By ProSports
As the days grow shorter and cooler and the leaves start to change color, the baseball season has raced to its grand climax – the World Series featuring the Los Angeles Dodgers and Boston Red Sox.
The games offer the potential to generate significant revenue for Major League Baseball (MLB) and deliver the viewership that sponsors and advertisers find appealing.
Why Do Companies Sponsor Sporting Events?
Sports is one of the few remaining television events that viewers watch live.
Few, if any, DVR sporting events. That means that viewers are not fast-forwarding through the commercials. Live sports delivers a large, live audience. Additionally, sports sponsorships offer the potential to build brand awareness and loyalty, create a positive brand image and ultimately generate increased sales.
So, how does the World Series deliver?
Attractive Viewership Statistics
According to Sports Media Watch, 2017 was the third highest rated World Series since 2005[1]. The seven-game series averaged a 10.7 rating and 18.9 million viewers on FOX, down 18% in ratings and 19% in viewership from Cubs-Indians last year (13.1, 23.4M) but up 23% and 29% respectively from the five-game Mets-Royals series in 2015 (8.7, 14.7M). It is also of note that two of the highest rated World Series have been in the last two years. This illustrates that baseball has the potential to deliver the viewership that sponsors may find attractive.
A Relative Bargain
According to The Manual, a 30-second ad during the World Series averaged about $565,000 during 2017.[1] That compares to over $5 million for an ad during the Super Bowl. Of course, viewership and ratings are much different for the two events. However, the cost of the ad in relation to viewership might be attractive to potential sponsors.
Impressive Impressions
An article on Business Insider noted that across the first five games, World Series ads on Fox had generated well over 5.1 billion impressions, according to the analytics firm iSpot.tv.[2] An ad impression, in this case, is recorded every time a person watches at least three seconds of an ad from the start.
Overall, iSpots says that over the first five games, 142 advertisers have run a total of 226 ads. There have been 601 ads “airings” to date which translates to over five hours and 10 minutes of pure advertising.
Viewers Actually Watched the Ads
What is even more impressive is what the iSpot.tv research further showed. According to iSpot, the ads run during the games were watched to completion by an average of 86% of the viewers. That is potential gold to advertisers.
Memorable Moment
One of more memorable and talked about ads from the 2017 World Series was that of YouTube.
The backstop behind home plate is among the most visible pieces of advertising real estate in sports, and YouTube came up with a brilliant way to use that spot. During most of Game 1 of the World Series, YouTube had a banner in one of the spots, advertising YouTube TV. But what made YouTube’s banner so brilliant was that the company’s play-button logo was the perfect size and was perfectly centered on camera in a way that during any right-handed at-bat it looked as if the game were a YouTube video and that the viewer needed to click play.
Some thought the ad was brilliant while others found it annoying. However, many were talking about it. So, the ad was successful in that it generated buzz around the brand.
Summary
The World Series, as the championship series for Major League Baseball, has the potential to generate the live audience that potential sponsors may find attractive. By advertising during the World Series, companies may be able to achieve their goal of achieving brand awareness, generate positive brand image with the end goal of increasing sales.
ProSports Sponsors Sports ETFs (FANZ) invests in companies which partner with the four major U.S. sports leagues. Investing in FANZ provides exposure to companies poised to realize the benefits of sponsoring the World Series.
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[1] Baseball by the Numbers: Unbelievable World Series Stats, The Manual, 10/31/17
[2] Shields, Mike, The World Series and its ads show why advertisers still love TV, Business Insider, 10/30/17