The 2026 FIFA World Cup, which kicks off next week, is one of many tentpole sports events drawing attention – and ad spend – to live sports streaming.
Cord-cutting isn’t the only motivator marketers have for throwing money at livestreamed sports, although spikes in streaming viewership is part of the reason.
As an industry, “we’ve been talking about the shift to streaming for quite some time,” said Mohammad Chughtai, global VP of strategy and partnerships at programmatic media platform MiQ. “Now, what we’re talking about is more about maximizing the investment as much as possible.” (Performance TV, anyone?)
To squeeze the most juice out of their live sports campaigns, Chughtai said many marketers are adopting programmatic buying and marketing mix modeling (MMM), both of which are also drawing more advertisers to the digital live sports cornucopia.
The 2026 upfront season is just one testament to the growing importance of live sports to marketers, Chughtai said. MiQ helps media buyers secure live sports inventory through private marketplace (PMP) deals.
