For years, sports marketing has been organized around a familiar center of gravity: the broadcast.
But what changes when fandom stretches beyond a single screen or a single moment and into a full, lived experience—one that begins well before kickoff and continues long after the final whistle?
At CES, two sports-focused panels (When Emotion Becomes Media and More Than a Game) surfaced a clear throughline. Whether the conversation centered on venues, media, brands, or streaming platforms, the conclusion was the same: the fan journey—not the placement—is now the organizing principle.
That shift is reinforced by Infillion’s 2023 The New Sports Fan Research, which shows that sports attention hasn’t disappeared or fragmented. It has expanded across locations, behaviors, and moments that brands now need to intentionally design for.
Game Day Doesn’t Start—or End—at the Arena
One of the clearest takeaways from the CES panels was that the arena is no longer the full experience—it’s the anchor.
As one panelist put it, “The venue may be the crown jewel, but the experience extends much more broadly. The customer journey starts far before you’re stepping into the building.”
That perspective reframes how game day actually works. Fans don’t arrive, watch, and leave. They gather. They anticipate. They linger. They move through neighborhoods, bars, restaurants, and shared spaces that surround the event itself.
Infillion’s The New Sports Fan Research reinforces that reality: 72% of sports fans say they’re likely to eat or drink near a stadium before or after a game. The behavior isn’t incidental—it’s structural.
That’s why teams and brands are increasingly investing beyond the four walls of the venue. Mixed-use districts, exterior media, and surrounding environments are no longer secondary considerations; they’re integral to how fandom is experienced and extended.
For brands, the opportunity isn’t confined to a seat, a screen, or a single impression. It lives in anticipation, arrival, celebration—and the shared rituals that make sports social in the first place.
Sponsorships Still Break Through in Live Sports
One of the recurring themes from the CES venue panel was that live sports environments operate by a different set of attention rules than most media.
As one panelist put it, “Live venues behave differently. When fans are in the building, sponsorship doesn’t feel like interruption—it feels like part of the environment.”
That distinction matters. Inside a stadium or arena, fans aren’t skimming past messages or half-watching from a second screen. They’re physically present, emotionally engaged, and moving through a shared space built around the event itself.
The research supports that reality. In Infillion’s The New Sports Fan Research, more than half of sports fans say they notice which brands sponsor stadiums—a level of awareness that’s increasingly difficult to achieve in other channels.
CES panelists pointed to concourses, entrances, stairwells, and other unexpected placements as examples of how sponsorship works best in this context. These moments succeed not because they demand attention, but because they earn it—by feeling additive to the experience rather than layered on top of it.
When sponsorship is designed as part of the environment, it stops competing for attention and starts building memory.
Why Sports Remains an Ad-Friendly Environment
One of the most consistent points raised during the emotion panel was that sports isn’t just one of the last places ads are tolerated—it’s one of the few places where they’re expected.
As one panelist put it, “Sports are one of the only environments where audiences understand there will be breaks. The game needs them. The rhythm depends on them.”
That expectation changes everything. Fans aren’t surprised by advertising in sports—they’re conditioned for it. What they do react to is whether a brand respects the moment it’s entering.
Several panelists noted that misalignment is what creates friction, not the presence of ads themselves. Showing up during a peak emotional moment with the wrong message—or ignoring the emotional tone of the game entirely—is what breaks trust.
This is why contextual storytelling consistently outperforms generic messaging in sports environments. When creative reflects the language of the game, the culture around it, and the emotional state of the fan, it doesn’t register as interruption.
It registers as participation.
Context Beats Scale in Sports Marketing
One of the clearest lessons from the CES panels was that bigger isn’t always better—but better aligned almost always wins.
Several speakers pointed to examples where contextual creative and experience-led executions outperformed broader media buys, not because they reached more people, but because they reached fans at the right moment. In one case, a brand reduced overall spend while tailoring creative to the sport, the broadcast, and the surrounding experience—and saw stronger performance as a result.
The common thread wasn’t novelty. It was relevance.
As one panelist noted, “Sports fandom is situational. The way fans engage inside the venue, outside the venue, and on their phones are completely different moments—and brands have to respect that.”
Sports isn’t a single environment; it’s a sequence of states. The brands that succeed are the ones that adapt to those shifts rather than forcing one message everywhere and hoping it lands.
Access Is the New Advantage
As the sports experience expands, access matters more than ever.
Infillion InStadium provides access to inventory in 97% of professional and college sports venues in the U.S.
That reach isn’t about ubiquity for its own sake. It’s about enabling brands to show up consistently across the moments that define fandom—inside the arena, around it, and throughout the broader game-day ecosystem.
When access is paired with context and creativity, scale becomes meaningful instead of blunt.
What This Means for Brands Moving Forward
Taken together, the CES conversations and the New Sports Fan research point to a clear evolution:
- Planning shifts from placements to journeys
- Value shifts from reach to relevance
- Sponsorship shifts from visibility to experience
- And venues reclaim their role as high-attention environments
Sports haven’t become harder for brands. It’s become more dimensional.
The fans are there. The emotion is real. The environments are primed for connection.
The brands that win will be the ones built for the full experience—inside the venue, around it, and everywhere fandom shows up next.
