What Actually Changes When You Move Your Live Sports Ads From Cable to Streaming

NOTE: This blog is a transcript from a podcast and therefore may contain errors.

Krystal Vivian: Welcome to Digital Marketing ROI. I’m Shannon Nalen, your host. I’m here with Krystal. You can keep saying it, Shannon.

Shannon Allen: She’s my favorite host, you’ll always be my favorite cohost, right?

Krystal Vivian: That’s true.

Shannon Allen: I had one of our newer employees had listened to one of our… that’s part of their training is to listen. But she said, “You guys are so natural.” I was like that’s just because we’re up there chit-chatting,” and if you know both of us, we could talk forever

Krystal Vivian: love to talk.

Yeah, we could… It’s honestly impressive that we keep these episodes to 20 to 30 minutes because- I

Shannon Allen: literally …

Krystal Vivian: we could chat for hours.

Shannon Allen: Sometimes every now and then we’ll be like, “Okay we’re nearing the 30-minute mark. We need to, ramp

Krystal Vivian: it up here … we gotta wrap this up.

And every once in a while I’ll cut out a in what I’m editing, but I try not to do that too much.

Shannon Allen: Yes. It’s August, and what’s scary to me is the topic we’re gonna talk about. But yeah, we’re gonna talk about football season, everybody.

Krystal Vivian: We are.

Shannon Allen: It’s football season.

Krystal Vivian: It’s football season. It’s funny because we have been talking about it for two months now at this point. Yes. we’ve been talking about it since April when we started doing live sports.

Shannon Allen: yeah, March, ’cause we were March Madness when we really

Krystal Vivian: It was March Madness … our big platform. so March we started talking about it, and then we started a big push in June, and August is always bittersweet because it’s like it’s the end of summer, everyone’s back to school now.

Shannon Allen: Yep.

Krystal Vivian: And it’s sad that summer’s going, but football is very exciting, and-

Shannon Allen: It is

Krystal Vivian: I think everyone, most, the vast majority of the country is very excited for football to return.

Shannon Allen: Yes.

Krystal Vivian: So I think that I’m very excited to talk about it.

Shannon Allen: dig in. What do you got for me?

Krystal Vivian: Obviously we’re talking about football not just because we’re fans of football, but because it’s really important for advertisers, and for local businesses especially.

And so I just wanna start off by going real broad. Why is football season such a critical window for local businesses that may not think of themselves as sports advertisers?

Shannon Allen: The first is one of the most obvious to me, which is football is the most watched content in America by a wide margin, by the way.

Yeah. Everybody has their own favorite sport, but this audience is not just a sports fan. This is everybody. Even if you’re not watching… and it’s not just NFL or college, it’s a little bit of everything, right?

It’s going in your high school game and like in the year of America’s 250 footballs goes right along with that, right?

Krystal Vivian: Yeah. I think a lot of people think of base ball is like America’s pastime, but really, football is America’s favorite sport, 100%.

Shannon Allen: a stat that I think is something to remember is the most watched NFL game of 2025 was the Chief versus Cowboys on Thanksgiving.

It drew 57.2 million viewers. Then there was the Netflix on Christmas Day, one of the most watched sporting events Netflix had ever seen. It crashed it, to be honest with you, right? Yeah. So we know it’s a huge audience, For years and years, TV has wrapped their head around what they own. And so for instance, CBS and Turner and that whole group of Sinclair had owned March Madness for many years.

And then what happened a couple years ago is it wasn’t just a network owning it, it was multiple networks, and then it all flew into the streaming world, right? Which is why there was a football game on Netflix. I remember, I think it was, the first was a boxing match on Netflix, and it crashed- Yep

Because it was their first live like that. There was the Peacock game that they forced a very important playoff game to run on Peacock, and everybody was mad, but guess what? Their subscriptions went through the roof.

Krystal Vivian: Yeah.

Shannon Allen: So we know that football is something that brings people together. the real question is not, “Is my business a sports brand?” It’s, “Do my customers watch football?” So it goes a little bit away from what we tend to talk about with the consumer journey, which is we follow wherever they go. It’s actually identifying an audience right off the bat that we know is a large audience that we have their full attention, and they’re sitting there watching everything, and it’s unskippable inventory.

So that right off the bat is, why is this such a critical window? And part two of that and we’ll talk about this, is, back in June, we were going to our customers saying- we have a football package that encompasses all football. You don’t have to decide what sports fan you are.

That’s the good news. But there’s only so many spots left, right? If we can only have access to Monday Night Football because Amazon owns Thursday once that sells out, it sells out. So we were talking to our clients, it’s not me teasing fear of loss, it’s true.

They might come to us right now and say, “I want this,” and I’ll be like, “Here’s what I have limited, what I’m able to sell.”

Krystal Vivian: And we’re already seeing it with football, that there’s already starting to be limited inventory, but I also wanna point back to the NBA finals, and they sold out every single game in advertising days before the game even was played.

Yeah. And when, by the time that game four came around, we knew that there was gonna be a game five was almost sold out before game four even started. So there is definitely that fear of loss that if you don’t get in, you will miss it. And it’s an important… There’s a long window for NFL as compared to the NBA finals.

You have all the way from August, we’ve got pre-season all the way through, the Super Bowl in February.

Shannon Allen: Yeah.

Krystal Vivian: And Super Bowl is separate. But-

Shannon Allen: As our playoff games,

Krystal Vivian: Yep. But even if you go through August through December, that’s Q4 is some of the most critical time of the year to advertise.

And bring in,

Shannon Allen: bring in your year.

Krystal Vivian: So cable has pretty much tried to have a monopoly on live sports for years. Yes. And we’re finally pulling it out of their grip. What is actually different about advertising during a live game on streaming versus buying a cable spot?

Shannon Allen: There’s one very glaring one, and I talk about it all the time, but I’m gonna hit on a couple other points first. So think about it this way. When you’re buying directly on a cable buy you are, first and foremost with cable, you’re competing with DVR skipping. You’re competing with channel surfing.

You are competing with anything in that cable box that they can just walk away, right? Now, in streaming, you absolutely can get up and go to the bathroom, but you can’t skip the commercial, right? That’s one thing. The biggest thing is viewership. I’m gonna lead with that, and, keep talking about some other things.

But when it comes to viewership, cable is the fastest dying- traditional left when it comes to TV. Because there are so many people being cord cutters anymore and already bypassed it, that it is right now a viewership, if we look at a big piece of the pie, it was started the year at 21%, 20%, and it’s already down to an 18%.

Now, during sports season it does bump a little bit, but still, would you rather reach a 50% of a streaming audience or just buy that cable buy?

Krystal Vivian: Yeah, because even the people, there is a little bit of a bump during football season for cable and for people going to broadcast, too. But I think that those bumps are even getting smaller and smaller with every year that more games are available on streaming.

And I’ll speak, anecdotally for my household, we’re huge football fans. We watch every single football game. We’re watching Sundays, that’s what we do. Monday nights, Thursday nights, that’s what we do. That’s what we’re watching. And we have not watched it on linear TV in years.

Shannon Allen: Yeah.

Krystal Vivian: And the rest of my family, my extended family, they’re all watching it on streaming. My dad and my step-mom are the one holdouts where they will watch it on broadcast. That’s it .

Shannon Allen: Another thing that’s a big difference is cable’s still buying by total spots, right? That’s a little bit outdated, where streaming is by impression.

But let’s be clear, every time a commercial plays is an impression, right? The video starts and stops, and if you can’t skip it. So if I’m selling it at 50,000 impressions, let’s say that’s what’s available, what I have, how many commercial spots I have available. Do you wanna buy 22 spots or do you want 50,000 impressions?

Which means I’m just watching it that many times, right?

Krystal Vivian: Yep.

Shannon Allen: And not dictating if that particular game, wherever it’s played at, I can buy the live sports, right? these are curated lists when it comes to streaming instead of just saying they’re only watching it on, if let’s say it’s running March Madness, that’s a great example.

we know CBS owns that, or, s- the Sunday football. We’ve moved away from buying spots. Super Bowl still sells in spots but football directly I can reach a larger audience with a higher reach and frequency than cable will ever be able to do.

And guess what? The last time I took it away from a local auto dealer that was running all their live sports with cable, I was actually able to save them money with more viewers. it’s a no-brainer.

Krystal Vivian: And you have that guaranteed reporting. You know exactly how many impressions you got.

Exactly- And

Shannon Allen: by the way, if I don’t serve them I return them.

Krystal Vivian: Yeah.

Shannon Allen: And we should make that a slogan. I just thought of it. if we don’t serve them, we’ll return it. You get a credit.

Most of our clients aren’t just buying football only, they’re buying other things, right?

And other sports. And so if they set it on a budget and then we split it and say on an average you’re gonna be charged X amount per month to do live sports, and if we didn’t use the full budget here, or we need more here, or we wanna buy a bowl game, we’ve got a little bit of money here to play with, right?

Oh, and by the way, I’m still only gonna charge you, $10,000 a month and not charge you more during the bowl games. It’ll just all spread out evenly. So there’s a lot of things that we can be much more flexible on but the number one reason is viewership. the cable buy versus streaming is you’re just gonna increase your viewership, and probably save you money.

Krystal Vivian: Yeah. I love that. Let’s talk about specifically college football, because this has historically felt out of reach for most local advertisers. What’s changed with college football?

Shannon Allen: So first and foremost it has changed significantly and quickly. So the, the college football has expansion to 12 teams, extended the season, and spread viewership across more market and fan bases, right?

One of the things working with our partner Madhive is they were able to curate some of those lists and not everybody is a Notre Dame fan or a Michigan fan or an Ohio fan, right?

Like I’m come from Michigan, so we’re split between MSU and U of M for sure, but we also have people in there that are Notre Dame fans. And by the way, you can be a University of Kentucky fan because- … you went to college there and moved to Michigan. So why are we deciding we shouldn’t just go and decide that our viewers are watching the local U of M game or the local Notre Dame game.

So that first and foremost is it’s changed because it’s expanded and, it keeps growing and then it gets more and more expensive. But the way that we’re doing it is going to help not make that decision. And if I’m sitting in front of an owner of a business that is a huge Ohio State fan, he’s gonna be like, “I better not be on U of M.”

So that’s to me, one of the biggest things is we know that, the story of the Indiana Hoosiers just from last season is a perfect example of why it matters. In these Midwest markets, a school that had never been a TV draw suddenly had the most watched conference championship game and a top 10 audience for its title run, right?

But that hasn’t been a package that was created years ago because that wasn’t, they were just some- Nobody

Krystal Vivian: thought it.

Shannon Allen: Nobody thought of IU as a football school. They never thought they’d ever get there.

Krystal Vivian: Yeah.

Shannon Allen: So yeah, local audiences in a Big 10 market specifically, which is where we’re at, had a very unexpected massive opportunity that they never had before.

If you think your football audience is the way to go, we can do college football, we can do NFL, or you just tell us you want to reach football people and we’ll do both.

That’s where we have the ability to do whatever you need to do and not pick one or the other. What you can’t do is say, “I only want to be on this game. I only want to be on the Colts because I’m from Indiana, and I only…” I can’t do that.

That’s called a guarantee buy. instead of paying 5,000 for that month to hit X amount of impressions you’re gonna pay $20,000 for X amount of spots. So that is when you are dictating it.

Krystal Vivian: but that’s, to your point that is pointless anyway because if you are… it doesn’t matter what team you’re watching.

Yes. People who are watching the Colts could be in Indiana- Yep … but they could also be in Kentucky. They could be in- Oh, yeah … Alaska. They could be in a different country. And so it’s really more important about buying the audience and then letting it- It is … programmatically deliver w- whichever game they’re watching.

Shannon Allen: And we have the ability to do what’s called an avail, right? What’s the available inventory? As I said earlier, there’s gonna be a lot less inventory for a Monday Night Football that I have the ability to deliver ’cause there’s only so many spots. But by the way, it’s a long delivery.

It’s not just within the game, it’s also pre-game and it’s also ESPN later that evening. It’s still the audience of where they’re going, and that, the targeting is just knowing that they are that football person, right? But when it comes down to entry points, doing it programmatically, it can really reach those fans across multiple streaming apps with just one coordinated campaign that you don’t have to think about.

And I have really good reporting. I can show that I can set, a pixel on your website to know that we delivered them the video commercial, and within 30 days they actually came back to your website. You can’t do that with what’s out there right now.

Krystal Vivian: Yeah, absolutely. That I think leads very into what’s the risk of waiting? Why does a business need to act and book their buy before football season starts, not during football season?

Shannon Allen: So I talked about our avail inventory. It’s hard right now for me to pull an avail for March Madness, right? We’re sitting in August. I can pull it, inventory’s open, but as you get closer to a season, this is why back in June I told my digital consultants, “Get out there and talk to your clients,” because they’re gonna all of a sudden be like, “Wait a second, I can’t get any inventory.”

Now, again, we have the ability, and we’re gonna tell you if we can’t, but it is. There’s only so much inventory available, and so there is a risk of waiting. What I find is the most crucial, from a strategy standpoint, instead of being like, “Okay, right now I’m gonna buy college football.

What can I do?” That’s a reactive moment, knowing that there might be a deal on the table. I’m not working in deals. I’m gonna, “Here’s my rate. Let’s plan it out. Let’s make sure we have different commercials going.” one of the car dealers that I worked with, we played out his schedule from March of 2026 through February of 2027 so that he’s captured everything he wants, right?

And I based it on knowing… I worked his budget into it. I based it to make sure that the frequency is good, but I know I got the inventory buy. Now, leading into that, March Madness was scary, and so one of the thing we realized, we didn’t think we had enough inventory, and so we borrowed from some of his golf inventory and used it for that.

And we also had a little bit of hockey in there, because we were able to end up having his commercial run on one of the U of M games locally. Like, how crazy is that?

Krystal Vivian: That’s

Shannon Allen: awesome. Because we were able to pivot and do these things. Now, I can’t go back and say to him, “You can do that again,” ’cause I never know what inventory’s gonna be available.

So why it’s such a don’t risk it plan is that there’s so many people already out there locking in. They might just live in the space, and you might just be getting into it, but, our best success story, was from somebody that you would never expect- To do live sports during March Madness, and that was a winery.

What do we think of when we think of a winery? We think of females.

Krystal Vivian: Women drinking wine.

Shannon Allen: By the way, I’m a huge March Madness person. I watch all the games. I have multiple pools I’m in. So yeah, I am in your target audience. and I’ll talk about it in the ROI.

But we know that 78% of CTV advertisers are already running live sports campaigns, and 79% plan to increase their spend in the next co- coming months. So that in itself is like, why are you waiting? If you think this is an audience you want to deliver to, you do run a risk that I’m gonna be like, “Man, sorry.

There’s no inventory left. we’ll have to book that out and come up with a different strategy.”

Krystal Vivian: Yeah. So let’s then talk about ROI. We always bring it back to this. What is the ROI of advertising during live sports, and especially football?

Shannon Allen: This is a very high-end brand awareness campaign.

This is not where you’re trying to track coupons, you’re not doing that. You have the opportunity to go cast a wide net like you’re fishing to reach a lot of people sitting in their living rooms, watching it on their phones, wherever they consume their live sports, specifically football.

You have the opportunity to get your message across and really put your brand in front of them. Now, where the ROI comes in that you haven’t probably been able to do when you’re working with a cable buy or a local TV buy, is I now can show you, A, the completion rates are silly, ’cause it’s all unskippable, so it better be like 95 to 98%, and that five to 3% margin is because somebody turned their TV off and they didn’t complete.

But we have the ability to track that last conversion step. I can’t track it in your building, but I can track it into your website, which is your secondary store, right? We can track what we call website view throughs or conversions.

And the story I was gonna tell you is back to that winery, is they did a three-week campaign, and in the next 30 days after March Madness was over, we were able to track 460 website conversions back to their website of somebody we know we delivered their ad, and they went to that winery’s website.

Now, that’s very valuable.

Krystal Vivian: That’s incredible.

Shannon Allen: 460 is a big number. The campaign isn’t about the click. You’re not clicking on it. It’s about brand awareness and what do we want them to do. We want to walk them into the store. And if you’re doing it continuously the way you should, you will start to see the sales tie into that, those conversions as well.

 

Krystal Vivian: the

Shannon Allen: ROI …

Krystal Vivian: that’s 460 people who came to their website after seeing the ad. They were compelled enough, but then how many other people then went to their local liquor store to buy that wine? The grocery store, or who stopped in to your event? Winery did wine tasting

that winery has a bunch of events.

Shannon Allen: Yep. Exactly.

Krystal Vivian: So that’s huge.

Shannon Allen: Yep. So that’s our football conversation.

Krystal Vivian: It sounds like if anybody wants to do football or is interested in football advertising, it needs to be a run, don’t walk situation.

Shannon Allen: Absolutely.

Krystal Vivian: And reach out to us very quickly, ’cause we do still have some avails for football season.

But the longer that you wait, the less likely those avails are gonna be, and the fewer impressions you’re gonna be able to get, and you might not be able to get any.

Shannon Allen: Yeah, 100%. Thank you, Krystal. I always like talking football. I am a little sad that summer’s coming to an end. I don’t even want to say that, ’cause I stay on my boat through 1st of October anyways.

Krystal Vivian: Yeah. I’ll still be outside. I’ll wear shorts and sandals for as long as the weather will let me. So I’m gonna enjoy that. And hot football is fun, so

Shannon Allen: I hate this. It’s better than cold football for me Better

Krystal Vivian: than cold football, yeah Yes There’s a reason I don’t live in Buffalo, New York.

Shannon Allen: Yeah, 100%. Thank you to our listeners, and tune in to our next episode of Digital Marketing ROI.

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