This Ad Tech Briefing covers the latest in ad tech and platforms for Digiday+ members and is distributed over email every Tuesday at 10 a.m. ET. More from the series →The FIFA World Cup 2026, co-hosted across North America for the first time, has spelled out what some in U.S. media circles have known for some time: association football, or “soccer” to use local parlance, is now big in America, and it’s time for corporations to cash in at pace — one hydration break at a time.
The fact that the U.S. Men’s National Team has consistently generated live audiences in and around the 30 million mark and has warranted presidential intervention, per media reports, underlines an already popular notion: sports is one of the last big live audience mass-market TV networks advertisers can reach.
Piracy threat
Of course, any mention of TV ad sales on Madison Avenue isn’t complete without “CTV” entering the conversation, especially as sports betting marketing in the region burgeons, with many marketers in the sector willing to tailor their tactical bids to reach such audiences.However, amid such excitement, there’s an inconvenient truth: there really isn’t that much sports inventory on the market, and this scarcity amid huge demand is opening the door for shady actors to enter the fray, facilitated by a prevalence of willful blindness.
