The stadium remains one of the most expensive offline advertising venues: tens of thousands of viewers in the stands plus the TV broadcast. Clubs sell this inventory to sponsors in packages, and the packages have carried the same items for decades. Here is what works, what can be counted, and what the new layer of stadium advertising looks like: inside every fan’s phone.
Classic stadium inventory
- Boards and LED perimeter: maximum reach including the broadcast, priced from hundreds of thousands per match at top-league clubs. Response is not measurable
- Scoreboard and media cube: videos in breaks, cheaper than boards, competing with the viewers’ phones
- Kit logo: an image placement on a season scale, priced from millions, effect estimated by awareness surveys
- Stand and zone naming: long-term presence in navigation, tickets and commentary
- Promo staff and sampling in the concourse: live contact, manual counting, reach limited by the flow past the stand
The common trait: the sponsor pays for impressions that cannot be converted into actions. The match ends, the banner comes down, and the brand is left with photos and an audience estimate from a press release. This applies to a club’s title sponsor, the general sponsor and advertising at smaller sports competitions alike.
The new layer: activation in the fan’s phone
Before the match or at half-time the stands take part in a light show: fans scan a QR code from the scoreboard, raise their phones, and the stadium turns into a single canvas of light. The show itself solves the club’s tasks: atmosphere and viral content. For the sponsor the key part comes next: right after the show a promo opens in every participant’s browser.
A case with numbers
At the Krylya Sovetov vs Lokomotiv match with 9,000 viewers, 1,493 people launched the show: 16.6% engagement across the whole stadium. After the show viewers got a prize draw and a promo, and click-through conversion holds at 25–30% of participants in tests. The full funnel is in the Lokomotiv match case, the counting method in the fan engagement numbers article.
For comparison: nobody knows how many people acted after a scoreboard video, that number does not exist. Here every step of the funnel is visible in the report: scans, show launches, promo clicks, collected contacts.
Advertising on sports broadcasts
A match is watched not only from the stands. Russia’s main sports channel, Match TV, and streaming services sell advertising around broadcasts in several ways:
- Spots in ad breaks before the match, at half-time and after. The price depends on the competition, time and rating, charged per rating point or per airing
- Sponsoring a broadcast or segment. “Brought to you by” idents, branded score and stats graphics
- Stadium branding in shot. Boards, pitch, kit. This is club and league inventory, but its main value comes from the broadcast
- Virtual advertising. Replacing board images in the broadcast feed, different for different countries or platforms
TV advertising gives huge reach, with the same flaw as boards: viewer action is invisible. A show in the stands also makes it into the broadcast when staged before kick-off or at half-time, but its main point is different: a promo on every participant’s phone and numbers for every step.
How a sponsor enters matchday
A show for an arena starts from 30,000 ₽ per event, the sponsor package with promo and report is quoted separately. The club provides three things: a QR code on the scoreboard, our control track in the stadium sound and a minute in the match script. What else works on matchday is covered in the sports marketing overview, and the idea of seat-side food delivery promo in the collaboration post.
Packages for brands and bookmakers, report examples and terms are in the For brands section, the format for clubs in the Sport section. If you are a club wondering how to find a team sponsor, a measurable item helps sell team sponsorship for more: see how to attract sponsors.
Why brands are moving from logos to an experience on the viewer’s phone: event marketing.
