This summer, sport has been inescapable – whether you’re usually a committed fan or not. With the Euros, Wimbledon and the Olympics, major sporting events have been reaching huge audiences across the globe. Just four days into Paris 2024, the BBC reported a total TV reach of 23.9 million, with BBC Sport’s social offering earning 132 million views.

B2B brands recognise the massive opportunity presented by sports audiences. Sports sponsorship is a key part of many businesses’ awareness strategy – in fact, it’s a $66 billion industry globally. Among the leading players in the IT services space, for example, Infosys, Cognizant and Wipro have all tapped into the power of sport to connect with their customers. 

TCS stands out particularly here. Through its partnership with multiple marathons worldwide, TCS has shown that, as well as reaching a broad audience, sports sponsorship allows brands to tap into human emotion. 

TCS brings its tagline –“Building on Belief” – to life, capturing a sense of possibility and achievement. According to TCS’s CMO, “Most of our clients don’t get emotional about software or technology services, but [...] when they participate in these marathons, it’s a really emotional moment for them.” 

By being present in and enabling that moment, TCS is able to build and promote a positive human connection. Our campaign for TCS, This Run, helped strengthen this association by celebrating the authentic stories of people and their personal motivations to run.  

More than a logo

Importantly, sponsorship is a chance for brands to showcase their broader values. It is more than just a logo (in fact, all the Olympic stadiums are clean of logos). It should be a meaningful demonstration of who a brand is and what it values. 

Deloitte, a major sponsor of Paris 2024, highlights the themes of fair play, solidarity and inclusion in the Olympics, and claims that these go all the way through its approaches to clients, people and stakeholders. 

Describing it as a “partnership with purpose”, Deloitte aims to show how it is helping to transform the Games. Its content series The First Effect shows how the impact of “firsts” (in areas such as inclusion, sustainability and technology) have continued to shape the world. The story of Sarah Attar, the first female Olympian to run for Saudi Arabia, is a nice example. 

The value of emotion

Sport offers a unique opportunity for brands to explore the human stories behind the headlines, inspiring audiences with their struggle, determination and triumph. The value of putting emotion behind B2B brand communications is well recognised: the LinkedIn B2B Institute found that B2B strategies that appeal to emotions are seven times more effective than rational messaging.  

The focus on human stories will only become more important as the ways in which people engage with sport change. Younger audiences in particular are shifting their allegiance from teams to individual athletes, encouraged by social media allowing fans to connect with and understand them on a more personal level. 

These changes to fandom and the sports viewing experience are also being accelerated by technology that allows sports to reach ever broader audiences in a more personalised way. This opens up greater opportunities for brands to engage and grow their own audience.

Genius Sports epitomises this new future for the industry. Our campaign, Built on Genius shows how the sports data company enables sponsors, teams, broadcasters and betting companies to create richer experiences and communities for the new generation of fans through the innovative use of data and AI. The campaign captures the rush people feel at a sports event and creates a sense of immersion in sports. 

Demonstrating impact

Sponsorship and involvement in sports is not only a way for B2B brands to tell us who they are, it’s also an opportunity to show off what they can do. In many cases, they can transform the way the whole event operates. With such a prominent platform on which to demonstrate their capabilities, they can excite potential clients with the promise of the impact they can have on their own businesses. 

IBM’s three-decade-plus partnership with Wimbledon has brought huge innovations, from enhancing the fan experience and generating deeper insights for players, to automating business processes – and making sure it’s all digitally secure.

We’ve supported IBM along this journey, helping them to tell this story. This included developing a campaign around Wimbledon’s “In pursuit of greatness” brand promise, using IBM Watson to spark a debate around “What makes great?”. Demonstrating the power of enterprise-level AI, we helped generate huge amounts of global engagement over the course of the tournament. 

As sporting events reach more and more people across the globe and fan engagement gets ever deeper, sport is undoubtedly a valuable opportunity for B2B brands to create an exciting, human connection with their audiences. However, to truly be on the winning team and capture hearts and minds, they need to consider how they can make their engagement with sport meaningful to who they are, what they offer clients and what they stand for.

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