There are a lot of options when it comes to sports marketing opportunities. The Super Bowl is the most famous in the US but has a very high budget threshold. So we looked into the data to find out what are the fastest growing sports in the US that could help brands find more affordable marketing opportunities.
Here is what the data says:
The Super Bowl is still the one-night reach king. This year averaged about 128 million viewers. That is the high water mark for mass awareness as well as for advertising cost.
To find the next “Super Bowl” opportunity, we looked at ratings data for areas smaller but growing much faster.
Women’s sports have grown massively (+139% year over year) in U.S. TV ad spend, reaching about $244 million. Disney said Women’s March Madness ad sales jumped about ~200% year over year and most inventory sold out. The 2025 title game still pulled about 8.5 million viewers on ABC/ESPN.
The other opportunity is soccer in the U.S., especially among Spanish speakers. The World Cup is coming soon to North America and there’s already meaningful viewership. The Copa América final in 2024 delivered about 13 million combined viewers across English and Spanish. The 2025 Club World Cup in the U.S., a smaller tournament, proved the base is there even outside a World Cup, averaging about 1.3 million viewers on TBS in English and about 1.4 million on Univision and TUDN in Spanish; across the tournament, English averaged roughly 0.46 million and Spanish about 0.60 million.
Most impressions still come from broadcast today (about 86% of sports viewership in Q1) with streaming climbing into the high teens by summer. Making broadcast the best pick for scale and layer streaming impressions for team, market, and language precision.
The cost efficiency story makes these opportunities even more compelling for smart marketers. While Super Bowl ads command $7+ million for 30 seconds, women’s sports and soccer inventory often costs 70-90% less while delivering highly engaged, underserved audiences. Early movers in women’s sports are seeing 2-3x higher brand recall rates compared to traditional sports advertising, according to Nielsen data.
The Spanish-language soccer audience is particularly interesting. Viewership studies show these fans watch 40% more of each broadcast compared to general market sports viewers, creating more impression value per dollar spent.
Smart brands should start testing creative approaches now – women’s sports audiences respond best to authentic partnership messaging and soccer content performs strongest when it acknowledges cultural moments and community pride.