DMAs.

When we break down the aggregate conference viewing, we can see the impact that the conference changes will have on each individual market. Despite the sprawling population of Los Angeles—home to UCLA and USC—Portland stands to gain the biggest percentage lift in viewership next season.

While the Big Ten will benefit next year from the arrival of USC, UCLA, Oregon and Washington, the Big 12 will benefit from the arrival of the University of Colorado, home to this year’s hottest college football story. The Colorado Buffaloes have been in the news ever since NFL legend Deion Sanders took over as head coach last year, but the team’s 3-1 start, including an upset over TCU (Texas Christian University) to open the season, has made their games must-see TV for football fans. In fact, the team’s double-overtime victory over Colorado State on Sept. 16 attracted 9.3 million viewers³ despite the fact that it didn’t start until after 10 pm ET. The team’s Sept. 23 game against Oregon attracted more than 10 million live and same-day viewers, the largest audience of the season.

While our national TV exposure value analysis doesn’t suggest a significant change (+1%) for the Big 12 when Colorado joins next year (along with Arizona, Arizona State and Utah), the impact on local TV viewing is a different story. The impact of Coach Prime was immediate, as the Denver TV audience for the Buffaloes’ first game was 117% higher than last year’s. And that was just a starting point.

In aggregate, the increased attention bodes well for the Pac-12 this year and the Big 12 next year, as the average viewership at the household level is up 976% and up more than 1,100% among viewers 2 and older. The hype over the Buffaloes is also boosting co-viewing by 15% this year.

There’s no mistaking the appeal of NCAA college football among sports fans, especially when big matchups come to town. And while marquee rivalries will always command national TV exposure, we can see how local market TV viewership contributes to the value associated with the teams involved with the most recent changes among the Power 5 NCAA conferences.

Sources

¹The five most prominent and highest-earning athletic conferences in Division I NCAA football: ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12, SEC
²Nielsen Fan Insights; Q2 2023
³Nielsen National TV Panel; live + same day viewing (3 a.m.-3 a.m.)
⁴UCLA, USC, Oregon, Washington
⁵Nielsen Local TV measurement

The post The Big Ten effect: With 4 new football teams next year, the NCAA conference will extend its TV reach in key markets appeared first on Nielsen.

The 2023 Women’s World Cup is here and so are our predictions for which teams will advance and who will go on to take home the gold. Gracenote’s Head of Analysis Simon Gleave talked us through the dynamic dataset and how we make sure it stays accurate throughout the tournament.

Game predictions are just a slice of the insights available for sports broadcasters and content providers through Gracenote.

Access to a constant flow of data like schedules, live results, athlete profiles, medal tables and more to build engaging audience experiences that keeps sports fans tuned in.

Learn how you can deliver a winning fan experience.

Visit our Global Sports Data solution

The post 2023 Women’s World Cup tournament predictions appeared first on Nielsen.

Interest in women’s sports is growing at a meteoric pace. 

The 2023 NCAA tournament drew nearly 10 million viewers for the final game between Iowa and LSU—up 103% from the previous year. The WNBA draft audience increased 42% between 2022 and 2023 and was up 89% with female viewers¹. Interest in the Women’s Super League increased 81% from 2022 to 2023², and this year, 41% of the global population are excited for the Women’s World Cup, rising from 34% before the 2019 Women’s World Cup³. 

This massive shift hasn’t occurred in a vacuum. It’s the result of brands, sponsors and broadcasters investing in and prioritizing women’s sports. 

Visibility for the win

Consider how the BBC approached women’s football in the past four years. Previously, women’s football fans had to search high and low to watch their favorite teams compete. While a few games were shown on main linear channels, the rest were tucked away in digital space. But then, in 2019, the broadcaster doubled down on the Women’s World Cup, showing nearly triple the number of matches compared with the Women’s Euro 2017 on Channel 4. Three years later, the broadcaster did it again, prioritizing the UEFA Women’s Euro 2022 by airing 26 matches in total⁴.

Source: British Audience Ratings Bureau

The BBC not only gave more prominence to channel slots, but they also promoted the coverage of the 2019 and 2022 tournaments—along with other women’s sports—through an integrated campaign.

Between 2017 and 2019, U.K. viewership rose from 11.7 million to 68.6 million. In 2022, 57.9 million people watched the UEFA European Women’s Football Championship. This growth was largely led by women ages 35+, but in looking at new male audiences, younger fans are particularly interested in women’s sports, reinforcing the diversity of the growing appeal⁵.

These major tournaments are drawing bigger and bigger audiences, creating a halo effect of opportunity for the players, the fans and the sponsors. Nearly 80% of the general population are now aware of the 2023 Women’s World Cup and 40% find it appealing—the highest scores for any female competition⁶.

The takeaway is clear: Prioritizing the access and promotion of women’s sports increases visibility and grows audiences and sponsorship opportunities. To do so, broadcasters and sponsors must internalize these three facts.

Sources

The post Women’s sports viewership on the rise. appeared first on Nielsen.

Interest in women’s football is growing fast. Excitement for the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup is up 7 percentage points from the 2019 tournament¹. There are a bevy of reasons driving this rise, but one chief among them is the players themselves. 

The relationship between athletes and fans is powerful. Think back to the first player you connected with. Did they inspire you? Make you feel seen? Sway what cereal you ate or shoes you bought? Sixty-five percent² of global sports fans agree that female athletes can be role models in society. In some ways, athletes are the original influencers. And finding an athlete you connect with can deepen your interest in the tournament, team and sport itself. 

We tapped Nielsen InfluenceScope to discover Instagram’s 10 most influential athletes and the 10 breakthrough players for the 2023 Women’s World Cup. Given the right platform and brand partner, these athletes have tremendous potential to supercharge the growth of women’s football.

Instagram’s 10 most influential female football players

Note: Leah Williamson (England) would have ranked fourth, but is not included in the list due to injury.
Note: World Cup 2023 is Kerr’s hometown tournament, which could potentially increase her follower growth and sponsor value significantly.
The methodology includes a range of performance and sponsorship-related key performance indicators (KPI) including social following, content engagement, fan base growth, quality, reachability and equivalent media value of branded content published by each player. Leveraging the flexibility of InfluenceScope, different weights are given to each KPI in order to distinguish them in terms of importance. All data is from June 2022 – May 2023.

Take Alisha Lehmann, a Swiss forward who plays for Aston Villa who ranked No. 1 on our list. Her Instagram following has increased by 75% in the last 12 months to more than 13.4 million, making her the most popular Swiss sports person on the platform—even more followed than tennis legend Roger Federer. 

Spain’s Alexia Putellas, the 2022 Ballon d’Or winner, grew her following by 65% over the past year, Manchester United Alessia Russo forward increased hers by 280%, and VfL Wolfsburg and Germany’s Jule Brand’s following went up by an eye-popping 517%, the highest growth by a player in Nielsen’s top-10 most influential players. 

While these players may have less reach than some of their male counterparts, they often have higher engagement and a much more reachable audience. This represents a huge opportunity for brands, says Jon Stainer, Managing Director of Nielsen Sports. 

“The footballers participating at World Cup 2023 are not only exceptional sports women but also social media powerhouses, capable of driving impactful conversations and fostering genuine connections with their followers,” says Stainer.

Instagram’s 10 biggest breakthrough players (born 2000 or later)

In the case of breakthrough players, leveraging the flexibility of InfluenceScope, more weight was given to the growth in following and performance over the past year than to more static KPIs: the solution allows the weight of each KPI and—at a later stage—of each data point to be changed according to the objectives.

The data shows just how potent the connection is between these athletes and their followers. Across Instagram, more than half of the creators have an engagement rate below 5%. Seven of the women on Nielsen’s top 10 list are above that, and all of the biggest breakthrough players are above that benchmark by wide margins.

Those connections lead to the kind of results that make sponsors’ ears perk up. Seventy-one percent of consumers trust advertising, opinions and product placements from influencers, according to the 2021 Nielsen Trust in Advertising study. In another study, where Nielsen’s Brand Impact service measured the effectiveness of influencer ads in nearly 200 campaigns, the results were even more impressive. An average of 80% of people who viewed influencer ads were able to recall seeing the brand featured in the ads, and the ads also drove a nine-point increase in both brand affinity and purchase intent relative to consumers who didn’t see them. 

When engagement rates are this high, it translates into significant value for sponsors. As a group, the top 10 female footballers deliver an average of over $65,000 USD of media value per post. On her own, Lehmann’s posts embody more than $300,000 USD in media value per post, and Barcelona midfielder Alexia Putellas posts are still valued at $100,000 USD despite being injured for most of the past year. 

These athlete influencers are especially well suited for the platforms they exist on. Instagram is generally dominated by women and younger audiences, allowing sponsors to reach these coveted demographics, who they may struggle to communicate with otherwise.

As we head into the 2023 World Cup, these athletes can be a critical force for unlocking new heights for the tournament, the sport and all of women’s sports for years to come. The fan engagement and brand value is already there, and with the right partnerships and promotion, new audiences are sure to follow.  

For more insights and stats, explore our Women’s World Cup data hub. 

Sources

¹Nielsen Brand Tracker – FIFA Women’s World Cup, April 2019 – Jan 2023
²Nielsen Fan Insights, March 2023, Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Spain, U.K. and U.S.

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Bridget Nelson, Head of Brand Performance and Audience Research at MassMutual, joined us as we discussed: 

• The role of sports sponsorship in MassMutual’s marketing mix
• Using data to evolve a brand’s sponsorship strategy
• Optimizing sponsorship investments by holistically measuring impact on business objectives

The post Building brands with sports sponsorship appeared first on Nielsen.

Compared with most live sports in the U.S., which air outside of traditional work and school hours, the majority of the World Cup games were held at times when many Americans would be otherwise indisposed. That fact notwithstanding, this year’s World Cup matches, especially those involving the U.S. team, attracted massive TV audiences in the U.S. In fact, three of the matches the U.S. team competed in this year are in the top 10 most-watched English broadcast World Cup matches in the U.S. dating back to 1994. And this year’s U.S.-England match boasted a U.S. audience of almost 15.5 million to the English telecast—the highest U.S. viewership of any men’s World Cup game to date.

For context, consider the viewership associated with new fall TV programming—the primary driver of the annual advertising upfronts. This year, the four primary English broadcast networks¹ attracted an average of 3.9 million viewers for primetime programming airing in the first month of the new fall TV season². The audience grows to 5.5 million when we factor in time-shifted viewing over one week, but the aggregate viewership still pales in comparison to that of the World Cup matches featuring the U.S. Those four matches engaged an average of 12.2 million viewers across English telecasts.

The viewership of this year’s tournament is perhaps more notable when Nielsen Fan Insights indicates that just 28% of U.S. respondents are interested in soccer. Overall, Americans remain most interested in the NFL, the Olympics, the NBA and MLB.

The appeal and interest in this year’s tournament has also withstood some intense competition. From an audience perspective, fall is when linear TV programming gets a boost, and this year was no exception, as sports viewing increased 222% in September as the new American football season kicked off. In October, sports viewing volume increased another 19%, just ahead of the start of the year’s World Cup, which is typically held in the summer.

By the time the tournament started, the matches that were broadcast on traditional cable began challenging other sports events for slots in Nielsen’s weekly top 10 listings. And over Thanksgiving weekend, possibly the biggest sports viewing period of the fall, survey respondents claimed the World Cup was their third choice for sports viewing, coming in behind NFL and college football. Yet perhaps more noteworthy is that the two matches listed in the top 10 cable listing for the week of Nov. 21-27, 2022, didn’t feature the U.S. men’s team:

• 4.1 million tuned in for the Argentina-Mexico match
• 3.6 million tuned in for the Spain-Germany match

Given the 90-minute matches, tuning in—especially midday—is a commitment. Most Americans acknowledge the need to balance their interest in the games with other aspects of their daily lives. While the majority of fans are keeping track of the action by watching highlights on TV, many are following on social media and hearing from others via word of mouth, including texting. And with 47% texting and 43%³ scrolling on social media, big moments in individual matches have attracted audiences who might not have already been tuned in.

Take the Group State match between Brazil and Serbia for example. Nielsen Gracenote had given Serbia a 32% chance of advancing, possibly limiting audience engagement for the Thanksgiving Day matchup with tournament-favorite Brazil. But when Brazil’s Richarlison de Andrade, known mononymously as Richarlison, made a dynamic scissor kick goal just before the 73-minute mark, viewership jumped 7% during the five minutes following the goal.

Given the wide appeal of live sports, sponsorship activations remain a key way that brands can engage with new and existing fans. And while long-term success will hinge on bridging the gap between awareness and conversion, sponsorship activations in the sports industry have risen in their ability to convert fans.

For example, our 2022 annual sports report noted that during the pandemic, when we controlled for the impact of changing levels of brand awareness and sponsorship maturity, levels of purchase intent among exposed fans were higher than levels of brand familiarity. In addition, a recent Nielsen analysis of 100 sponsorships between 2020 and 2021 in seven markets across 20 industries found that the sponsorships drove an average 10% lift in purchase intent among the exposed fanbase.

During this year’s World Cup, nearly two-thirds of those who watched or intended to watch live World Cup matches in our World Cup Viewing Habits Survey said they recalled the ads they saw during the matches they watched. And not surprisingly, food, snack and alcoholic beverage brands benefited the most, gaining the best recall among audiences.

The World Cup, like the Olympics, presents a unique opportunity for brands and agencies to attract audiences who might not otherwise be inspired to watch. With an average 4.7 million⁴ people watching the 2022 men’s World Cup live on cable and broadcast—higher than the average primetime programming we saw this year—advertisers would be wise to consider global tentpole sporting events in their marketing mix.

From a soccer perspective, they won’t have long to wait to score a golden goal, as the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup is just around the corner. The opportunity therein speaks for itself; the 2015 final between the U.S. and Japan was the most watched World Cup match (men and women) of all time.

Notes

1. ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX
2. Sept. 20-Oct. 17, 2022
3. Nielsen World Cup Viewing Habits Survey, Nov. 27-Dec. 1, 2022
4. Nielsen National TV Panel

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The tide of popularity is turning for football in North America, to the benefit of sponsors and advertisers. Since 2015, the U.S. has added 10 clubs to the MLS, while Canada founded the Canadian Premier League in 2017 with eight current teams and Mexico’s Liga MX boasts some of the largest crowds of any North American league¹. 

This new popularity is creating hotspots of football fan bases across future host countries. In Canada, for instance, interest in football in general has increased 32.8% since the announcement that the country will host 10 2026 World Cup matches². And according to Nielsen Scarborough, in the U.S. Houston is the 2026 World Cup host city with the most football fans per capita, followed by Los Angeles and Miami/Ft. Lauderdale.

World Cup host cities are home to their own football clubs, so fan concentration in these areas makes sense. But, importantly, the popularity of local teams can spread to surrounding areas, enlarging the sphere of influence for advertisers that partner with regional teams or athletes.

To reach these fans, advertisers are using social media sites like Twitter, TikTok and Twitch. According to Nielsen’s 2022 World Football Report, while free-to-air television is still the preferred method of viewing matches (81%) for football fans who watch sports, social media is now a go-to platform, with 72% of fans claiming they use apps to watch the action. 

And when their teams do well, fans flock to social media to follow and like and engage with content. The Canadian men’s team, for example, saw a significant increase in social media content & interactions in the 2021/2022 season after qualifying for their first World Cup in 36 years. The women’s national team saw a similar increase in social media engagement when they won gold in the 2021 Tokyo Olympics.

The qualification also sparked interest in football for Canadians in general, with 35.6% saying they are now more interested in watching football than before the team qualified for the World Cup, according to Nielsen Fan Insights.

National team football fans in each host country prefer YouTube for sports news and content. While Twitch is among the lowest used by percentage, fans over index significantly on its use compared to the general population. To further expand its reach for the 2022 World Cup, Twitch is adding a live streaming component to their coverage for the first time, granting Brazilian Twitch influencer Casimiro Miguel the rights to stream matches to his millions of followers.

In addition to the notable on-screen audience exposure that sponsors receive on both live TV and social media, Nielsen’s 2021 Trust in Advertising study found that brand sponsorships in sporting events rank just behind recommendations from friends and family, as 81% of consumers reported either completely or somewhat trusting them (vs. 89% who trust recommendations). Football fans are also eager to learn more about the brands sponsoring their favorite team—56% of percent actively inform themselves about brands engaged as a sports sponsor.

But football sponsorships are more than an opportunity to increase brand awareness—they can be the key to staying top of mind with fans when it comes time to make a purchase. According to Nielsen Fan Insights, 67% of football fans think brands are more appealing when they participate in sports sponsorships, and 59% would pick a sponsor’s product over a competitor’s if price and quality are the same, compared to 45% of the general population. And Nielsen’s 2022 Global Sports Report found that the sponsorships drove an average 10% lift in purchase intent among the exposed fanbase.

As the 2022 World Cup heads to the first match, winners and losers will be decided both on the field and off, with advertisers tallying up the cost of sponsorship against the impact on brand awareness and revenue. Brands that want to get ahead of the game for the 2026 World Cup and start making early inroads in North America need to start planning now for campaigns that can build on the momentum of 2022 and turn today’s fans into tomorrow’s customers.

Notes

1. The Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football
2. Nielsen Fan Insights, August 2022

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