Insights from the ABX Sports Impact Index™ highlight unexpected audience dynamics shaping sports advertising effectiveness.
Why Sports Advertising Performance Isn’t What Most Brands Think
Sports advertising has long been viewed as a reliable way to reach highly engaged audiences. Large viewership, passionate fans, and cultural relevance have made sports programming a cornerstone of many media plans.
But reach alone does not guarantee impact.
New analysis from the ABX Advertising Benchmark Index™, using the ABX Sports Impact Index™, suggests that some of the most widely held assumptions about sports audiences and advertising effectiveness may be incomplete — and, in some cases, misleading.
These findings point to meaningful differences in how audience segments respond to sports-related advertising, with implications for creative strategy, media alignment, and performance optimization.
What the ABX Sports Impact Index™ Measures — and Why It Matters
The ABX Sports Impact Index™ (SII) is a composite measurement designed to evaluate sports-related advertising through a broader performance lens. Rather than focusing on exposure or awareness alone, the Index integrates:
- Creative effectiveness
- Audience passion and engagement with sports content
The Index is supported by 14 standardized advertising KPIs, allowing for consistent comparisons across:
- Demographics
- Cultures and ethnicities
- Geographic markets
- Sports and non-sports programming
This structure enables ABX to evaluate how and why sports advertising performs — not just whether it reaches fans.
What Prior Research Has Already Shown
Previous ABX Sports Impact Index™ analyses, including studies of major sports programming such as the Super Bowl, have demonstrated that sports-related advertising often outperforms non-sports advertising on key brand KPIs, including:
- Reputation
- Purchase Intent
- Intended Action
Importantly, these lifts are not automatic. Performance varies significantly based on:
- Creative execution
- Audience alignment
- Contextual relevance to the sports environment
In other words, being in sports programming helps — but it doesn’t guarantee success.
Insights from the 2025 NCAA Women’s Final Four Championship
To further understand audience response within sports environments, ABX analyzed advertising from the 2025 NCAA Women’s Final Four Championship using the Sports Impact Index™.
At a high level, the ads evaluated showed stronger performance across core brand KPIs compared to general-population benchmarks, reinforcing the value of premium sports programming.
However, the more revealing insight emerged when ABX examined audience segment differences.
Male vs. Female Audience Response
When KPI performance was analyzed by gender, results showed that female viewers demonstrated higher relative responsiveness across several key measures, including:
- Purchase Intent
- Message Delivery
This finding challenges a long-standing assumption that sports advertising performance is primarily driven by male audiences — even within sports environments.
Notably, similar audience response patterns have been observed in other ABX sports analyses, suggesting that this is not isolated to a single event or league.
Why This Matters for Sports Advertisers
Many brands already invest heavily in sports media. The opportunity uncovered by this research is not simply to spend more — but to spend smarter.
These findings suggest that:
- Certain high-value audience segments may be under-leveraged
- Creative strategies optimized for “sports fans” in general may miss important nuances
- Performance gains are possible through earlier creative evaluation and audience-specific optimization
Without structured measurement and pre-testing, advertisers risk assuming effectiveness where performance could be meaningfully improved.
The Role of Pre-Testing and Creative Guidance
Sports advertising is complex. Creative success depends on the interaction between:
- The ad itself
- The sports context
- The audience’s emotional connection to the event
The ABX Sports Impact Index™ enables advertisers to evaluate creative before campaigns air, identifying opportunities to strengthen:
- Reputation impact
- Purchase intent
- Action-driving performance
By applying consistent, data-driven evaluation across creative development stages, brands gain insights that are not available through traditional post-campaign metrics alone.
Key Takeaway
Sports advertising can be highly effective — but not by default.
The greatest gains come from understanding:
- Which audiences are most receptive
- How creative aligns with sports passion and context
- Where assumptions about “who sports ads work for” may fall short
These are the questions the ABX Sports Impact Index™ is designed to answer.
Want to Explore the Findings Further?
This summary highlights only a portion of the insights uncovered through ABX’s sports advertising research. Deeper analysis, category-specific results, and creative diagnostics are available through the ABX Sports Impact Index™.
Written by:
Angela Jeffrey
Vice President, Brand Management
ABX Advertising Benchmark Index™
To learn more or request additional information: CONTACT US HERE
ABX Advertising Benchmark Index, (www.adbenchmark.com), is a data science company that drives ROI through creative excellence in advertising and marketing. ABX evaluates client creative against the world’s largest syndicated database of in-market ads, across media types, with more than half-a-million ads measured to date. Insights are accessible and affordable through its Global Multimedia Platform and Creative Feedback Loop™. Services also include in-market pre-tests, trackers, product placement/integration, entertainment and gaming, podcasts, short-form radio on mobile and more. ABX is a research partner to the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) and the Radio Advertising Bureau (RAB).