What is your favorite season? Spring is the favorite of 36% of Americans, according to a poll Gallup did in June1. My favorite season isn’t winter, spring, summer or fall. It is football season (Geaux Saints!). Each August, I prep for the NFL season by purchasing my Sunday Ticket subscription, tuning in to football podcasts to hear the latest pre-season news, and most importantly, planning my fantasy football draft strategy.
I am extremely competitive when it comes to fantasy football, and looking at the stats, I’m clearly not the only one. Nearly 60 million Americans play fantasy sports2 , and nearly 40 million of them play fantasy football.1 Along with planning my season-long fantasy football team, I also participate in weekly fantasy contests on FanDuel. How much money I put into my FanDuel bets depends on my confidence in the lineup I’ve created. During football season, I average spending about $50 a month on fantasy sports. In that industry, I’m a low spender – in 2019, the fantasy industry was worth $7.2 billion, according to Statista.3 With high participation and deep investment from participants, advertisers should heed the value fantasy gaming can bring.
Since nearly 20% of the U.S. population is active in a fantasy sports league or betting platform, advertisers can create exclusive offers and opportunities for this unique population. If you’re checking your fantasy football team scores, you’re probably watching the games being played in real time as well. Marketers can capitalize on the opportunity to reach fantasy participants on a new level – CPG companies can market snacks for the football game watching party hosts, restaurants can offer exclusive fantasy football experiences (Buffalo Wild Wings is ahead on this front!4, and the sports teams can market exclusive offers to fantasy participants.
Along with the cultivation of new experiences, marketers can reach in-market individuals through programmatic buys on sites fantasy participants are likely to use. Personally, I scan several sites like fantasypros.com, cbssports.com, and thefantasyfootballers.com to help me make wise lineup decisions each week. It’s worth noting that a fantasy football participant spends an average of roughly 7 hours a week doing research.5 Along with display advertising, advertisers can explore new routes like podcast advertising to reach fantasy participants. Along with reading articles and listening to podcasts, fantasy participants are also consuming fantasy sports content through YouTube videos. With such a variety of outlets to reach fantasy participants, the possibilities for advertisers are endless.
Fantasy sports is a multi-billion-dollar industry – it’s time for advertisers to get a piece of the pie. Acxiom offers segmentation to reach in-market people looking to join a fantasy team as well as current fantasy sports participants. All Acxiom audiences can be combined using Boolean logic to create unique, specialized audiences. Fantasy football season is right around the corner. Beat the crowd and reach out to [email protected] now to get started.
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