Mid-sized brands often view sports marketing like a venue with a velvet rope: impressive from the outside, but not for them. Too expensive. Too complicated. Better left to the household names with eight- or nine-figure media budgets.
That assumption is wrong. And for brands with regional footprints, it’s an increasingly costly one.
In 2024, 75 of the 100 most-watched TV telecasts were sports programs, up from 56 the year before. In a fragmented, on-demand media landscape, sports are one of the last true appointment television events. The question isn’t whether sports marketing works. It’s whether you’re playing at the right level.
The playing field isn’t level—and that’s the opportunity
National sports marketing is designed for national brands. The Super Bowl, Sunday Night Football, the NBA Finals—these properties are priced for brands with broad distribution and the appetite to compete for share of voice alongside the biggest advertisers in the country. For a brand whose customers are concentrated in specific markets, playing in that arena is too expensive and way too inefficient.
Local and regional sports partnerships don’t just solve for budget. In many cases, they’re the stronger strategic play.
The barrier to entry is lower than most brands assume. Partnerships directly with a team or rightsholders offer hyper-local relevance without league-level pricing. Live sports inventory is increasingly accessible via CTV and programmatic channels—a mid-sized brand can now activate across a targeted set of DMAs at a fraction of national linear costs.
KSM IN ACTION: A regional food client recently invested in Winter Olympics digital inventory across just 14 DMAs, delivering over 1 million impressions, roughly 80% through a single streaming platform. No national deal required.
And if you’ve been told sports marketing is impossible to measure, you’ve been getting incomplete advice. According to Forrester, 76% of marketers who invested in sports sponsorships in 2024 said they struggle to calculate ROI—but the majority of those same marketers reported seeing real business growth from their deals: boosts in brand equity, consideration, and sales. The tools to prove it exist. Impression tracking, attribution modeling, and ROAS measurement that applies to paid digital applies here too. The gap isn’t in sports marketing’s ability to deliver results. It’s in having a partner with the expertise to measure them.
The part that surprises most brands:
Local doesn’t mean small.
A well-structured local partnership has meaningful reach beyond the home market. TV-visible signage and on-apparel partnerships travel with the team, extending a brand’s presence into regional and away markets without paying for regional or national inventory. Understanding a team’s schedule, broadcast footprint, and fan geography is part of how a smart partner evaluates the opportunity.
Reach matters, yet it’s only part of the story. The deeper value is belonging, and local sports partnerships are one of the most authentic ways for brands to show what they stand for. The best partnerships go beyond logo placement—they create real impact in the communities that matter most to fans.
KSM IN ACTION: A financial services client used its jersey patch partnership with a Major League Baseball team to launch a program connecting the club with local charitable organizations, directing a portion of authentic jersey sales back into the community. The patch partnership generated $2 Million in tracked media and publicity value. Another client used a hockey partnership to build a youth access program that brought the sport to kids who’d never had the chance to play. These programs are meaningful to the communities they serve, and they’re the kind of thing consumers remember long after the season ends.
How to evaluate sports partnerships for your brand
Not every sports partnership is the right one, and the best opportunities aren’t always obvious. Here are a few factors we weigh when helping brands decide whether—and how—to get in the game.
Worth exploring if:
- Your brand has a regional footprint where local depth matters more than national breadth
- You’re in a trust-driven category, or a category driving foot traffic—financial services, healthcare, QSR, and retail all fit
- You want to make an abstract brand real and present in people’s daily lives
- You have B2B goals alongside consumer ones—few channels match sports for hospitality and experiential extensions
One note: Women’s sports continues to deserve serious attention. These loyal fans are passionately following their favorite college, professional, and Olympic athletes. The average women’s sports ad in 2024 generated 40% more consumer engagement than primetime counterparts. Especially if you’re earlier in your sports marketing journey, associating with and supporting a growing and powerful cohort of fans is good for your brand—and good for the sport, too. Pricing also continues to be favorable; WNBA media rights cost nearly 580% less per engaged fan than the NBA.
Time to pump the brakes if:
- Your footprint doesn’t map to the markets you’d be activating in—that’s partnership waste, and a good agency will flag it before you sign
- You want the sponsorship without a plan to amplify it—a partnership that lives only inside the stadium is a tree falling in the woods
- You’re treating it as a standalone tactic rather than an integrated marketing pillar
What the right partner brings
The sports landscape is genuinely complex—league controls differ from team controls, exclusivity terms vary widely, and IP usage rights come with restrictions that catch brands off guard.
KSM IN ACTION: Category exclusivity is often misunderstood. When a regional QSR client was locked out of a major national tournament at the category level, DMA-level programmatic insertion let them reach the same audiences in the same moments, bypassing the restriction entirely. When a gaming client faced venue restrictions, activating the entertainment corridor surrounding the stadium delivered authentic brand presence without a formal agreement.
These aren’t workarounds. They’re what experienced partnership strategy looks like in practice.
The brands building the deepest community roots in their markets aren’t doing it with the biggest budgets. They’re the ones who stopped assuming the game wasn’t for them — and found a smarter way to play it.
Curious what’s possible in your market? Let’s talk.