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.
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, including sectors with no view of the scoreboard. 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.
How a sponsor enters matchday
A show for an arena starts from 30,000 ₽ per event, sponsor promo and the report are part of the activation package. 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.
