No single subject consumes more television time, worldwide, than live sports events. No other kind of programming had as much impact on making television commercially viable in its infancy. Sports—so widely publicized and producing an unrehearsed outcome—motivated enough people to buy the newfangled gadget to generate a mass audience.
Leonard Koppett wrote those words in 1999 in an article for Columbia University about the first televised sporting event: a Columbia–Princeton baseball game on May 17, 1939.
Today, this still holds true. Live sports continue to dominate television viewership numbers. They drive more advertising revenue than any other type of programming. And they still motivate fans to buy “newfangled gadgets” that broadcast their games.
What has changed is how viewers consume live sports (and the gadgets on which they watch).
Digital viewership of live sports surpassed traditional TV in 2023, and the gap continues to widen. In the U.S., digital live sports viewership is projected to increase by 21% between 2024 and 2027, reaching 127.4 million viewers. Sports are now broadcast on linear TV, across a growing number of streaming services, and even on social media (where viewership grew an impressive 34% between 2020 and 2024).
This shift presents a moment of truth for digital advertising. To truly unlock the potential of live sports, we need to move beyond traditional metrics and embrace sophisticated data partnerships that draw a clear line between who saw an ad and who took action. But this shift isn’t just about measuring ad exposure or attention, it’s about proving the tangible business impact of reaching valuable viewers in a premium content setting.
The Evolving Landscape of Live Sports on CTV
As consumers look for more flexible and affordable ways to access content, streaming platforms have stepped in to meet that demand. Viewers now enjoy greater control over what they watch, and platforms benefit from increasingly loyal and data-rich audiences. This shift has especially taken off among younger consumers, who are opting out of expensive cable bundles in favor of on-demand, internet-based services.
Recognizing the opportunity to reclaim what once anchored traditional TV, streaming services have significantly expanded their live sports offerings. Live sports remain one of the few types of content that viewers consistently watch in real time, making them especially attractive to advertisers. As a result, we’re seeing the rise of dedicated sports channels on Free Ad-Supported Streaming TV (FAST) services, alongside major sports leagues launching their own direct-to-consumer streaming options.
For platforms and advertisers alike, the live sports audience is simply too valuable to ignore.
Studies show that live sports viewers spend significantly more time watching the screen compared to other content viewers and are more likely to remember ads. According to an LG Ad Solutions report, 64% of respondents said they tuned into ads, and 80% recalled them. This kind of engagement underscores the unique value of live sports for advertisers.
However, measuring that impact isn’t always straightforward. Traditional linear TV metrics, like GRPs and reach, fall short when it comes to capturing the effectiveness of CTV advertising. What sets CTV apart is its ability to deliver more granular, audience-level data. But even with this potential, marketers still face key obstacles when it comes to truly measuring and optimizing campaign performance.
The Limitations of CTV Advertising Measurement for Live Sports
Consumers are watching live sports—and they’re watching the ads. But marketing success isn’t measured by impressions alone, it’s defined by outcomes. The key question remains: did the ad drive action? Despite the promise of CTV, marketers still face significant obstacles in connecting viewership to conversion.
- Fragmentation: The CTV ecosystem is highly fragmented. Consumers access content across a wide range of platforms, devices, and services, making it difficult to gain a unified view of campaign performance. This scattered environment complicates data collection and prevents advertisers from clearly understanding what’s working.
- Lack of Standardized Identifiers: Unlike the web, where cookies have traditionally facilitated tracking, CTV lacks universal identifiers. This limits precise targeting, effective frequency capping (ensuring an ad isn’t shown too many times to the same person), and accurate attribution of conversions back to specific ad exposures.
- Co-viewing Complexity: When multiple people watch content on a single screen, it becomes difficult to determine exactly who saw a particular ad. This lack of viewer-level precision makes it challenging to measure individual ad exposure and attribute outcomes accurately. As a result, co-viewing complicates efforts to understand and optimize ad performance in the evolving CTV landscape.
Overcoming These Obstacles
While these challenges haven’t been fully solved, advertisers can take meaningful steps to capitalize on the promise of live sports. This includes choosing the right data and technology partners to strategically collaborate ensuring you have a robust mix of data to broaden your understanding of both viewing behavior and shopping behavior. Without tying ad exposure to real-world outcomes, it’s impossible to truly evaluate return on ad spend. As the ecosystem evolves, combining smart partnerships with outcome-based measurement is key to unlocking CTV’s full potential.
The Critical Role of Data Partners in Effective Measurement
Specialized data and technology partners play a crucial role in bridging key data gaps. They offer sophisticated solutions for identity resolution, cross-platform tracking, and granular audience insights helping marketers move beyond mere ad exposure and reach to a more complete understanding of campaign performance.
These partnerships may include:
- Identity Resolution Providers: These companies specialize in the complex task of linking disparate data points to construct a more complete and accurate view of individual viewers and households, across a multitude of devices. By connecting fragmented identifiers, they enable marketers to understand a single user’s journey, even as they move between different CTV apps, mobile devices, and desktop experiences.
- Data Aggregators: These partners can collect and integrate data from various sources, including viewership patterns, demographic information, and behavioral data. This aggregation enriches audience profiles, allowing for more precise targeting and a deeper understanding of consumer segments.
- Measurement and Analytics Platforms: These companies provide the essential tools and technologies to track campaign performance, attribute conversions back to specific ad exposures, and generate actionable insights that inform ongoing optimization strategies. These platforms often leverage the data provided by identity resolution and aggregation partners to offer comprehensive reporting.
As these data partnerships become more central to CTV advertising, the importance of privacy compliance cannot be overstated. Data partners must operate strictly within the confines of evolving privacy regulations, such as the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). This necessitates the exclusive use of privacy-compliant data that is both anonymized and consented to ensure that consumer privacy is protected while still enabling effective and data-driven advertising.
The Critical Role of Purchase Insights for Demonstrating ROI
To drive real business growth through CTV advertising, it’s not enough to know that someone saw your ad—you need to know what happens. Did they make a purchase? Visit your website? Download your app? Fortunately, advertisers no longer have to rely solely on proxy metrics or assumptions. The most compelling proof of an ad’s impact lies in an actual consumer purchase.
By integrating purchase insights with CTV ad exposure, advertisers gain a powerful advantage. This means:
- Analyze granular performance by DMA, daypart, or frequency to Optimize Media Performance. Adjust strategy in real time by identifying the media tactics that drive the strongest outcomes.
- Prove sports ad ROI by tying sports ad exposure directly to in-store and online purchases to measure true incremental lift and confidently demonstrate ROAS. This includes demonstrating a direct increase in sales, a rise in generated leads, or measuring incremental sales lift that can be directly attributed to a CTV ad shown during a major sporting event.
- Identify which sports, teams, and leagues your current (and future) customers are watching for more precise targeting. Use that intel to guide smarter sponsorships and ad buys.
This advanced approach moves well beyond traditional viewership metrics and allows marketers to make smarter, more confident decisions that drive growth.
Key Considerations for Leveraging Data and Purchase Insights
Uniting data from diverse CTV platforms, various data partners, and internal transaction systems is complex. Each platform may have its own data formats and APIs, which requires robust data infrastructure and sophisticated secure data sharing practices to ensure seamless and compliant data flow.
Additionally, with integration comes the crucial need for data matching and accuracy. Effectively linking a specific ad exposure on a CTV device to a subsequent purchase, which might occur on a different device or even offline, requires highly accurate matching techniques to avoid misattributions and ensure reliable insights. This also leads to the necessity of attribution modeling. Given the multi-touchpoint customer journeys prevalent today, simplistic last-touch attribution models are insufficient. Sophisticated attribution models are required to account for various touchpoints across different devices and channels, accurately assigning credit to the CTV ad’s contribution to the overall conversion.
The success of these data-driven strategies hinges on strategic partnerships. Choosing the right data partners, those with proven expertise in CTV measurement, strong identity resolution capabilities, and secure access to relevant purchase insights, is paramount to overcoming these complexities and unlocking the true value of live sports advertising.
Does it work? The Proof is in the Purchase.
The ability to tie ad exposure to real-world outcomes isn’t just a theoretical advantage—it delivers measurable results. By diving deep into consumer behavior, marketers can move beyond broad demographic targeting to identify segments that not only watch live sports but also respond to ads in ways that lead to purchases or other key outcomes.
This granular insight into who converts, what they buy, and which ad exposures drive those actions, enables brands to:
- Craft highly relevant, personalized ad experiences that speak directly to specific audiences.
- Maximize campaign efficiency by focusing spend where it’s most likely to generate results.
- Drive real business impact across the entire funnel—from awareness to conversion.
A strong example of this is a study we conducted with EDO, the TV outcomes company. The companies leveraged Fansactions™, a solution that gives brands a clear line of sight between sports media exposure and real-world purchase behavior, to measure the impact of live sports advertising on both mid-funnel behaviors like brand searches and website visits, as well as lower-funnel conversions such as quick-service restaurant (QSR) purchases.
The results were striking. Adding live sports to a TV ad campaign significantly amplified performance. In some cases, sales lift more than doubled—from 8% to 17%—depending on the type of sport featured.
The takeaway? Live sports aren’t just great for reach—they’re powerful drivers of real, measurable business results.
Post Game-Show Conclusions
Live sports have always commanded attention—but in today’s fragmented, digital-first landscape, that attention must be measured and monetized more intelligently than ever. By embracing advanced data strategies, forging the right technology partnerships, and integrating purchase insights, advertisers can move beyond outdated metrics and finally connect the dots between ad exposure and business outcomes. The result isn’t just better measurement—it’s stronger campaigns, smarter investment, and proof that live sports on CTV deliver real impact where it matters most.
