What CMOs can really prove about sports sponsorship, according to measurement specialists

February 2026 brought an unusual collision of sporting events, with the Winter Olympics, Super Bowl LX and NBA All-Star Weekend all falling within 17 days. Measurement specialists say the concentration of spend raises hard questions about what marketers can genuinely prove.

Gary Danks, general manager of Kochava, has called the period an ‘advertising supernova’. “When billions in spend collide across a few short weeks, success isn’t just about reach,” he said. “It’s about having the infrastructure to prove exactly which investments drove results in real-time.”

Traditional marketing mix models report long after the moment has gone. That leaves CMOs with a tension: visibility is instant but proof arrives late, and in an expensive market, late proof can cost next year's budget.

What can be measured live

Aaron Goldman, chief marketing officer at Mediaocean, said the most dependable signals are those captured as events happen. “During major tournaments, the most reliable signals are those captured in the moment – attention quality, accurate creative delivery and immediate behavioral responses like search lift or site visitation. These indicators show whether a brand message truly landed when audiences were most engaged.”

Useful live measures include attention quality and verified delivery of creative, increases in search and website traffic, reach beyond existing audiences and new customers in priority markets.

Sponsor visibility, however, is often exaggerated. “Only around 40% of World Cup followers say they’re likely to notice brands during matches… Presence alone does not guarantee impact,” said LoopMe's senior manager of insight & analytics, Dan Sicular. His research shows mobile viewers have the highest ad recall, at 76%, ahead of streaming and social, especially among the most engaged fans. “What is measurable live is attention and memory,” he said.

According to Satya Menon, EVP analytics at Kantar, big tentpole sports campaigns can build brand equity six times as effectively as everyday paid media and as much as 20 times as effectively as an ordinary TV spot, although that is not guaranteed. “One-off activations peak during kick-offs or finals and then quickly fade. Sustained presence across the phases of the game is what protects long-term impact,” Menon said.

The most sophisticated marketers distinguish real exposure quality from assumed exposure. Live sport works through halo effects across channels, raising interest, discovery and later efficiency, rather than paying back instantly.

Common mistakes

High costs create a temptation to over-claim. Frequent errors include trying to prove immediate, direct returns from a single event, giving one channel credit in a multi-touch system, treating equivalent media value (EMV) as a return on investment, leaning on brand lift without keeping media weight up, and unintentionally blocking high-attention inventory through strict brand safety filters.

“EMV remains the most misused metric in sponsorship,” said Fuse's head of insight and effectiveness, Marie Binet. “It can assess the efficiency of rights as a media opportunity, but it does not measure brand impact, behavioral change or business outcomes.” Used on its own, EMV turns complex sponsorship results into a media cost comparison, often inflating performance while hiding whether perceptions or purchasing changed.

Fiona Salmon, managing director at Mantis, pointed to another hidden problem. “Overly restrictive brand safety and keyword blocking settings can quietly remove high-attention inventory at exactly the wrong moment,” Salmon said. Analysis of last year's Super Bowl found about half of publisher content about the game was wrongly blocked because of everyday sporting language, leaving brands missing from the biggest moments and puzzled by weak results.

Integral Ad Science's EMEA managing director, Csaba Szabo, said big sporting events attract fraud and unsuitable placements. “To meet high expectations of strong ROI in our era of less, marketers need more than post-campaign viewability reports. Harnessing real-time media quality data and pre-bid contextual intelligence ensures investment is directed toward premium, suitable, relevant placements.”

In fragmented CTV and social environments, visibility without quality control can damage both performance and credibility. Where campaigns are kept away from live coverage by filters, the data is incomplete and spending can look less effective than it was.

Incrementality

The real test of sports investment is whether it created additional business value, not whether awareness rose. Danks advocates always-on incrementality measurement. “Brands need a strategic pulse-check in real-time, allowing them to detect channel saturation and shift budgets while the games are still live,” he said. Quick geo-experiments, control groups and real-time modelling can separate halo effects from genuine growth.

Jack 39's SVP and group strategy director, Pat Heffernan, said expensive partnerships need evidence that satisfies the C-suite. “Simply measuring brand visibility isn’t going to cut it. Demonstrating brand lift isn’t enough either,” he said. “Sponsorships need a measurement plan designed to show how the partnership impacts the business – directly through sales, attributable shopping actions, or indirectly through preference metrics tied to future purchase behavior.”

For B2B brands, that could mean hospitality that builds pipeline; for consumer brands, cheaper customer acquisition or more valuable customers among those who saw the activity. If awareness jumps but acquisition costs are unchanged six months on, the investment may not be building value.

Enterprise value

At M+C Saatchi Sport & Entertainment North America, EVP of Sport Valerie Middleton said sponsorship must be treated as a portfolio. “One-off tactics will fall short without a partnership portfolio strategy. Marketers must understand the dollars in versus dollars out value of each property, and how each partnership creates enterprise value.”

She said partnerships should not be judged like performance media. “Over a well-nurtured partnership, the payoff appears in lower-funnel efficiency: improved conversion, reduced acquisition costs and deeper loyalty.”

Jane Power, client managing director at Medialab, said brands need frameworks that reflect what each channel does well and long-term outcomes. “Build out a measurement framework that plays to the strengths and capabilities of different channels. Know what to test, as well as where, when and how.”

17 Sport's CEO and co-founder, Fabien Paget, highlighted a further gap. “Almost no one is measuring whether their partnerships are delivering internally,” he said. He cited Sanofi's Paris 2024 partnership, which involved 26,000 employees in 50 countries in Olympic-linked initiatives and helped recruitment and retention in competitive labour markets. “When people feel the brand’s purpose through sport, it shows up in engagement and retention,” he said. “Yet those internal metrics almost never appear in sponsorship evaluation.”

For global businesses, benefits such as culture, recruitment and partner relationships can justify spending where direct attribution is unclear.

Operational readiness

Goldman said the biggest differentiator is being prepared. “The real differentiator isn’t just buying the moment; it’s being operationally ready for it. Brands that have the infrastructure to adapt creative, manage frequency, and measure outcomes in real time are the ones that turn high-stakes investments into ROAS.”

PepsiCo takes a broad view. “There is no single metric that captures the full value of sports partnerships,” said Adam Warner, PepsiCo's vice-president of global sports & entertainment partnerships. “We connect audience scale and cultural relevance to tangible business outcomes – combining brand health tracking, retail and e-commerce lift, media effectiveness modeling and first-party data capture from activations.” Long-term partnerships, he added, let brands improve their measurement each year rather than starting again.

Four tests before reporting results

• Incrementality: did the activity create new behaviour compared with the baseline?

• Attention quality: was the creative actually seen, engaged with and remembered?

• Behavioural signals: were there rises in search, site visits, app downloads or regional growth?

• Enterprise impact: did it improve employee engagement, partnerships or the ability to attract talent?

If only one of these is strong, the story may not survive scrutiny. In a World Cup year marked by concentrated spending and close attention from finance chiefs, the brands that keep investing in sport beyond 2026 will be those that swap inflated expectations for disciplined measurement.