Sports Goes Vertical

The roar of a stadium crowd has become more than a backdrop for brands. In India today, sport functions as a cultural axis around which consumer attention, digital engagement, fandom and brand narratives rotate with growing intensity. The fan journey no longer begins with the toss and ends with the final whistle; it runs throughout the day across platforms, formats and communities. For brands, this has steadily altered the role sport plays in marketing. It is no longer a seasonal burst medium but an always-on cultural environment.

Against this backdrop, agencies are formalising sports marketing into standalone verticals. Recently, Ting launched Ting Sports, converting what had long been project-based work into a dedicated business unit focused on sports brands, teams and events. Ting is not alone. TheSmallBigIdea has been operating TSBI Sports for three years, while global networks such as Dentsu, Omnicom and WPP Media have strengthened their sports offerings in India through units like Dentsu Sports and Entertainment, Fuse India and WPP Media Sports.

For Sudharshan Anandkumar, Co-founder, Ting, this shift is not a sudden reaction to market pressure but a natural consequence of how Indian sport itself has expanded and diversified. “It’s no longer limited to marquee leagues alone. Sports like chess, street cricket, badminton, volleyball and pickleball have built their own leagues and fan bases, alongside a strong push at the grassroots level. This diversity demands a deeper understanding of regional nuances, formats, and audience behaviour, something a generalist agency may struggle to deliver consistently,” he says. In his view, specialised teams are also better positioned to take Indian sport and Indian creative thinking to global platforms, as international sporting properties increasingly look to India not just as a market but as a narrative ecosystem in its own right.

That emphasis on cultural immersion led TheSmallBigIdea to invest early in sports specialisation. Harikrishnan Pillai, CEO and Co-Founder, TheSmallBigIdea, says sports marketing operates at the intersection of passion, identity and community, requiring a mindset distinct from conventional brand communication. “While knowledge of the game and the players is basic expectation, the real differentiator is understanding how fan culture has evolved over decades and how loyalties are formed. Sports is driven by emotion, and that emotion shapes how brands are received within those spaces,” he says. With sport functioning as a year-round engagement platform rather than a match-day medium, Pillai adds that there is a strong need for specialised marketing services that understand the culture and can translate it into meaningful, scalable brand narratives.

The shift is also reshaping how large integrated networks structure themselves, as clients look for fewer partners capable of managing more of the brand journey under one roof. According to Amit Wadhwa, CEO, Dentsu Creative & Media Brands, South Asia, the emergence of Dentsu Sports and Entertainment in India was driven by the need to deliver integration across increasingly complex brand mandates. “Clients today are asking agencies to own as much of the journey as possible. Integration cannot stop at creative and media. Brands now expect agencies to bring together content production, sports, entertainment, podcasts and experiential into one cohesive strategy aligned to business goals,” he says. For Dentsu, building a dedicated sports and entertainment vertical ensures these elements are not managed in silos but designed as part of a unified growth plan.

From a broadcaster’s perspective, expectations extend well beyond reach and frequency metrics. Janhavi Vyas, Head of Marketing, Warner Bros. Discovery South Asia, says that for sports brands such as Eurosport, the focus lies in building sustained relevance within a sport’s ecosystem, not merely visibility within a broadcast plan. “Brands expect agencies to understand the fan mindset, the cultural nuances of the sport and how audiences consume it across platforms. Effective campaigns today combine credible ambassadors, long-term storytelling and clear consumer insight, rather than relying on media weight alone,” she says. Referring to Eurosport’s work in motorsport properties such as MotoGP, she notes that sustained narratives and credible associations matter more than short-term bursts of visibility.

This demand for continuity is even more pronounced from the league side, where building long-term fan relationships is central to commercial sustainability. Simran Malik, COO, SJ Uplift Kabaddi, says brands now expect agencies to operate as ecosystem partners rather than media facilitators. “Key expectation is end-to-end capability from property alignment and content creation to on-ground execution and post-campaign analytics delivered with speed, flexibility, and accountability,” she says. Drawing from the Uttar Pradesh Kabaddi League Season two, Malik notes that consistent on-ground visibility, regional branding and city-level presence helped reinforce the league’s identity beyond broadcast, strengthening recall and familiarity among fans and stakeholders.

The always-on content environment is also compelling agencies to rethink where and how stories are produced. Anandkumar argues that traditional models struggle to keep pace. “Sport today is digital-first and social-first. The soul of sport is captured on the field, not in boardrooms or studios. That has created a need for on-ground content creation,” he says. Specialised sports teams, he adds, operate more like creators, using mobile-first tools and responding to defining moments in real time rather than relying solely on extended post-production cycles.

From the perspective of newer formats, expectations are increasingly content-heavy, digital-first and driven by speed and cultural responsiveness. Dayaan Farooqui, Chairman and Promoter, Pro Wrestling League, says timing can be as important as messaging. “There is a clear expectation around speed and relevance. Sport moves in real time, and brands want partners who can react instantly with content, collaborations, and creator integrations that feel timely and culturally aligned,” he says, adding that delayed or overly planned responses often fail to connect with highly engaged fan communities. Brands, he notes, are now focused on becoming part of everyday fan conversations rather than limiting themselves to logo visibility, which makes specialist teams better suited to respond across both real-time and long-form formats.

At the grassroots and regional level, operational realities further underline why sport does not fit neatly into standard agency frameworks. Aishwarya Bhargava, COO, Adroit Sports, points out that in indigenous sports such as kabaddi, agencies are often deeply involved in execution across multiple locations and communities. “In grassroots sports like kabaddi, brands expect agencies to handle the end-to-end execution, from working with players and local teams to managing events, logistics, and regional activations,” she says. With sport embedded in local culture across tier-two and rural markets, Bhargava adds that on-ground understanding is critical to ensuring brand messaging aligns with community realities, something difficult to manage through centralised planning alone.

For Pillai, the move towards sports verticals also acknowledges that sport, much like film marketing, is not a simple extension of routine brand communication. Having worked across entertainment properties, he maintains that teams and broadcasters prefer partners with contextual intelligence, as the risks of misjudging tone, timing or fandom are significantly higher. In that sense, sports marketing comes with inherent entry barriers, making specialisation less a choice and more a prerequisite.

Looking ahead, Anandkumar believes this specialisation will deepen as India’s sporting ecosystem expands beyond headline leagues. With niche formats and regional competitions building loyal audiences, he sees growing demand for creative ecosystems that understand local cultures, digital behaviour and real-time engagement rather than relying on standardised national campaigns. The future of sports marketing, he suggests, lies in teams capable of moving fluidly between community-level storytelling and global platforms, as Indian sport increasingly attracts audiences beyond domestic borders.

The rise of sports-focused verticals therefore reflects a broader structural shift. As leagues expand, regional formats grow and fan engagement becomes more creator-led and community-driven, marketing around sport is becoming more continuous and more local than traditional agency models were designed to manage. Specialist capability is no longer peripheral. It is increasingly central to how sports marketing will be shaped in the years ahead.