in a year defined by major global sports moments, including Super Bowl LX, the Winter Olympics, and the lead-up to the Fifa World Cup 2026, WPP is launching WPP Media Sports.
A unified sports and gaming practice, WPP Media Sport will deliver premier, scalable sports sponsorships, integrations, and content to drive intelligent growth with fans, wherever they are, at a time when, it says, sports marketing is at an inflexion point.
The future of sports marketing isn’t about who’s the loudest. It’s about meeting fans where fandom happens, moving beyond one-off moments or games toward connected, multi-year strategies built to last.
The attention is there: live sports remain one of the best places for brands to reliably reach massive, engaged audiences in real time.
However, the way fans engage, move, and transact around sports has fundamentally changed.
Delivering real growth
WPP Media Sports is built on a simple belief: passion alone isn’t enough to cut through the noise.
To deliver real growth, sports investment must be planned, activated, and measured within a broader growth system that reflects how audiences experience sports today — across live events, streaming, social, creators, gaming, and culture.
It says its approach harnesses fan engagement through content, precision, and scale for lasting performance.
“It’s one thing to be on a fan’s mind during the game, but it’s another thing to stay there after the final whistle,” says Martin Blich, WPP media executive director and head of US sports investment & partnership.
“We focus on making every sports moment count — using data, insights, and tools to help brands turn fleeting attention into lasting engagement and real business impact.”
According to WPP Media’s latest This Year, Next Year forecast, global advertising revenue is expected to grow 8.8% in 2025, reaching $1.14trn, fuelled by AI-enabled efficiency, new advertiser categories, and smarter reinvestment of savings back into media.
Unlocking live sports’ full value
Sports are at the centre of that evolution.
Live sports continue to anchor streaming growth, command premium attention, and provide cultural relevance at scale.
Unlocking its full value now requires a future-forward operating model: one that connects media, partnerships, content, experiential, and analytics, eliminating fragmented planning and disconnected decision-making.
WPP Media Sports wants to shift brands from a reactive execution to a proactive, holistic sports strategy.
By bringing those capabilities together under one integrated practice, WPP Media Sports says it eliminates fragmented planning and disconnected measurement, enabling brands to plan sports holistically, activate with precision, and optimise continuously over time.
The challenge of real results
A core strength of the practice is its fully connected, data-driven foundation.
Leveraging proprietary, partner, and marketplace data — and amplified through partnerships with GumGum and Relo Metrics — WPP Media Sports enables real-time sponsorship measurement and contextual intelligence, helping brands understand not just where they show up, but how performance evolves across platforms and moments.
As WPP Media US chief media officer Susan Schiekofer explains, “Sports delivers unmatched attention.
“The real challenge is converting it into results. That’s what we do at WPP Media — we bridge the excitement of the game with the rigour of data-driven marketing, ensuring passion translates into performance.”
Blich adds, “For millennia, sports have united people and ignited passion across cultures and generations.
“Our role is to make sure that power translates into tangible growth, embedding sports strategically into broader marketing and growth plans, so every partnership contributes to measurable impact.”
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