The Expanding Number of Niche Sports Offers New Ad Plays
A proliferating number of organized leagues offers marketers access to growing legions of fans
When Carvana first mulled a partnership with the Professional Pickleball Association (PPA), the used car retailer was eager to learn whether its brand aligned with the increasingly popular sport. Carvana soon discovered it shared a good deal with both the sport and its players.
"Carvana is the fastest-growing used auto dealer in U.S. history and pickleball is the fastest-growing sport in the U.S.," says Makena Berchem, senior brand manager of partnerships at Carvana. "Additionally, we saw a natural affinity with the sport's community focus and inclusive environment. Carvana's mission is to make car buying more accessible for customers of all ages and backgrounds, and this parallel to pickleball is what initially drew us to the sport."
The partnership sparked the Carvana Professional Pickleball Tour, which launched in January 2023. The 2024 Carvana PPA Tour features 26 tournaments, with stops in Dallas, Phoenix, and Daytona Beach, Fla. As part of the multiyear partnership, Carvana also created the Carvana Court to encourage people to give pickleball a whirl and offer fans the chance to win some equipment.
For Berchem, the marketing appeal of pickleball is twofold. It's a hugely popular game in which people from multiple generations indulge, and it's a professional spectator sport drawing a legion of fans. "The PPA has a significant presence on social media, which allows us to measure our reach and efforts through engagement and impressions," Berchem says. "We also work with the PPA to use surveys to help measure lift in brand awareness."
Major advertisers are joining the fray. For instance, Reebok recently debuted Nano Court shoes specially designed for pickleball, while Target partnered with tennis brand Prince to create a nearly 80-item pickleball line that includes apparel, sports equipment, and other accessories.
Pickleball leads an expanding roster of niche sports for advertisers to tap into, including sports fishing, urban fishing, padel (a close cousin of pickleball), cornhole, slap fighting, and SlamBall, which combines aspects of basketball, football, hockey, and acrobatics.
According to Roku's five predictions for TV streaming in 2024, a niche sport will likely cross to the mainstream this year, thanks to changes in consumer behavior. "In 2024, the high demand and significant pain points around discovery of sports content (for consumers) and sponsorship opportunities (for brands) will set the stage for niche sports to break through," the report says.
A Jump Ball
Niche sports provide ample benefits to advertisers, namely affordability and the opportunity to fully integrate a brand into the fan experience. "Partnerships and sponsorships are far more cost effective with niche sports and should be pursued to complement any media buys," says Scott Becher, former CMO at Sport Fishing Championship (SFC) and founder of Win-Win Partnerships, which works with brands, teams and leagues, and personalities and influencers. "The integration of brand presence within the sport itself is what will differentiate a brand. The payoff can be dramatic."
Take The Catch, Powered by Verizon, a made-for-TV competition that pairs NFL stars with leading SFC anglers.
SFC inked a multiyear deal with CBS Sports in 2022, setting up a partnership that would broadcast all SFC tournaments on CBS Sports Network. As part of the deal, CBS Sports live-airs two hours of the final day of competition from the fishing league's 12 annual events. The network also airs The Catch.
Brands that affiliate with SFC latch on to both live events and the online content produced during the various competitions. "Our brand partners were seamlessly integrated into the hospitality experience, festival, digital, social, and broadcast offerings," says Mark Neifeld, commissioner and CEO of SFC. "Whether it be intimate, bespoke brand opportunities with NFL superstars or curated, custom content, and everything in between, SFC delivered a one-of-a-kind experience to our partners."
For instance, apparel brand Salt Life sponsored this year's The Catch, Powered by Verizon with both the anglers and on-air hosts clad in the company's threads — as was Cleveland Browns quarterback Jameis Winston, who provided the play-by-play as well as a post-catch "interview" with two fish, which went viral.
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When Becher was CMO of SFC from July 2023 through May 2024, the entire offshore fishing industry lacked granular data about its fans. To remedy the situation, SFC partnered with brand marketing agency Wasserman to create "Fishing's Emerging Fan Base," a study featuring a composite of syndicated fishing research from 16,000 participants, and a custom survey of nearly 2,000 fishing fans.
"The findings were eye-opening, like the affluence of offshore fishing fans is three times that of Formula 1 fans, or that 85 percent of freshwater fans also are fans of offshore fishing," Becher says. "These insights are critical to assess whether a sponsorship is the right fit."
In the Arena
Robust audience data is one factor to determine whether a niche sport is a good fit. However, the cost of emerging sports lets brands experiment and figure out the most effective ways to engage particular audiences, according to Bruce Bundrant, SVP and global head of business development at global sports marketing agency and ANA member rEvolution, whose clients include Chipotle, Lamborghini, and NetApp.
"Brands shouldn't be fearful of getting it wrong," Bundrant says, pointing to the relatively inexpensive costs to test the effectiveness of using niche sports as a marketing vehicle. He says there are sponsorships out there that are more budget-friendly, nowhere near the $7 million for a 30-second TV spot for this year's Super Bowl.
Indeed, advertising on marquee sports leagues like the MLB, NBA, and NFL is prohibitively expensive for most brands. The rise of niche sports may be a great equalizer for brands that would otherwise have to sit on the sidelines. A lot depends on the execution.
"My advice to brands is to go to these events, sit there in person, observe, and listen — and watch it on TV," Bundrant says. "Have conversations with people who have worked in the sport, and then you'll start forming a picture of how your brand might get integrated into their ecosystem."
The ideal situation for advertisers is to get involved with a niche sport early as the respective league builds an audience, according to Bundrant, who previously worked as a consultant for Major League Pickleball (MLP).
While he was working with MLP, Bundrant asked Margaritaville if the resort and hotel company wanted to be a title sponsor of the league in an effort to engage demographics that were initially interested in playing the sport and could appreciate Margaritaville's tropical vibe. But pickleball was quickly able to attract people of all ages who have subsequently turned the sport into a marketing juggernaut.
"That's a brand that realized early on that their core demographic was the recreational pickleball player," Bundrant says, referring to Margaritaville. "Then when the opportunities of the professional league started to develop, they jumped all over it and kept on this trajectory of doubling down into the pickleball ecosystem."
Good Things Come in Small Packages
Becoming synonymous with a niche sport with a lot of upsides can help marketers reach new audiences and expand their aperture, and aligning with leagues that possess a smaller, boutique quality has its own rewards for advertisers.
"Niche sports don't always offer the same kind of celebrity buzz surrounding the big leagues," Becher says. "That's fine, and not very different from working with micro influencers rather than personalities with larger followings. More important is authenticity and relevance, which should always be a guiding light [for brands]."
Niche sports also offer an opportunity for brands to connect the passion of budding sport fans and players with a mainstream audience hungry for anything related to more popular sports. That was Verizon's goal when the company hooked up with The Catch and its cast of anglers and NFL players. "This elevated a niche sport to the broader fandom of pro football, which delivered both reach and credibility," Becher says.
