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.

Live sports is becoming a bigger part of streaming advertising, but reaching fans is no longer enough. As sports rights migrate to streaming platforms and advertisers gain access to new formats, brands are under pressure to demonstrate that their investments are influencing consumers, not simply generating impressions. For Amazon, that means expanding its sports portfolio, attracting advertisers that traditionally haven't invested in sports, and developing ad experiences that complement the action rather than interrupt it.

His 1.5M+ followers offer portable reach beyond traditional team sponsorships.

Football is commanding more media budgets as premium ad inventory gets pricier and college sponsorship options expand. Now, brands face a widening trade-off between its unmatched reach and rising ad costs.

Competitive rewards multipliers on essential categories can help co-brands capture spend outside branded purchases.

Spectacle events surrounding sports are pulling viewership numbers that rival, and sometimes exceed, the games themselves. That creates new openings for advertisers to reach passionate audiences in low-stakes, high-excitement environments. Major sporting events reveal broader cultural trends. "Amazon is in such a unique position to give us an idea of broader consumer sentiment because of its scale and reach," our analyst Sarah Marzano said on a recent episode "In the Game." The same principle applies to sport-adjacent spectacles, which reveal an unsatiated hunger for collective experiences that traditional game broadcasts don't satisfy.

Football season is a delivery app season. As the 2026 NFL and college football seasons kick off, fans will be inviting friends and family over to watch the games, and they will be ordering the snacks and drinks to feed them. That gives brands a window through commerce networks to reach hungry fans on delivery apps, introduce new products, and help them plan the right mix for their guests.

The NFL’s fan base is broadening, and advertisers now have a more diverse audience to reach over live digital channels. The upcoming season, which kicks off with its first preseason game August 6, will have more international games than ever as the league continues to grow a global audience. US digital live sports viewership will reach 122.7 million, up 6.1% YoY, according to EMARKETER’s forecast. The NFL’s current media rights agreements include two streaming-exclusive deals (Netflix and Prime Video), and four deals with broadcasters that include linear retransmission on streamers (ESPN, Paramount+, Peacock, and Fox One).

Nielsen's math gets challenged: TVB questions Nielsen’s ad-supported TV figures, saying flawed inputs overstate streaming and undercount linear viewing.

Media consumption is climbing again after years of slower growth, thanks partly to genAI. New forecasts reveal how AI, streaming video, live sports, and converged TV are reshaping how US adults spend their time—and driving more screen time in the process.

Sports audiences are fragmenting across platforms and channels, but live games still command attention and deliver engaged audiences. Streaming is growing, but traditional TV remains an important part of the ecosystem.

Amex can deepen rewards for its sports-hungry membership.

Sports fuels streaming catalogs: SVOD sports titles jumped 77.5%, giving marketers premium digital arenas.

Live sports represent the last mass TV audience, driving a surge in sports TV ad spending. But ad prices are climbing as demand intensifies, forcing advertisers to face rising costs and limited inventory.

Why live sports still wins the attention game In a fragmented media environment, live sports remains one of the few places where audiences gather in real time and stay actively engaged. As fandom extends across apps, highlights, fantasy, and social platforms, advertisers are gaining new signals into how sports fans behave beyond the broadcast.

Netflix hits the gas on advertising: The company secured a slew of NFL games, but its bet on podcast and vertical video ads is less certain.

US sports betting is shifting from adding users to maximizing revenues from higher-margin types of bets. Although operators are earning more from each bet, they face the threats of rising scrutiny, higher user acquisition costs, and new competitors.

Disney’s results show consumers are still spending: The company’s high-demand streaming services are keeping viewers on board despite economic shocks.

Vertical UHNW wealth management is a growing theme.