Live sports remain one of the most powerful targets for advertisers. Even as media consumption fragments, sports fandom continues to unite massive, highly engaged audiences across screens, platforms, and geographies. It remains one of the few content categories that consistently draw huge real-time audiences. The NFL, for example, now always holds most of the top spotsfor most-watched TV events or episodes.
Whether it’s the NFL, NBA, Premier League, Formula 1, college sports, or global tentpoles like the World Cup and Olympics, advertisers are leaning into sports moments because they deliver scale, passion, and real-time attention that’s hard to find anywhere else.
Sell-side audience targeting allows advertisers to reach fans before, during, and after the game, across CTV, set-top boxes, premium open web and app inventory, without depending solely on expensive linear buys. Aligning data and media before the bid even reaches the DSP, pre-filters the supply using audience signals.
With the right curated audiences, brands can target the right audiences and engage fans in the moments where anticipation is high, conversation is active, and purchase intent is strongest.
Here are some of the powerful ways sell-side targeting can elevate your live-sports campaigns:
1. Reach Fans by Sport and League
With granular segmentation, you can target NFL superfans, NBA enthusiasts, soccer devotees, F1 loyalists, tennis followers, and more. Each fandom features different demographics and psychographics, so it’s a much better way to target more effectively than just advertising to all sports fans. Pairing sport-specific creative with specific targeting can dramatically increase engagement. The NFL has dominated American sports for a while, with baseball and basketball tied for second. Almost 40% of fans only watch one sport, and 30% more watch two sports, so it’s important to know which type of people you are targeting and which sport they watch to spend efficiently.
2. Go Beyond a Single Screen
Live sports watching is only one facet of the overall sports fandom experience. Many fans read websites and watch preview shows on linear, streaming, and YouTube and conduct second-screen browsing during the action to track their fantasy teams, and consume post-game highlights. For example, one study finds that 80% of sports fans use a second screen, and that figure increases for younger generations. In addition to creating greater scale, cross device, and household level audience expansion allows brands to connect with fans when they’re ordering food, buying merch, or planning watch parties.
3. Engage Sports Bettors and Fantasy Players
In 2024, over 88 million people engaged in fantasy sports or sports betting, according to The Fantasy Sports & Gaming Association (FSGA). Sports bettors had double the amount of college degrees than the average American, and almost 25% of them make $100,000 or more.
Sports bettors, daily fantasy sports (DFS) players, and season-long fantasy participants also consume a lot of content to support their decisions. With curated segments around betting interests, team-following behavior, and predictive stats browsing, campaigns can efficiently reach high-intent users.
4. Align with Big Moments Without Big-Moment Prices
You don’t have to know much about sports to realize how championship games like the Super Bowl, NBA Finals, World Series, and others are big-ticket, high-cost events. Since not every brand can afford spending millions on ads during these events, they can use sell-side curation to advertise in tangential publishers, capturing attention at scale while controlling cost and reach.
5. Plan your World Cup Strategy
The World Cup remains one of the most powerful audience engines in global media, uniting billions of fans across continents, time zones, and devices. And in 2026, it will be played in the United States, Mexico, and Canada, ensuring broadcasts during advantageous hours.
With 5B+ cumulative viewers in 2022, the World Cup delivers unmatched reach and increased digital engagement. Fans don’t just watch, they watch with others and build their days around the games. This creates a uniquely valuable advertising moment where curated sell-side audiences can pinpoint national-team followers, bettors, and superfans at a massive scale.
Glossary’s Sell-Side Audience Curation Advantage
As major sports calendars peak and new seasons kick off, ensure your campaigns break through with precise, intent-driven sell-side audience curation.
Glossary helps brands reach passionate sports fans across devices using proprietary prebuilt or customized audience segments built around sport, league, team affinity, betting interest, content consumption, and real-time engagement signals. Dedicated strategists fine-tune campaigns across premium placements, while our media curation ensures quality, privacy compliance, and minimized waste.
Ready to get in the game?
Contact us and we’ll have your sports campaigns live before the kickoff, tip-off, or first pitch.
