Every big cricket season, the same question lands on marketing decks: “Are we doing anything around sports this year?”
Inside most teams, the answers split into two camps:
- “Sports is insanely expensive, let’s avoid it.”
- “Everyone is on sports, we can’t miss out.”
Both views miss the real point.
Sports isn’t a default media line item; it’s a force multiplier you pull at the right time. Done well, it compresses reach, attention, and memory into a short burst. Done poorly, it’s just a very visible way to waste a lot of money.
So the real decision is not “Sports: yes or no?”
It’s: “Are we in the right place to use sports well right now?”
A Simple “Are We Ready for Sports?” Checklist
Instead of starting with sponsorship tiers and cost per 10 seconds, start with six basic questions. Answer them with a straight Yes or No:
- Is there a real business moment to accelerate?
Launch, season, competition, new geography, or a big narrative shift—not just “nice to have visibility.” - Can we surround the burst with a full funnel?
Search, retargeting, content, offers, landing pages, and ops ready to capture demand—not just a TV spot or a logo presence. - Have we hit a reach ceiling in our current mix?
More spend is pushing frequency up, but not really adding new people. - Is incremental reach becoming disproportionately expensive?
Each extra point of reach is costing a lot more than it used to. - Are we visible but not really remembered?
Decent delivery metrics, weak recall, and no movement in branded search or direct traffic. - Are we over‑invested in performance and under‑invested in brand?
Lower‑funnel looks great, but brand metrics, direct traffic, and future demand are flat.
How to read it:
- 0–2 Yes: Park sports for now.
- 3–4 Yes: Use sports selectively, in a tightly defined role.
- 5–6 Yes: You’re likely ready to treat sports as a serious impact layer.
From here, everything else is detail. Let’s unpack each lens.
1. Timing: Sports Works Best When Something Is at Stake
Sports is not “always‑on” media. It’s an accelerator.
Ask: “What are we trying to speed up in the next 4–8 weeks?” For example:
- New product or variant launch
- A predictable seasonal spike (tax season, admissions, festive buying, renewal windows)
- Category entry or repositioning
- A period of loud competitor activity
- Launch in new cities or regions
When there is a clear business moment, it becomes much easier to see whether sports actually moved the numbers you care about: branded search, direct traffic, leads/orders, pre‑orders, dealer enquiries, city‑level activity, etc.
When there’s no real “moment,” sports starts to feel like “we were present” instead of “we moved the business.”
2. Orchestration: Can Your System Handle the Spike?
The uncomfortable truth: sports is rarely the problem—orchestration is.
Sports should sit on top of a system that can absorb and convert the surge in interest. That means:
- Paid and organic search ready to capture intent
- Retargeting set up with sufficient budgets and creative variants
- Fast, stable landing pages and apps that don’t crumble under peak traffic
- Clear, simple offers and CTAs
- Content, influencers, or OOH reinforcing the message in key markets
When this isn’t in place, what happens is familiar: traffic spikes on match days, but conversions, quality leads, and long‑term indicators hardly move. Demand gets created, then leaks away to competitors, slow journeys, or confusion.
The question to ask is: “If sports does its job and gives me a spike, does my system know what to do with it?” If the answer is no, that’s where to invest first.
3. Reach: Are You Just Repeating Yourself?
As brands scale, a common pattern appears: budgets keep going up, but the number of new people you reach barely changes, while frequency climbs relentlessly.
That’s a classic reach ceiling. Signs include:
- Spend up 20–30%, reach up only 5–10%
- A big chunk of your audience sitting at very high exposure counts
- Incremental reach points getting more and more expensive
In that situation, you’re effectively paying to shout louder at the same group.
Sports can help here because it aggregates audiences at scale in a short window, often outside your usual pools. But it’s not a substitute for fixing poor planning fundamentals. If your existing mix is badly distributed, sports will sit on top of a flawed base.
4. Economics: The Real Question Is Marginal, Not Average
Most sports debates get stuck on surface metrics like CPM. The more useful question is: “What does it cost me today to add one more meaningful reach point?”
As your base channels saturate, the cost per incremental reach point climbs quietly. You see scenarios where a big top‑up in budget buys you a tiny bit of extra reach and a lot of extra frequency. That’s diminishing returns territory.
In those moments, sports can sometimes improve the marginal economics of impact:
- You pay for an expensive but highly concentrated window
- You get a large, fresh audience in one go
- You create attention that is harder to replicate through standard inventory
If your marginal cost of reach in existing channels is still healthy, you don’t need sports yet. If it’s spiralling, sports can become surprisingly rational—as long as you’re tracking it as an incremental impact layer, not a vanity buy.
5. Attention: Are People Actually Processing Your Ads?
One of the biggest silent issues in digital is low‑quality attention. Campaigns “deliver” in terms of impressions and viewability, but people don’t really watch, think, or remember.
Symptoms:
- Good impression counts, weak ad recall
- Healthy viewability, flat brand lift
- Big video spends, but no movement in branded search or direct traffic
Sports environments, especially live events, tend to command higher attention density. People lean in rather than scroll past. That’s why the same creative often performs differently during live sports compared to regular inventory.
Of course, sports can’t rescue a weak idea. If your story is fuzzy or your branding is invisible, paying a premium for attention won’t change that. The better way to think about it is: “Is my creative good enough that it deserves a high‑attention moment like live sports?”
6. Funnel Balance: Are You Just Harvesting, Not Planting?
In a lot of teams, “performance” gradually eats the whole budget.
When most of your money is locked into lower‑funnel tactics (retargeting, shopping ads, deal‑led influencers), a few things often happen:
- Branded search stalls
- Direct traffic stops growing
- New customer contribution drops
- CPAs rise slowly over time
- Brand metrics stay flat despite “great” performance dashboards
In that situation, sports can act like a reset button for brand: legitimacy, trust, and mental availability. Appearing around marquee events signals scale and seriousness in a way that’s hard to replicate elsewhere.
But again, it should serve a clear job: launch acceleration, narrative change, deeper penetration in priority markets, reinforcing leadership in a moment that matters—not just “spend on sports because everyone else is there.”
The Practical Rule of Thumb
Strip away the jargon, and the rule is simple:
Use sports when you need to compress reach, attention, and recall into a short period where the business stakes are genuinely high—and when your system is ready to catch the demand it creates.
Everything else is execution and discipline.
Jan–May 2026 is going to be peak cricket season. If you’re under pressure to “lock something in,” run yourself through the six questions first. If the answers point to readiness, sports can be one of the most efficient impact levers in your mix. If they don’t, it’s okay to sit this season out—and invest in getting truly ready for the next one.
Read our LinkedIn article to understand in detail.
At The Media Ant, we’ve spent the last decade helping brands navigate exactly these decisions—when to lean into sports, when to hold back, and how to design campaigns that actually move business metrics, not just vanity numbers.
If you’re evaluating IPL, cricket, or any other sports property this season and want a clear, numbers‑first view of whether it’s right for you, our team can help you run this readiness diagnostic on your own brand and category.
Explore some of our sports work and case studies here: The Media Ant Sports Marketing Hub.
