Between the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics and the FIFA World Cup, 2026 is shaping up to be a massive year for sports marketers—and that’s not including the mainstays on the sports calendar.

For those with big enough budgets, international tournaments can provide reach and help achieve other brand goals, but amid Olympics and World Cups and Super Bowls, a number of other sports properties have emerged in recent years that could also help marketers achieve their KPIs while standing out.

“2026 is definitely the year of sports,” Martin Blich, executive director and head of sports partnerships and content in the US for WPP Media, told Marketing Brew. With such a busy sports calendar, he later added, “you would think that [demand] would start to fizzle out, but it just doesn’t.”

With supply and demand for sports media and sponsorships as high as ever, Marketing Brew asked several agency execs what partnership opportunities they think brand marketers are overlooking, and why they could be good bets in the year to come.

Continue reading here.—AM

Panels at marketing industry events are ripe for buzzword bingo, and CES is no different.

Here’s one from the first day of the conference: “newstalgia,” which is when brands lean on beloved cultural moments of the past with a new twist. Chick-fil-A’s new 80-year-anniversary marketing campaign that kicked off this week and features retro packaging and menu items aims to do exactly that.

Buzzword overuse is perhaps especially true when it comes to AI, which is still the talk of the strip this year as marketers, media execs, and agency execs continue to figure out how it will—and won’t—upend their various industries.

The question of what that transformation (there’s one more marketing buzzword for you) will look like doesn’t have a pat answer.

Based on conversations at the conference so far, some marketers remain obsessed with AI’s promise of shortened production timelines, while others are focused on brand IP protection amid the proliferation of generative tools. Still more are lasered in on the tech’s power to “unlock the value of intellectual property,” Samira Bakhtiar, general manager, media and entertainment, games, and sports, AWS, said during a panel, noting that it could be particularly useful for brands with archival content.

Regardless of marketers’ particular obsessions, the sentiment so far this week seems to be that it’s no longer a question of if marketers will use AI, but rather how they are using it, and what benefit it can have for their brands. Expect that to extend beyond digital AI tools.

“We’re going to see so many robots here this week—and good luck to all of us,” Elav Horwitz, chief innovation officer, WPP, said onstage, adding that the holding company is “testing how robots can help us with the future of production.”

Other notable tidbits from the conference so far:

• Buying something from Samsung? It’ll probably have AI in it.
• Amazon plans to listen more when pitching advertisers this week.
• Reddit’s got a new AI media buying tool of its own.

Gripe: The midnight wake-up call from a literal false alarm at The Linq Sunday night. After 20 minutes of confusion in pajamas in the lobby, the alarm simply ended, and hotel guests were sent back to our rooms with no explanation—and much lower confidence in how an actual emergency might play out. What happens in Vegas…and all that.

Overheard: “Did you say you were ChatGPT-ing that?”—KM

Each week, we spotlight Marketing Brew readers in our Coworking series. If you’d like to be featured, introduce yourself here.

Steve Rotter is CMO of DeepL, an AI-powered translation service. He has also served as CMO at the software companies FourKites, OutSystems, and Acrolinx.

Favorite project you’ve worked on? By far, it’s been the launch of DeepL Agent, our recently launched autonomous AI that can handle complex knowledge work tasks. There are two big reasons why. First is that the technology is mind-blowing. We’re living in an incredible period of rapid transformational innovation that is unlike anything any of us have experienced before. Second is that the marketing challenge was fascinating—not only did we launch an incredible new technology, we did it in the noisiest tech market in recent history. At the same time, we guided the company through a major brand shift from being a “translation company” to “DeepL as an AI innovation company.”

What’s your favorite ad campaign? I love ads that connect emotionally, or ads that are so clever you have to pay attention. My top three—I can’t pick just one—are Google “Reunion” (you will cry if you watch this), Ikea’s “bookbook” (just brilliant!), and DeepL’s “Lost in Translation.”

One thing we can’t guess from your LinkedIn profile: I’m obsessed with quokkas, gnomes, and sea otters. And I really like competitive trail running.

Read more here.

Unifying customer touchpoints is rarely a seamless process. It’s often more like a tangled thread. Mandeep Bhatia will detail how they leverage AI to weave a cohesive, personalized luxury experience across their global brands. Consider it the masterclass in getting all your retail threads to finally line up.

Mergers and acquisitions, company partnerships, and more.

• Meta acquired the AI company Manus in a deal reportedly valued at over $2 billion.
• Nielsen and Roku signed a multiyear deal that allows Nielsen to continue using Roku data for its measurement products.
• Omnicom Health merged DDB Health and The Purpose Group into a new full-service health agency called Remedy Edge.
• Listerine is leveraging Twitch streamers for its first campaign of 2026.
• Optimum Nutrition tapped F1 champion Lando Norris and rugby players Dan Sheehan and Marcus Smith for a campaign poking fun at traditional sports endorsements.