With highly skilled athletes, strong TV coverage, and growing audience interest, ad campaigns in women's sports are currently thriving and provide excellent opportunities for ad sales teams to offer efficient connection with local audiences.
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In this episode of the State of Streaming Podcast, Tim Rowe hosts Shelley Stansfield, co-founder of Centriply, a tech-enabled agency that specializes in media buying and ad tech development. Our conversation explores the current landscape of local linear sports advertising and how it can be layered with streaming TV targeting and measurement. So, let’s pull out the playbook and call the next big move: educating digital-native buyers—the MVPs who aren’t just shaping the future, but practically drafting the blueprints for brand success.
First, live sports are the last stronghold of appointment viewing. When ads run during games, audiences see them as they happen—no skipping, no “I’ll catch it later.” The magic is in the moment. There’s a collective energy, a sense of urgency, and a real, live audience waiting to see if that three-pointer, goal, or last-second play will make history—and your brand gets to share that spotlight. Even volleyball—yes, volleyball!—is spiking in viewership and making headlines for surging ratings. If you want fans who are present and engaged, look no further.
But the secret sauce is in the fans themselves. “Emotionally invested” barely scratches the surface. They show up—rain, shine, or extra innings—cheering, analyzing, and living every play as if the outcome depends on it (which, let’s be real, sometimes it does for bragging rights). Loyalty among sports fans isn’t just tradition; it’s a full-on identity—there’s a reason team colors appear in email signatures, and heated debates light up Twitter well past midnight. This is an audience that doesn’t just consume—they champion.
And really, it all comes down to the audience, doesn’t it? When you tap into advanced TV campaigns with us, you get access to both the passion and the precision. We make it easy to buy the right eyeballs on local linear TV—reaching fans where they are, right in their own communities—while also extending that impact through strategically synced streaming campaigns. It’s a power pairing your media mix didn’t know it needed and, frankly, the most reliable way to fill frequency gaps, drive incremental reach, and unify your story across every screen.
Working together, local linear and streaming do more than coexist—they amplify. This cross-screen synergy isn’t just theory; it’s how modern brands turn transient viewers into loyal households and casual watchers into real, measurable results. When you connect with audiences on their turf—whether that’s game night on the couch, streaming recaps, or even their digital second-screen of choice—your campaign gains the flexibility and reach it needs to win, no matter what the scoreboard says at the final buzzer.
Challenges facing hyperlocal/multi-market scale
But let’s not pretend media buying is all fun and games. Scaling hyperlocal or multi-market TV is like trying to run the same play in every stadium across the country—you’ll quickly find out Boston and St. Louis do not watch TV the same way. Add in those ever-shifting carriage agreements and a jungle of rep contracts, plus the fact that everyone’s got a slightly different flavor of “sports recap,” and you’ve got a mess that even the best coaches struggle to call.
Now, multiply that complexity by each market you want to reach, each channel, and each campaign objective, and suddenly even a seasoned ad pro can feel like they’re chasing 'Hail Marys' on every down. TV inventory is as fragmented as ever: stations vary in coverage, market rules, sales reps, and technology stacks. Some blocks of inventory are locked behind old-school deals, while others are up for grabs—if you can even find them in the first place. One network’s “Saturday Sports Spotlight” might be another’s “Weekend Wrap-Up,” so if you like metaphors, think “herding caffeinated cats with a clipboard.”
Data, of course, doesn’t always play nice either. Naming conventions aren’t just inconsistent, they can be bewildering. One station’s primetime slot could be labeled in five different ways across contracts, logs, and invoices. This makes the simple act of filtering offers—something we take for granted in e-commerce or digital—is suddenly as tangled as a toddler’s first attempt at tying their laces. Rearranging spots just to meet a buyer’s spec can turn a straightforward request into a creative writing exercise.
Measuring effectiveness brings its own set of hurdles. With every market, genre, or even unique show, the rules change. And in a landscape where clients demand proof and transparency, calculating ROI for a cross-market campaign starts to look suspiciously like advanced calculus.
That’s exactly why we built TangoRESPONSE—our ad tech platform that can put together packages in minutes, not days. Like a good quarterback, it reads the field, sorts through all the options in real time, and brings order to chaos—standardizing program formats so you always know if you’re booking post-game analysis, historic highlight reels, or the game itself.
Yet even with great tools, the industry’s long legacy matters. To bring sanity to this shifting field, we rely on Nielsen ratings and data signals, pulling historic viewership to forecast impressions and set rates. Campaigns don’t run on hope—they run on guarantees. That means every campaign we launch comes with guaranteed impressions: you lock in outcomes, not just air time. Because for brands, certainty isn’t just nice to have—it’s the only shot worth taking.
Women's sports as a growing opportunity
Now, for the main event: women’s sports. Not a niche anymore—if this is just a trend, then the sun’s a “passing phenomenon.” Ratings are breaking records, and the fans? Younger, more diverse, digital natives—exactly who brands are chasing these days. And the emotional investment on display? It’s tough to find a parallel; these audiences don’t just watch, they champion, cheer, and mobilize. Supporting women’s teams isn’t just good PR—it’s an authentic alignment with the values today’s consumers are looking for: inclusion, progress, and empowerment that shows up both on and off the field.
Dive into the data and the proof is everywhere: Women’s sports fans don’t just passively tune in. They’re vocal, active, and engaged—advocates who are proud to align with the brands that support their leagues and players. That kind of authentic passion quickly transforms into brand loyalty, turning a casual sponsor into a household name. When you invest in women’s sports, your message doesn’t stop at halftime. It echoes through online communities, group chats, family rooms, and beyond, long after the final whistle blows. These fans are network multipliers—what they love, they share, and the ripple effect is measurable.
So for brands, investing here it isn’t just smart business; it’s a bold brand statement. You’re not just buying media—you’re joining a movement, stepping up as a recognized leader in equity and inclusion. Getting in now means you capture not only audience share but also the reputation boost that comes from being ahead of the curve.
But don’t stop at CTV or just linear TV—why pick sides when you can be everywhere your audience is? A high-impact campaign uses both, leveraging every screen and channel for compounding results. It’s a synergy play: brands that show up smartly across platforms are the ones that stand out in the frenzy of today’s fragmented marketplace.
And here’s the clincher: Women’s sports offer culture-defining energy—Super Bowl-level passion, but without the Super Bowl-level price tag. As these audiences continue to grow, evolve, and inspire, the opportunity is only getting bigger, and the brands who move first will reap the biggest rewards. For us, it’s never either/or. It’s about putting together the dream team of platforms to maximize your reach, rocket your ROI, and ensure your message is the one fans remember—game after game, season after season.