What’s next in sports sponsorships, according to marketers

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 US head of sports partnerships and investment at 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.

Start your engines

In the years since Drive to Survive debuted on Netflix, Formula 1 has experienced an unprecedented explosion in popularity in the US. In 2025, a growing number of marketers caught onto the trend, but there are still plenty of opportunities on the track.

“There’s a huge concentration of interest in the teams that are at the front of the grid,” Jay Prasad, CEO of sports sponsorship intelligence platform Relo Metrics, said. (McLaren, for instance, has been hot among sponsors, with two consecutive Constructors’ Championships under its belt.) Even at the back of the grid, he noted, “there are opportunities in some of those teams.”

There’s also a new team set to join the grid this year, Cadillac, as well as a handful of other motorsports for brands to sponsor. Prasad predicted that IndyCar and MotoGP could be next in the US, and other racing leagues like SailGP and Formula E have also been courting American investors, fans, and brands.

Perhaps even more outside the box is Monster Jam, the monster-truck event that Dan LaTorraca, director of marketing for partnership analytics company Zoomph, called “a property with far more brand value and sponsorship upside than many realize.”

The event is especially popular with kids and families, and experienced social growth in 2025, including an 80% boost in impressions and a 99% increase in engagement, according to data from Zoomph, which counts Monster Jam as a customer. In real life, Monster Jam visits more than 50 markets annually, offering “major-league scale” and setting it up as a high-potential sponsorship opportunity in 2026, LaTorraca said.

On your mark

Endurance races like marathons and Hyrox were on the up-and-up in 2025, and marketers expect that trend to continue this year. Laura Correnti, founder of Deep Blue Sports + Entertainment, pointed to Alexis Ohanian’s Athlos, a women’s track and field event, as a “new and differentiated way for brands to participate” in those sports ahead of the 2028 Summer Olympics in LA.

Similarly, swimming typically gets a lot of attention during an Olympic cycle, but tends to fly under the radar outside of those years. Ashley Shaffer, CMO of Stagwell-owned agency Redscout, said a colleague recently put the sport on her radar as a sponsorship opportunity, “mainly due to really sexy, stylish brands coming into” running and cycling in recent years.

“People who do [triathlons] have a lot of money and a lot of expendable income,” she noted, “but swimming kind of feels forgotten.”

Up the flag pole

Flag football is another sport on the rise in the leadup to LA28, when it’s set to make its debut as an Olympic sport. The NFL has placed significant emphasis on flag in recent years, especially the women’s game, and brands like Oakley have been catching on. Joe Zajac, SVP of brand marketing, Excel Sports Management, said that “sponsors have room to grow” their involvement as the sport continues to gain traction.

“Participation has surged, the game is fast-paced, co-gender, noncontact, and easy to play with very little equipment, which makes it accessible for players of all ages and appealing for families,” Zajac said. “By 2027 and 2028, the scale and cultural relevance of flag football could look very different than it does at the start of 2026.”

Across the pond

The Summer Olympics aren’t the only big event coming to the states: This summer, the World Cup will be jointly hosted in Canada, Mexico, and the US, and in the run-up, some major companies have been leveraging sponsorships with FIFA and the US Soccer Federation.

However, some sports agency execs said brand marketers are overlooking other soccer organizations and players. The Women’s Super League, the highest level of pro women’s soccer in the UK, could have “tremendous commercial potential around the world,” Correnti said, citing record viewership for the Women’s Euro final in 2025.

Brand execs might also want to take a closer look at some of the international stars who play in the NWSL, Shaffer said. Superstars like Gotham FC’s Esther González, Angel City FC’s Jun Endō, and the Kansas City Current’s Debinha seem “reserved for their countries,” Shaffer said, but could be powerful for helping US brands reach certain audiences, like people whose first language isn’t English.

Close to home

Next-gen US Women’s National Team stars like Jaedyn Shaw, Catarina Macario, Lily Yohannes, and Alyssa Thompson are emerging stateside as well, and ahead of the 2027 Women’s World Cup, the team “deserves a media spotlight as bright and commercial investment as deep as the talent,” Correnti said.

The same can be said of the NWSL’s new expansion teams. Sara Gotfredson, founder of the sports media and sponsorship agency Trailblazing Sports Group, is working with Boston Legacy FC, which is set to start playing in 2026, and said one of the team’s initiatives could be “one of the most forward-thinking sponsorship models in pro sports.”

The club is partially funding the renovation of White Stadium, where it will play for 5% of the year, according to Gotfredson. The rest of the time, the facility, which is owned by the City of Boston and Boston Public Schools (BPS), will serve BPS students. Boston Legacy is also working with the school system in other capacities, such as partnering with the BPS marching band to have students perform at matches, Gotfredson said, adding that a team partner might also be able to sponsor the band.

“For the right brand, the opportunity to align on that community angle could be gold,” she said.

New league dropped

It’s not just new teams rolling out in women’s sports these days—it’s entirely new leagues and organizations, many of which are being built and operated much differently than traditional sports orgs. Correnti and Will Ober, VP of athlete partnerships at Omnicom’s Platinum Rye Entertainment, both named Unrivaled and Athletes Unlimited as overlooked properties among sponsors.

Unrivaled, the women’s 3-on-3 basketball league founded by WNBA stars Breanna Stewart and Napheesa Collier, already has a substantial group of sponsors headed into its second season, and could look even more attractive given ongoing tension in the W, Ober said.

“The unique competitive advantage with Unrivaled is that the players have tangible skin in growing the game via equity stakes,” he said. “With uncertainty swirling around the WNBA’s collective bargaining agreement, Unrivaled is in position to command attention early in 2026.”

Athletes Unlimited, which operates a number of pro women’s sports leagues including softball, volleyball, and basketball, recently inked a three-year deal with ESPN that should help it provide reach to sponsors, Ober said. Correnti said marketers should pay especially close attention to the Athletes Unlimited Softball League, which played its first season in 2025 with buy-in from Major League Baseball.

“New women’s sports leagues are reimagining how women’s sports operate, build audiences, are marketed and sold commercially, presenting a unique and cost-effective testing ground for advertisers to engage and invest,” Correnti said.