Creator Sports Network is trying to monetize the ad industry’s two biggest buzzwords: creators and sports.
Creator Sports Network, which launched in 2023, helps influencers livestream sports events on their social media pages. The platform doesn’t livestream the actual sports games; it acquires sports airing rights and shares them with influencers, who then stream the games for their own followers.
“We look at our creators as digital affiliates,” not dissimilar to national networks with local affiliate stations, said Barrick Prince, co-founder and chief product officer. In other words, Prince said, “the scale of creator-led distribution creates new engagement opportunities for brands.” And those opportunities are growing as Creator Sports Network snags the rights for more popular sports leagues.
“When we started this business three years ago, our rights partners were primarily up-and-coming leagues that [many people] had not heard of,” Prince said. Now, he said, the company boasts deals with more popular leagues, such as Division One football and basketball teams and the Savannah Bananas, an exhibition baseball team also known for their high-energy performances and choreographed dances on the field.
For brands, collabing with Creator Sports Network gives them on-screen ad placements and live mentions during the broadcast. “Advertisers are looking at us as incremental spend to [reach] a younger demographic that they’re not [reaching] from traditional TV distribution,” Prince said.
Play (Banana) Ball!
Running campaigns in traditional sports broadcasts can be not only cost-prohibitive but fail to effectively reach younger audiences, said Laurel Boyd, EVP of creative media at MissionOne Media, which sits within the BarkleyOKRP indie agency. That audience is increasingly choosing to engage with social media influencers rather than traditional sports broadcasts, she added.
In contrast, the creator economy has such “sheer scale” that influencers are “almost media networks in their own right,” Boyd said.
Creator Sports Network has more than 2,000 influencers in its network, and each brand gets 100% exclusivity in a broadcast. The scale expands when Creator Sports Network deputizes, say, a handful of influencers to livestream a game with Applebee’s ads while another handful livestreams a game featuring Samsung ads. Creators also livestream sports games across multiple platforms where they have channels, including Twitch, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and Kick, to name a few.
Paired with scale, Boyd said, Creator Sports Network brings “more opportunities to weave the brand into the conversation” compared to traditional media buys. Viewers and fans can participate in live chats during the livestream, both with the creator and with each other.
For brands, they get static product ads that remain on-screen throughout the duration of the stream. And the creator cheers or chants the brand’s advertised product during impactful moments of a game for memorability. In one recent example, when Twitch streamer Brendan Hofmann (who has one million followers on Instagram and TikTok) livestreamed a Savannah Bananas Banana Ball game featuring Applebee’s ads promoting the limited-time Dollarita drink, Hofmann cheered “Dollarita” throughout and after a high-impact catch during gameplay.
These shoutouts are hard to quantify, but brands that appeared in creator livestreams of Banana Ball games over the summer saw an overage of 65% impression delivery during and after the livestreams, according to Creator Sports Network. Impressions post-livestream typically take place throughout the platform’s audience extension network, which includes app environments hosting sports-related content, such as ESPN, Yahoo and Barstool Sports, said Josh Kaufman, head of sales.
From the agency perspective, “we’re always looking for unique formats where we can go beyond a 15- or 30-second spot in a traditional sports broadcast” to drive more engagement, Boyd said.
As for the measurement piece, Creator Sports Network uses a variety of first- and third-party brand lift metrics to help brands optimize their media plans moving forward, Kaufman said. The company specializes in upper- and mid-funnel growth, such as brand awareness and lift, he said, which is no surprise since streaming video is still largely considered a reach vehicle.
What matters more, Boyd said, is driving improved engagement and results with a “more modern way to incorporate sports” in a campaign media plan.
