The digitization of sports has taken an immense leap since the pandemic. Fueled by the crossover of sports consumption via multiple online channels, with a lot more platforms investing in digital streaming rights.
It’s evident how certain brands benefit a huge amount from multiple sports sponsorships and targeted advertising in stadiums and gaming arenas all over the world.
However, what about the rising influence of digital space? How are brands who don’t have big money to spend in the stadium be a part of these events?
The opportunities for advertisements are exceptionally vast with the rise of digital media. A wide variety in viewership from different demographics comes from digital media and brands plan their campaigns around the sporting events have taken advantage of it to stay relevant and top of mind.
In Pakistan, the cult-like fan following of the athletes drives contemporary marketers to curate their branding and advertising strategies around cricket more than ever. Some of the most known cricketers’ part-take in Pakistan’s most-watched sporting league, i.e. Pakistan Super League (PSL).
Daraz partnered to broadcast ICC T20 World Cup digitally for the first time on their platform back from October to November 2021. The e-Commerce platform doubled its monthly active users by the end of the tournament and saw more than 400 Million views on the tournament alone.
After a positive response from the World Cup Partnership, Daraz went for HBL PSL rights and the e-Commerce platform won the bid for the 7th and 8th seasons of the biggest cricketing league in Pakistan.
According to Pakistan Cricket Board, Daraz submitted 175% highest bid in accordance to the public tender process where ASports, Geo TV, Trans Group and Tapmad also participated in the process.
Creating sports partnerships of this nature, to create an experience for their customers is a staggering reflection of sports marketing.
With a large digital audience base in Pakistan, many advertisers can take advantage of this opportunity to expose their brands to millions of people who are digital natives.
The shift in the marketing superstructure has been tough due to the Coronavirus pandemic. But with the latest technology, monitoring makes it easy for the brands to track potential businesses. The impact measured is useful for the brands to analyze where they should spend.
Whilst live streaming allows people to follow sport in real-time, the video content is still available after the event has finished.
This means that days, weeks or years after the event has finished, people are still able to view the content and get a feel for what the event was like.
Being able to watch a sporting event live gives a greater essence of what it is like to be there and with brands like Daraz making it accessible, the overall talkability of the event will most like see an increase as well.