The state of sports sponsorship in 2026
Fans watch more sport than ever, brands are moving money towards it, and women's sport is the fastest-growing part of the market. The numbers, and what they mean for a brand.
Every year someone predicts that sport will lose its grip on audiences. Every year the numbers say the opposite. Here is where sports sponsorship stands going into 2026, using the most recent public data we could check, and what we think it means for a brand.
Fans are watching more sport than ever
According to Two Circles, fans consumed 3 trillion hours of professional sport in 2024, up 131% since 2021, and the firm expects that figure to reach 4 trillion hours by 2034.
That matters because attention is the scarce resource in marketing. Most media is fragmenting. Sport keeps gathering people at the same time, around the same moment, with the same emotion.
Brands are following the audience
Two Circles estimates that brands spent $250 billion of their sponsorship and media budgets reaching audiences through sport in 2024. Only 19% of that went to sponsorship, down from 29% ten years earlier. The rest went to media: advertising around sport, not partnerships with it.
The same analysis expects a swing of around $30 billion a year from media spend into sponsorship. In plain terms: brands that have been buying space next to sport are starting to buy a place inside it.
Buying space next to sport is not the same as being part of it.
On the other side of the deal, sports properties are growing too. Two Circles puts aggregate sports property revenue at $174 billion in 2025.
Sponsorship still moves people to buy
Awareness is the easy part. The question every marketing director asks is whether fans buy.
Nielsen analysed 100 sponsorships across seven markets and 20 industries between 2020 and 2021 and found an average 10% lift in purchase intent among fans exposed to the sponsorship. In its Trust in Advertising research, sponsorship of sporting events ranks among the most trusted forms of brand communication, behind only recommendations from people and brands' own websites.
That trust is the asset. Fans give sponsors a benefit of the doubt they rarely give a banner ad.
Women's sport is where the growth is
Deloitte estimates that women's elite sport generated more than $2.4 billion in revenue in 2025, a 248% increase on 2022, and forecasts at least $3 billion in 2026.
Sponsors are moving in that direction. SponsorUnited found that sponsorships across women's sports grew 12% year on year, against 8% for men's professional leagues.
What this means for a brand
The audience is there. Sport is one of the few places where a brand can still reach a large, engaged audience at the same moment.
The deal is only the start. If more money is moving into sponsorship, more brands will be fighting for the same fans' attention. The ones that win will be the ones that give fans something, not the ones with the biggest logo.
Trust is earned by taking part. Fans already lean towards sponsors. An activation that respects their sport and their culture turns that goodwill into preference.
Look at women's sport now. It is growing faster than the rest of the market and many categories are still open.
At Krausen we help brands turn sponsorships into stories fans care about. If you have signed a deal and want it to work harder, see how we activate sponsorships.
Sources
Two Circles, 250B reasons why brands are backing sports, July 2025.
Two Circles, Sports IP Revenue League 2026, April 2026.
Nielsen, Sports sponsorships are raising more than just brand awareness, March 2022.
Deloitte, Game changers: unlocking the potential of women's sports, 2026.
SponsorUnited, Explosive growth of women's sports offers opportunities for brands, March 2025.
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