People around the globe are getting more interested in starting sports businesses, and they have good reason: The global sports market is a sector worth hundreds of billions of dollars and is projected to continue growing for the next decade.
Estimates themselves will regularly have to be rewritten as trends that affect the projected valuation of the sports media industry worldwide keep entering unknown territory.
For instance, as more communities worldwide get access to better connectivity, so do new markets emerge in these communities - new markets that may enjoy viral growth for particular sports for unpredictable reasons.
Even factors like post-Covid economic pressure on health systems and spending may lead to a big increase in endurance sport audiences 7-10 years on from the pandemic; as adults who delayed child-bearing in 2020 seek to extend their fertility through more healthy lifestyles.
A surge in popularity inspired by a global trend on a social media platform of the future could lead to a niche sport’s emergence as the trendy activity of the decade.
Those are uncertainties and unpredictable. You can certainly make bets/investments on outcomes and then seek to bring those about, but for the purposes of this article, we will focus on what factors make sports content businesses thrive today. What are the facts, and what are the main ways people are making money.
We do not include a section here on licensing and rights to images, broadcasts, highlights or any related, traditional sports media distribution. These rights are typically held and sold by the sport associations themselves and these methods of generating revenue are well-established, and separate from the sports content industry as we define it here.
Here, we mean the websites, blogs, social media channels, talkshows, profiles and sports reports.
What makes sports content businesses so profitable right now
Sports content businesses have shown significant prospects of profitability in recent years and social media is a big part of that. Sports organizations are starting to take advantage of the trend by partnering with internet personalities and using crossover brand promotion, fueling the already profitable influencer and content marketing industry.
Viral content often leads to massive conversions. The recent Michael Jordan miniseries, “The Last Dance” generated over 1.5 million tweets during its final episode. Following the documentary's finale, Air Jordan sneakers saw a massive spike in prices. Cost for achieving virality, much like cost for publishing online, is low - if the strategy pays, it pays off big.
Sport is: popular with people across all sects of society; healthy for the population and therefore easy for governments and official bodies to get behind; (mostly) apolitical and so participation or promotion rarely presents political risk; and universal, transcending barriers like language and culture by creating its own, defined by the sport’s own rules, culture and practices.
Sports are inherently marketable. There are generally well-defined cohorts that tend to follow sports and when there are not, there are well-defined boundaries that allow for audience targeting: a sport like soccer for instance, may transcend societal bounds but more women are likely to follow a women’s league or more people in a local area, the local team.
Then, there is the diversity of sport. There are a huge variety of different sports and new ones are being invented all the time, all over the world (think pickleball and padel). There are also new versions of old sports that develop organically (like futsal) or are created to meet the needs of a specific group (like “murderball”).
There are even ancient sports, revived to celebrate cultural roots (like Pok Ta' Pok, cheese-rolling, the Wall Game). Every one of these, theoretically, has an under-served audience somewhere, waiting to be found.
Finally, sports are iterative and endless: there is always a new round of matches being played and a never-ending cycle of predictions to make, performances to analyze and scores to settle.
The key, though, to the industry’s surge in profitability, comes down to connectivity and digitalization. That has translated into access - for new audiences to new sports, and businesses to new audiences.
Digitalization has pushed the sports content industry forward, creating a gargantuan pool of business opportunities. The proliferation of mobile networks, internet expansion, devices and helpful technologies and platforms has made it possible to reach people anywhere, and for them to reach out to you.
There are many ways to make money, but we are not focusing on the most creative or niche here - these are the fundamental ways for sports content businesses to get revenue.
Direct advertisement
A sports content business can earn money from selling advertising to other companies.
Systems like Google’s advertising network are the obvious choice, but you can sell special deals directly, especially if you have a niche audience that is hard for companies to target.
A valuable niche audience, or a niche audience that is particularly valuable to a certain type of company, can prove especially lucrative. If your website publishes content that is read by a very specific audience, you can charge advertisers a lot more.
Companies looking to advertise typically look for a target audience that aligns with theirs.
Some sports businesses may put up an announcement on their websites or social media accounts to let these companies know that they are open to an advertisement - this is often in the form of a viewable or downloadable asset like a Media Kit.
That Media Kit is where you show who your audience is and how you serve them - with a website, you can often corroborate your assertions with clear demographic data and even audience behavior.
The key learning here is that to maximize profit here is to refine your audience and retain its purity. The value is in the who is reading it, and not the how many. This is where the principles of finding and picking a media bias becomes especially important. It is what matter to advertisers.
Affiliate marketing
Affiliates are going through renaissance, if ever there was a downturn, but you do not have to be a dedicated affiliate publisher to establish and benefit from this revenue stream in the long term.
This method has become especially popular in the digital era as ecommerce has continued to develop and evolve into the norm across industries. This means the process from the root “advert” to the final purchase has become both smooth and easily trackable. That is how affiliate marketing works, for dummies: clients pay you commission for sales that come through you. That may mean those that come through you via content on your website or some other form of trackable referral, like a promo code.
Affiliate marketing may share similarities with an advertisement, but you will only receive the money if you successfully create a sale through your affiliate channel. That is the key distinction - but the commissions tend to be generous as the outcome for your client is a sale - pretty much always the best outcome they look for.
Getting started in affiliate marketing is easier compared to an advertisement, though. You simply need to browse through the internet to find companies that offer affiliate partnerships. The hard part is getting and channeling the audience that will make that purchase.
The sports betting industry offers a great example of this business model. Their websites, for instance, may offer in-depth analyses of upcoming games and offer their audience to bet on those games using affiliate links that direct them to a particular sportsbook. They can earn money from the sportsbook whenever someone bets on a game using any of those links. More on that in the section further down this article.
The simplest way to think of affiliate marketing is as a coupon - if I use the coupon code from my favorite website or youtube channel to buy, for instance, I get 25 percent off. And the YouTube channel gets another 25% in commission. The client vendor saves on shipping, additional advertising costs and can generate a new pool of customers, so everybody is a winner.
Sponsorship
Although the relationship you build with a sponsor shares similarities with the partnership in an advertisement, the way you deliver the end result is slightly different.
In an advertising relationship, the company will request you to relay a specific message from the company to your target audience. In sponsorship, on the other hand, you will have more freedom to craft content and weave the sponsor’s message seamlessly into it.
A common example of sponsorship can be found in podcasts and video content. These podcast and video producers will give shout-outs to sponsors, linking their materials with the sponsors’ brands.
The great thing about these money-generating methods is that you can keep the operating cost low. There’s no need to purchase raw materials, maintain physical inventory and transport goods. You should direct most of your investment to high-quality content creation.
High-quality content will attract loyal audiences as well as increase your credibility in potential partners’ perspectives. Not every business owner will find content production easy, though, much less in the constantly updating sports sector. Hiring professional content services can help you meet your content targets.
Branded content - also known as custom content, sponsored content, organic placements or many other terms - is content that appears alongside branding from a client.
A famous example of this is when The New York Times ran a feature on women’s prisons, branded by the hit TV series Orange is the New Black. We are including this in sponsorship as itn accomplishes many of the same objectives as sponsorship. “Good content with brand equals good brand.”
And the money rolls in.
Sports betting content
Sports betting has seen a major increase in popularity in recent years, prompting many countries to relent to the demands. While many countries legalized sports betting decades ago, others did so only recently.
For instance, sports betting has been legal in Australia since the early 1990s. However, it has only recently gained widespread acceptance in the United States, after being legalized in 2018. In a short span of time, the market has seen a rapid expansion, with sports betting now allowed in 36 out of 50 states.
Cross-border gambling via the internet has made many regulations unenforceable and, frankly, taxing the profits and regulating the play makes more sense from a state government’s standpoint.
More and more markets are softening regulations on gambling and the most common path this takes is typically through the socially acceptable idea of sports betting. Along with the trend, online sports betting has become more popular and easier to access, improving fans' enjoyment of the sports while putting wagers on their favorite teams.
The increasing accessibility and convenience of online sports betting, coupled with the rise in popularity of sports and sports events, are driving the industry's growth. The global sports betting market is predicted to reach up to $129.3 billion in value in 2028 after reaching nearly $74.2 billion in 2021 with Europe holding around 50% of the market share.
However, online sports betting is usually regulated separately from its traditional counterpart. For instance, India started regulating gambling activities with its Public Gaming Act of 1867, but the country is still discussing whether to also regulate online gambling - which includes online sports betting.
As the sports betting industry continues to grow, sports betting content becomes an increasingly important part of the industry landscape. Businesses can generate additional revenue through advertising, subscriptions, and other means by providing bettors with the latest news, analysis, predictions, and other information.
They can also drive affiliate commissions through long form SEO content and even short-form videos.
Origin Hope provides any content operation with newsroom efficiency, powered by its optimized processes, AI technology and excellent customer service. We work with marketing departments, independent creators, publishers and media groups around the world. Get in touch here.