For Rocket Mortgage, sports marketing isn’t primarily about reaching the biggest possible audience. It’s about making a mortgage lender relevant to consumers long before they’re ready to buy a home.

The lender is using partnerships with the NFL and Detroit Lions, major events like the Super Bowl, and experiential activations to build awareness, affinity, and advocacy. The strategy reflects the realities of a category where purchase cycles are long and recommendations still matter.

“We want to show up in places that they have fandom or that they're interested in,” said Doug Buser, vice president of sports and entertainment for Rocket Mortgage, at an Advertising Week New York talk on Monday.

Sports gives Rocket national scale and local relevance

Rocket’s sports strategy starts with the peculiarities of selling mortgages. The company needs broad awareness, particularly as Rocket Companies expands its homeownership ecosystem through acquisitions including Redfin and Mr. Cooper.

Mortgages are also heavily influenced by personal recommendations. Sports marketing covers both needs, reaching large numbers of current and prospective home buyers while appearing local and personal.

“If you've ever gotten a mortgage or purchased a home, it's a very word-of-mouth industry,” Buser said. “We have to have both a national scale, but also reach local residents, and we do that through sports as one of our most effective levers to accomplish that,” Buser said.

Rocket’s Detroit Lions partnership demonstrates the local side of the strategy. At Ford Field, Rocket sponsors third downs, turning a predictable moment in the game into a branded experience as fans cheer and stadium noise rises.

“Decibel levels double in the stadium,” said Buser. “It's a unique branding moment.”

Rocket has been running the activation for several years and has connected it to improvements in brand affinity and advocacy among Lions fans.

“That moment itself drives increases for us, and we actually tie any percentage increase in affinity and advocacy back to a dollar amount when we look at our sales funnel,” he said.

Rocket wants to tap into sports’ emotional swings

Research from Genius Sports and iSpot found that winning fans were more likely to take action after games, while losing fans consumed nearly 20% more content afterward, according to the companies. A major comeback produced a 62% incremental conversion lift among fans of the winning team and an 11% lift among losing fans.

For Rocket, those findings could help justify costly sports investments, and eventually determine when the brand should activate.

“These are expensive partnerships, they're expensive ad buys,” Buser said. “So the more depth that you can give from a data analysis standpoint, the more effective that pitch is internally.”

The goal is to move beyond simply identifying sports fans toward anticipating the moments when their emotions may be strongest. Rocket can then consider how its brands fit naturally into both sides of the emotional experience.

“How do we make sure that we're showing up authentically in those moments, both in celebration and in defeat?” Buser said.

Sports storytelling fits a long purchase journey

Rocket doesn’t expect someone watching a football game to immediately take out a mortgage. That makes sustained emotional connections particularly important.

“Our cycle too is about 28 weeks,” Buser said. “So if you ever started searching for a home, it takes a long time for you to get not necessarily qualified, but actually find the right home.”

Sports gives Rocket recurring opportunities to stay relevant during that journey.

“We see sports as an emotional storytelling mechanism for us,” Buser said.

That storytelling can also connect the difficulty of buying a home to qualities celebrated in sports.

“We think the stories from sports can resonate with audiences to be able to pull in and give them motivation to continue their home search,” he said.

Rocket therefore thinks about sports seasonally. The Super Bowl, for example, effectively kicks off its marketing season around the time consumers begin considering spring and summer home purchases.

“The anticipation is using some of this data to be able to start to set up a framework,” Buser said.

As sports rights become more expensive, proving that those investments can drive something beyond impressions will become increasingly important.

This was originally featured in the EMARKETER Daily newsletter. For more marketing insights, statistics, and trends, subscribe here.