CTV advertising is a popular approach in many spheres, but it has great efficiency and success in sports, first of all. According to eMarketer, already today, more than 90% of CTV ad budgets are bought programmatically. And it makes sense: programmatic allows brands to reach specific audiences on TV with much better targeting, more control, and lower costs compared to traditional TV buying.
No wonder this approach has made great changes in sports ads and offers new solutions that take this direction in advertising to the next level. Let’s discover how it works and what’s special about CTV in live sports season this year!
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Why Sports Season Is a CTV Power Moment
Sport is one of the most followed areas of interest in the modern world. This year has a very busy sports calendar with football and basketball playoffs, global competitions, and lots of local events. Fans have many reasons to get glued to the screens that broadcast events, while advertisers shouldn’t lose a chance to engage them even more than previously. A special focus should be placed on live sports, which are getting more accessible all around the world, thanks to advertising, first of all.
Earlier, these were partnerships, reach, and frequency that were taken into consideration in sports sponsorships and ad buys. But nowadays we can see a shift towards layering commerce data and measurable insights into the impressions and ensuring that a person who saw an ad becomes your customer. This is where the power of convergence shouldn’t be missed since it provides premium storytelling and huge reach.
Fans follow the way they usually do in real-life purchases: they see personalized CTV ads while watching an event, later they see this sponsored content in the news, and only after some period of time do they make a decision to purchase the item. This reinforcement across multiple screens is a key to a confidence-building path to the purchase decision that doesn’t have a stalker effect. This approach works best in live sports, so it should be the key to the majority of modern advertising strategies.
How Fans Watch Sports on CTV Today
More sports fans prefer to follow their favorite sports on streaming apps and platforms, which is good news for brands that can reach them with greater scale and agility. They have had the chance to target viewers across a variety of platforms at the right moments, and the statistical data confirms this.
- Sports fans are getting more digitalized. The number of people who streamed live sports events has grown by almost 10 million over the year and is expected to increase by 21% by 2027.
- Connected TV live sports streaming of NFL ads worked 66% better than cable or broadcast ones in the 2024–2025 season. Some events have even outperformed TV ads by 116%! The main reason is the potential to reach a specific audience and deliver a more relevant message.
- A record number of viewers watched Super Bowl LIX via a live stream – 15.5 million!
- Top sports content is getting more available on live streaming apps and CTV since more platforms are doing their best to meet this demand.
- Live sports viewers are also more engaged, and 64% admit they pay attention to ads. Moreover, 74% of these viewers expect more relevant messaging.
Key Sports Events Driving CTV Ad Demand
It isn’t surprising that some sports events tend to be more popular with viewers and therefore, more important and lead-generating for advertisers. Let’s take a look at some of the most followed sports contests that drive the CTV ad demand to better understand the trends in Live Sports CTV Advertising in 2026.
NFL Super Bowl
The NFL’s popularity is evident in one key fact: 93 of 100 sports programs broadcast last year were NFL games. This number has grown from 82 in 2022, and the ratings have continued to grow in 2024. TNF had around 13.22 million viewers at the beginning of week 9, which is an 11% increase from 2023.
The fact that Amazon paid an overwhelming sum of $150 million for the rights to stream the playoff game in January 2025 came as a surprise, and the fact that it was watched by over 22 million people is another impressive fact of NFL success.
Example of the most viral CTV ad for the Super Bowl – Tubi
UEFA Champions League
The success of UEFA matches is easily recognized through final match viewing statistics. The 2023–2024 Champions League final was watched by over 145 million viewers and broadcast in over 200 countries worldwide. The UEFA Champions League semifinal 2025 between Inter Milan and Barcelona attracted an average of 1.278 million viewers, setting a US record.
NBA Finals
The NBA has a massive global following, and its final of 2025 was watched by 19.3 million viewers. One more important aspect is the league’s $76 billion media rights deal, which has changed the way sports fans follow their favorite games in 2025. Nowadays, there are more streams on Amazon Prime, Disney’s ESPN, and NBCUniversal. The results of this deal are clear: the national NBA games shown on these services have drawn over 60 million viewers through the first month of the season.
YouTube TV Ad during 2021 NBA Finals
Olympics & Paralympics
The Paris Games 2024 have become a breakthrough for Peacock since the service saw a 39% growth in monthly watch time. The company admitted to running up to 60 concurrent live event streams and up to 300 streams every day.
Formula 1 Season
The latest 2025 Formula 1 Season was covered by 42 broadcast partners in 37 territories all around the world. 7.5 million people viewed it on social channels. The overall number of fans exceeds 870 million people.
MLB World Series
The surge in baseball viewership was reported by ESPN, FS1, and MLB Network in 2024. The latter one admitted to having 14.5 billion minutes watched on streaming services and an increased engagement on social media platforms (e.g., a 33% growth on YouTube only).
FIFA tournaments & qualifiers
The FIFA World Cup reached the highest record in 2022, when around 5 billion viewers followed the tournament. Around 2.7 billion of these viewers followed the matches on digital and streaming platforms. The tournament is so popular that around 26% of US sports viewers agree to pay to watch the FIFA World Cup coverage.
eSports events
eSports has played a major role in reshaping how CTV advertising works, largely because it was built as a streaming-first, digital-native form of sports from day one.
Unlike traditional sports that migrated from broadcast TV to streaming, eSports grew on platforms like Twitch, YouTube, and later FAST and CTV apps. This meant advertisers could immediately use digital-style targeting, real-time optimization, and interactive ad formats inside a TV environment.
One of the biggest changes is audience targeting. eSports streams generate rich first-party data based on viewing behavior, game preferences, and engagement patterns. Advertisers can target fans of specific games (e.g., League of Legends, CS2, Valorant), teams, or even in-game genres, rather than buying broad “sports fan” TV packages.
Why CTV Matters for Sports Advertisers
Live Sports CTV Advertising is more effective and popular nowadays due to several unmatched benefits it offers:
- Premium live audiences. You can go beyond demographics and target users by specific interest, location, and viewing behavior to deliver relevant ads.
- Real-time engagement. Advertising campaigns can be tailored to specific in-game moments, making them more effective and dynamic.
- Co-viewing & household reach. You get more viewer attention and stronger purchase intent recall.
Opportunities for Brands During Sports Season
Brands that haven’t taken advantage of CTV ads yet should understand that they are the future of marketing when it comes to sports. The use of this approach opens them a range of opportunities:
- Live-streaming activations. They can run interactive and real-time digital experiences like polls, questions, and answers, or sponsored content to boost customer engagement and transform passive viewers into active participants.
- Fan-based audience segments. Brands can reach different customer groups to build deeper loyalty and enable personalized marketing initiatives.
- Cross-device extensions. Companies can reach their target audience across devices and easily expand their potential lead pool.
Challenges in CTV Sports Advertising
CTV sports advertising is connected with a number of challenges. Some companies believe that CTV is more expensive than other digital channels, but it’s a myth. The real challenges look as follows:
- Price. Price is the main barrier in CTV sports advertising. Live sports inventory on CTV is scarce and highly competitive, pushing CPMs far above those for standard streaming content. While regular CTV inventory may average $15–25 CPM, premium live sports, according to Digiday, only start from $30 and can reach 60+ CPM, especially during playoffs or finals.
- Fragmented rights & inventory. The target audience is spread across different applications, devices, and locations. It may make it difficult to create a unified approach to reach and view, and necessitate greater effort in developing plans.
- Frequency management. Such things as platform fragmentation, identity resolution gaps, and data silos lead to ad fatigue and underexposure during highly popular live events. Advertisers tend to lose money and spoil the brand perception.
- Measurement & attribution. Fragmented data, lack of universal identifiers, complex co-viewing scenarios, and inconsistent cross-media standards create difficulties with user tracking, capping frequency, and proving ROI beyond simple impressions. Read more about CTV ad measurement and attribution!
Best-Performing CTV Ad Formats for Sports
Choosing CTV ad formats for sports, it is important to remember that you should move beyond standard videos.
With CTV, brands reach sports fans inside streaming apps like ESPN+, Peacock, and Prime Video using video ads that automatically adapt to the viewer’s location, interests, and even the big game happening in their area that weekend. Instead of one static TV commercial, advertisers can run dynamic video ads that change messaging in real time.
Dynamic CTV formats can include:
- Team logos and colors
- Kick-off or tip-off countdowns
- Live scores or player stats
- Localized offers and QR codes
For example, within the same campaign, a Knicks fan in New York might see a creative referencing the Knicks game tonight, while a Lakers fan in Los Angeles sees a Lakers-themed version of the ad — all generated automatically.
Another advantage of CTV sports formats is non-skippable, 100% viewable video ads, which typically drive higher completion rates and stronger brand recall.
What’s Next for CTV in Sports
If you decide to foresee the future of live sports and CTV, you may come across several goals to be achieved by advertisers. The last ones should work to deliver real-time, interactive experiences that are relevant and engaging. Some experts predict an increase in programmatic buying of key elements, retail media integration, and AI-powered personalization. It will lead to the launch of data-driven campaigns, using interactive ad formats and more targeted content, too.