Most sports marketing firm rankings are not useful. They have vague promises such as "we have a global reach", "we have great authentic engagement", "We have a solid brand strategy", etc., but they hide the only numbers that matter: the cost breakdowns.
Therefore, a well-informed buyer marking a service will not invest in a firm based on those vague terms.
When a chief marketing officer from a growing company wants to sponsor an S-Tier soccer team, they run into a wall of hidden costs and unverifiable results.
In the market, there are outdated claims and generic pricing that say "upon request".
Therefore, buyers do not truly know what the value is of a $50K/month service.
Because of that lack of data, buyers are looking for very specific return on investment (ROI) measures and not just a promise of good impressions or a vague brand strategy.
I have analyzed the market from top to bottom, eliminated all the fluff and have provided a complete breakdown of the top sports marketing agencies currently operating in the arena.
How to Evaluate Sports Marketing Agencies
Based on projections, the sports sponsorship market will exceed $103 billion (USD) by 2026. Unfortunately, brands typically pick their agency partners based on blind faith.
Many agencies will claim they have delivered good returns to their clients, but the truth is they do not provide sufficient data, or "math" to substantiate their claims.
Currently, close to half of all sponsorships result in at least a three percent increase in sales for the brand, while campaigns with the highest level of success generate five percent or higher.
All of the above mentioned data is based on "return on sponsorship investment" (ROSI), as defined by the measurement frameworks published by Nielsen. If a sports marketing agency cannot accurately track, quantify or measure the direct impact of their agency services on fan engagement, cost per acquisition, or sales revenue, that agency is failing.
Moreover, due to the high amount of risk associated with betting or crypto opportunities in sports marketing, agencies with a copycat model typically cannot sustain a successful operation.
A partner who understands the laws and licensing requirements of each state along with a clear way to communicate on behalf of your company in a regulatory manner is paramount to success. A single misstep could have legal consequences, fine your company heavily, and result in a damaged reputation.
The Top 20 Performing Sports Marketing Agencies
We have focused only on real performing agencies rather than vague categories, thus we are providing a listing of actual performing companies that can demonstrate measurable results within the various sports categories.
1. inBeat
inBeat operates solely on a performance model utilizing a mix of influencers, UGC (user-generated content) and paid media. Their emphasis is on the highest of elite tiers.
A good example of how well this agency can perform is the campaign developed by them for Hurom featuring NFL star Nick Bosa, which resulted in 300% ROI growth from advertising spend, 70% reduced CPA and 150 million impressions.
2. FINN Partners
FINN Partners is one of the leading agencies in the area of public relations and strategic communications with more than 30 years of industry experience.
This agency's focus is telling the stories of athletes, leagues, and the events that happen globally. They provide a unique service by being knowledgeable in the area of NIL and gaming.
3. Two Circles
This agency operates on a strict analytics and audience insight model. They have 13 offices worldwide and their clientele includes major organizations such as the NFL, UEFA and the Premier League.
Their ability to retain clients has been demonstrated on multiple occasions with the NFL Game Pass International at an average of 80% annually.
4. 17 Sport
17 Sport is a certified B Corp that creates a link between business goals and social impact.
There is a heavy emphasis on aligning business goals with purpose-driven campaigns as well as management of rights related to this alignment and activation.
5. WePlay
WePlay developed and executed a creative strategy to engage with fans with an unprecedented level of precision through extensive measurement and analytics.
They have built their reputation as innovators in establishing modern communities, launching a Discord channel for Paris Saint-Germain that attracted over 12,000 members and generated over 386,000 messages during Champions League victories.
6. Best Sports Agency
Best Sports Agency operates as the media manager and luxury concierge for a number of top professional athletes on a global scale. They currently manage 21 professional athletes, residing in 8 different countries and competing in 5 different sports.
While they do not share exact metrics, they manage over 50 sponsorships and create thousands of pieces of content.
7. CSM
CSM is a global powerhouse with over 1,200 employees working in more than 20 offices throughout the world. They operate large-scale experiences and manage partnership activations, for which they have reported their marketing performance improves 227% on average compared to their industry peers.
They produced 132 games, over 1,500 hours of broadcast content, and 25 brand activations for Athletes Unlimited.
8. Infront Sports
Infront Sports fully owns the broadcast production and media rights space. They support 170 rights-holders worldwide and are heavily focused on providing digital innovation.
The most prominent example of their success is their handling of all broadcast production for the FIFA World Cup and the majority of winter Olympic sports.
9. WeAreNinety
WeAreNinety has offices in London and Manchester and focuses on producing PR and creative campaigns that are culturally relevant to their target market. They manage the entire process for athletes from identification to contract negotiations.
WeAreNinety is responsible for the partnership between Sky Sports and Audi. They handled all activation and analytic responsibilities.
10. rEvolution
The rEvolution agency utilizes physical experiences and live events to promote their clients in North America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. They have a background in providing complex sponsorship consulting services.
They developed a multi-city event over the course of the ICC Men's T20 World Cup, which included the construction of large-scale physical installations in New York City.
11. Right Formula
Right Formula is the industry standard for brands attempting to enter either Formula 1 or other forms of motorsport.
With over 15 years of program development experience, Right Formula builds a complete strategic partnership plan from the beginning to the end. They managed the Hilton sponsorship over the course of 13 races and 8 golf tournaments, resulting in greater guest engagement.
12. SportQuake
SportQuake advertises and serves as an agency for advertisers, with a heavy emphasis on brand-first sports sponsorship. They are known for their multi-club aggregation strategy in the English Premier League.
They were able to place the eToro brand on 7 clubs in the English Premier League, as a result providing significant brand exposure for eToro.
13. Playfly Sports
Playfly Sports focuses on maximizing revenue, data management, and commercialization strategies. The company recently grew its operations in Europe and the United States through the acquisition of Evolution Sports.
They design customized technology systems to track client value, but the outcomes experienced by their clients remain heavily guarded.
14. Druid Sport
Druid Sport is a boutique consulting firm with a very global mindset, with offices located in Dublin, Lisbon, Geneva, Riyadh, and Beijing.
They are responsible for managing media rights and event management services. They were instrumental in promoting cycling tourism in China by producing the La Vuelta Desafio Beijing event, attracting more than 2,600 participants.
15. SMI
SMI provides creative advertising and live sports media services. They develop custom creative solutions to assist their clients with complex media purchasing situations.
RunThrough provides website redesign and social media campaigns that help to increase overall followers, traffic and registrations to their clients live events.
16. Amra & Elma
This company specializes only in large scale influencer marketing and can accommodate over 10,000 influencers per week.
They utilize a combination of public relations and high quality search optimization to yield impressive results for their clientele. During a three month period, this company produced 16.7 million impressions and received 115,000 clicks for their customers while working with some of the most prominent brands including Rolex, Mercedes Benz, and LVMH.
17. IMG
IMG is considered a mega agency that operates in 70 offices in 30 countries. The agency has expertise in every segment of the sport industry and manages large global rights and sponsorships.
Some of their clients include Visa, DHL, and Intel, and have been actively involved in the global marketing of the Olympic Games for decades.
18. Octagon
Headquartered in Norwalk, Connecticut, Octagon competes directly with IMG in the market place. They offer an extensive array of sponsorship services that they provide to their clients.
They are focused on securing high-value naming rights and brand placements at the top major sporting events in the US.
19. Momentum Worldwide
With more than 80 offices in 53 countries, Momentum Worldwide develops highly integrated, multi-channel marketing campaigns.
They leverage physical event support with digital media purchasing to drive significant consumer sales for their clients. As active partners to globally recognized brands including Coca-Cola, Verizon, and DiGiorno.
20. Wasserman Media Group
Based in Los Angeles, Wasserman provides a high level of consultative and sales proficiency to their partners. They contract with brands in the MLB, NBA, and NFL.
As athlete representation continues to grow, many brands will be managing large brand partnerships with various athletes from T-Mobile to NASCAR.
Pricing Tiers for Sports Marketing Agencies
One of the biggest issues with pricing is a lack of transparency across all levels of the industry. Too often brands spend weeks with top sports marketing agencies, only to find out during a meeting or after a lot of back and forth, that the minimum cost is 3x their total available budget! There are three main tiers in this market, and knowing what these numbers are will save you time.
- Starter: $10k - $25k - 1-2 activations, 5-10 content creators, basic social media, 1-2 athletes. 1 account manager, 1 strategist, freelancers. Monthly reporting - best for direct-to-consumer brands, new brands testing sports marketing.
- Growth: $25k - $60k - 3-5 activations, 15-25 content creators, multi-channel social, 3-5 athletes, amplification of paid media. 1 account director, 2 strategists, 1 creative lead, 2 producers, 1 analyst. Bi-weekly + real time dashboards reporting - best for mid-market, national teams, growing influencer programs.
- Enterprise: $60k - $120k+ - 6-10+ activations, 30-50+ content creators, full funnel social + paid media, 10+ athletes, custom technology stack, event production. 1 senior account director, 3 strategists, 2 creative leads, 4 producers, 2 analysts, 1 technology specialist. Weekly + custom dashboards + quarterly strategy reviews - best for global brands, league partnerships, and multiple sport portfolios.
Always be aware of hidden costs! Production overages can easily add anywhere from $5k-$15k, depending on the asset! Paid media management fees typically are 15%-20% of your total ad spend.
How to Choose a Sports Marketing Partner
Choosing an agency is a capital allocation decision and should not be determined by the most impressive presentation. You need to develop a cold, logical process for filtering out the low performing agencies, to keep your budget intact!
Defining Objectives and Budgets
Before you send your first email to any potential agency, you need to define exactly what you're purchasing. When choosing an athlete or influencer to represent your brand, you must first determine what you are looking to get from that relationship.
Are you looking to buy brand awareness, increase your direct selling, or access to an athlete's network? Once you've answered that question, write a strict 1-page brief outlining your specific timeline and budget tier.
After defining your budget tier and timeline, you can then decide if you want a fast-pilot campaign - running for 90 days - or a full 12-month contract.
You must also know which specific sporting leagues and events are particularly relevant to your brand and product.
Next step in choosing an athlete or influencer is to shortlist them (e.g., filter) based on compliance and scoring based upon the same 100-point scale used in the previous bullet, with guidelines to allocate: 20% for budget fit, 20% for sport expertise and 15% for measurement tools. If you are operating within the betting/crypto/cannabis industries, you must assign a very high weight to compliance.
Seek red flags in the proposal phase: Pricing sheets with "upon request" that do not specifically show how many hours will be worked or on the size of the team to be assigned will lead you to believe this is an untrustworthy athlete or agency (most likely).
Case studies that say they are working to "engage the audience" yet produce no concrete metrics (i.e., numerical data) indicating actual results of their efforts.
If you are working in a heavily regulated industry, the position of account lead must have at least three years of real-world experience in your specific industry.
The Proposal and Hard Questions Phase
After you have completed the above steps, you are ready for the RFP (Request for Proposal) phase, where you will request each agency to submit their proposal, and to answer your hard questions.
You will send an RFP to at least three agencies in a format that will be comparable and, therefore, will allow you to make a real comparison across all proposals.
In addition to requesting hard metrics, ask each agency to provide you with their specific ROI formula, including whether or not they will use promo codes and UTM tracking, and how they measure the effectiveness of their campaigns.
Additionally, require agencies to provide you with their worst campaign failure, along with what they learned from that experience. This deviates from their typical sales script and compels them to discuss the true functioning of their operations.
Post-Pilot Optimization
Don't sign a blind 12-month agreement. Run a 90-day trial first. Establish the metrics for success on day one. If they don't achieve a 3x return on advertising investment or 5% engagement rate after 90 days, terminate the agreement.
If they perform well, then quickly develop a plan to maximize the success of proven assets and eliminate unsuccessful assets. Importantly, establish your expectancy towards vanity metrics within the sports marketing industry.
Every sports operation that occupies valuable space within top-tier sports marketing agencies functions based on hard data. They track impressions, but they emphasize actual conversions, the ability to retain subscribers, and the impact of direct sales.
If a brand is looking to enter this industry, make them prove their numbers. Demand transparency in pricing, create a concise contract with an exit clause, and work with organizations that treat your investment with respect to the investment's worth.
Questions and Answers
How does an internal team isolate a major sponsorship's specific sales impact?
They move past impressions and develop targeted tracking pipelines. The best-performing organizations build unique codes for promoting specific sports stars, create specific landing pages, and apply specific UTM codes to all of their content on the internet.
Additionally, at the enterprise level, they will perform a pre- and post-marketing survey to compare their results to regional sales spikes to demonstrate a significant increase in sales in the areas targeted by the brand's advertisements.
What are the most frequent leaks that occur within the operation of an athlete influencer campaign?
The lack of thorough vetting of the target audience. When agencies pay for access to a professional athlete that boasts 2 million followers, it is common for them to fail to examine whether those followers are real, active, and/or within the geographical areas of interest for the athlete.
As a result, they may incur significant initial costs, yet generate little-to-no conversions. This leak can be avoided by implementing strict procedures for audience auditing before signing a contract.
How can a regulated industry mitigate the severe compliance challenges associated with operating in a live sports media environment?
They must demand that their agency provide them with a comprehensive legal framework before the signing of the contract. A company that operates as a betting or crypto entity cannot afford to have a careless post on social media.
The agency must demonstrate a profound familiarity with the licensing procedures of each state where the brand wishes to operate and understand the laws pertaining to responsible messaging in those states. If the agency does not have a clearly defined crisis management program for any failures in terms of compliance, that agency is not qualified to work in that capacity.
When does hiring an external agency outweigh the costs of developing an internal media team?
It ultimately comes down to the projected size of the campaign and the connections of the external agency. In-house media teams require very significant base salaries, software licensing, and considerable time for training.
An agency provides immediate access to a worldwide network of professional athletic associations, established contacts within the leagues, and tested campaigns. If you are in need of only a limited number of local influencers, then you may wish to keep your efforts in-house, however, if you are planning a comprehensive multi-channel national campaign using high-profile professionals, the amount of time you save by utilizing an agency will easily justify their costs.