NFL and WNBA Fans Want More for Their Data Than Dumb Ads

As sports marketing spreads across platforms and fandoms, it’s become increasingly important for broadcasters, sponsors, leagues and teams to know their fans.

Manny Puentes, GM of advertising at sports data and analytics firm Genius Sports, has been in advertising for 26 years and has watched sports fans’ online experience evolve. From fans reading whatever publishers offered to brands capitalizing on user-generated content and data-heavy “conversations” with consumers, Puentes has mapped the expectation change for all parties. 

“That conversation is based on your interactions with the product, and it remembers that conversation as you’re going through and scrolling,” Puentes said. “You’re like, ‘Oh, my God, you know me … I like this feeling.’”

As Puentes pointed out, each ensuing generation expected more out of that data conversation, especially when they were marketed to as a result. “Banner blindness” set in, and patience with broad, impersonal ads thinned.

Now, companies like Genius Sports are trying to push that conversation forward.

The pursuit of data personalization has led Genius Sports to consider audiences within identity graphs. It looks at profiles from a user’s TV, laptop, smartphone, and tablet and how they used platforms such as Meta, X (formerly Twitter), and TikTok across devices. Puentes explained that this is all to ensure, at the very least, that there’s no fandom confusion.

You don’t ”want to think on this device you are a [Las Vegas] Raiders fan, and on this device, think you’re a [Buffalo] Bills fan,” Puentes said.

In addition, in sports, an increased investment in streaming platforms (the Olympics on Peacock, Major League Baseball on Roku, the National Football League on Netflix) has unlocked  “all of the reporting and analytics and insights that you need to understand the lifetime value of the audience.” While companies like Nielsen have attempted to broaden linear viewing measurement, direct access to that data helps power tools like Genius Sports’ Fan HubID—which builds fan-based profiles for marketers and broadcasters based on information from live game feeds.

Such tools not only allow brands to narrow the focus of game campaigns but also let broadcasters and leagues see what grabs their fans’ attention. During a conversation at ADWEEK’s Brand Play Sports Marketing Summit, Puentes told Andy Kauffman, svp of marketing strategy and science for the National Football League (NFL), that increased fan focus on players and disappearing third-party cookies give leagues an opportunity to stop “talking at the fan.”

With more than 400 league partners, including the NFL, English Premier League and Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA), Genius Sports is not only attempting to give them and their sponsors a better look at their fans, but it’s also putting that data on the screen to give fans and brands more ways to interact with the game.

“We’re becoming advanced as a community that embraces privacy, embraces consent and embraces transparency to give the ultimate value to the audience you’re trying to reach by having a true conversation with them and not thinking that they’re a Bills fan when they’re a Raiders fan,” Puentes said.

Investing in data equity

When the WNBA opened its season on May 14, it did so using Genius Sports’ Second Spectrum 3D tracking technology at each game. An array of cameras is placed in every WNBA arena, and Second Spectrum tracks player positioning and ball movement.

“Technology continues to fundamentally change the sports landscape,” WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert said in a statement. “Deploying state-of-the-art optical tracking technology through Genius Sports will deliver rich data to our teams that they can leverage to enhance player performance while informing in-game strategy and enable a new wave of insights and media elements for fans.”

Puentes noted that the league is currently using Second Spectrum primarily to measure shot quality, shooter impact, time in the paint, efficiency, points per chance, contest quality and defensive matchup data. It can break down performance metrics to a player’s maximum speed and total distance covered.  

“It is really exciting that our league is adopting this type of technology,” said New York Liberty general manager Jonathan Kolb. “The system capabilities are far more comprehensive than anything before seen in the WNBA and will greatly enhance strategic planning across the league.”

For its part, Genius Sports integrates all official WNBA tracking data into its basketball insights and analytics engine. The WNBA, meanwhile, becomes the first women’s professional sports league in the U.S. to use league-wide 3D tracking data and contributes to a data set that puts its metrics on par with those of its men’s counterparts.

“Basketball is going to be basketball, whether it’s a man or woman playing, and technology is not going to have a bias—it’s just going to tell you the data,” Puentes said. “It’s going to help you be better, and it’s going to bring parity across the leagues in cases like the NBA and WNBA.”

Getting brands in the game

But teams and sponsors can take data a step beyond the playing field and move it directly into their marketing.

Partnering with EPL club Brentford FC’s men’s and women’s teams this season, Genius Sports provided data-driven match highlights in the club’s home—Gtech Community Stadium—and across social media. Debuting the technology during a men’s matchup with Sheffield United, Brentford augmented in-game replays on stadium screens with graphics for player names, shot speeds, shot trails and the pitch map—all presented with small appliance manufacturer Gtech’s logo.

“​​With that 3D-immersive inventory, this is the first step into being able to process any live stream and make that programmatically available,” Puentes said. “That’s where we’re going—that’s not there yet—but we’re taking technological advancements and capabilities to bring 3D-immersive experiences to audiences.”

Using Genius Sports’ Dragon product, Brentford has Genius Sports capture 10,000 surface data points per player more than 200 times per second for every match. When the technology detects a player taking a shot, the big screens above the stadium goals automatically display the Gtech logo above the goal. Fans get the metric- and graphic-laden highlights on social media after each match, Genius Sports gets the data and Brentford and Gtech get another wrinkle to their sponsorship agreement. 

With Genius Sports already providing data-driven alternate broadcasts for the Premier League, NFL and NBA through Premier League Productions, CBS, Prime Video and ESPN, it sees more opportunity for brands to buy in. While new technologies can capture sports moments for brands as they happen, they can also personalize them for specific fans based on profiles like Genius Sports’ FanHubID.

“We also can display a brand that we know that you would have a high propensity for because we know you across platforms, across teams, across leagues and [across] your affinity towards particular brands,” Puentes said. “Now we’re tying it all together.”