How AI Can Enhance Value for Embedded Brands in Sports Streaming
Beyond supporting safety and alignment for streams monetized through integrated branding, AI creates a number of new possibilities for enhancing brand value, like a logo imposed on a sponsored athlete’s shoe, according to GlobalLogic’s Scott Davis, who digs into the emerging opportunities and strategic use cases as well as progressive innovations in ad integrations leveraging AI in specific sports in this discussion with Chris Pfaff Tech Media’s Chris Pfaff at Streaming Media 2025.
AI’s Current Role in Branded Sports Streaming
Pfaff kicks off the conversation with an open-ended question: “Scott, talk about where AI is and what you're doing on this branded side of streaming.”
Davis makes his initial case for AI’s advantages for brands sponsoring live streams in terms of targeting: "AI really helps us actually narrow down who we're targeting for the brand point of view," Davis says. "Who do we want to address to make the brand more successful?" The question of how to "deliver the brand to the right audience," he contends, comes down to "understanding who's watching what, so the brand gets its information back in the right way, so you're delivering the right information at the right time with the right message. So much concern comes out nowadays from people that when we deliver a message, it's the right message at the right time. Everybody's concerned that they never run into the point in time when they have the Jack-in-the-Box commercial over the top of war scenes."
The challenge that AI helps address, he explains, involves making "sure that we understand what's on the scene versus what's being delivered in terms of the message, to make sure that doesn't happen."
These targeting, content matching, and brand safety concerns also involve "knowing who we're delivering it to in terms of geographies, et cetera, understanding all parts of the delivery system to make sure that the data matches the message, matches the moment so that when a goal is scored, the right brand is in the background for their advertising. So it's like, 'Hey, I'm attributed to the success of that club because I'm the sponsor of that club. Make sure my ad is in the right part of the scene. Make sure that when this player's on the pitch or this player's in the scene, I can see them well. If I happen to be the sponsor of that player, [make sure that] my logo shows up in the shoe in the right place. That sort of thing is going on all the time. Enhancing that, maybe not in the live side, but in the highlight side, is a little bit easier nowadays. That sort of thing comes up all the time in our conversations."
"The vision mixes, the highlights [are] the kinds of things that people have been able to do in the cloud for a while now," Pfaff comments. "But I think from that sponsorship side, that really leverages the intentionality of AI."
"Absolutely," Davis concurs. "Knowing who wants to be seen at that moment and tying that back in with all the different vectors of information [are things] that AI can do much faster than a human editor can ever do."
Brands on Ice
Pfaff turns the discussion to hockey and the ways he believes the NHL has led the way in brand integration, proving much more progressive and innovative than other leagues like the NFL or the various futbol federations with bringing sponsors into the televised and streamed action, “whether it's avatars beforehand, following the puck, all these kinds of things. And I think that that was always there to some extent with ice hockey, even going back to the seventies.”
"It took a long time for people to really realize how far ahead the NHL was with their changing of the ads on the boards," Davis responds. "Some of my friends in Canada were watching. It's like, 'Wait a minute. Why are you seeing different ads?' I would send a screen capture of what I was watching, and they'd go, 'Wait a minute. Your ads are different.' I've got a nephew in Germany who'd be watching it and he would also get different ads. They're not just changing the ads home and away; their world feed would be different. So they're very intentional about how to do it."
Pfaff finds the NHL's approach particularly interesting on the streaming side. "Eleven years ago we were working with the NHL on capturing spatialized audio from different arenas. They were hip to that idea that I pitched to them for their streams. I find that there are so many new ways to capture different elements of what somebody experiences and what you, the sponsor, can jump into."
"They're painting ads on the glass now," Davis notes. "Somebody was asking me recently, 'Oh, don't those ads bother the people in the stadium when they're on there and watching on TV?' I said, 'That's not there. That's being painted on in production. And then I had to realize they're only doing that on the stream side. The NHL has always been ahead of the game in this term. They had electronic dasher boards a long time ago. The Penguins did it. The Capitals did it. Some others did it. Monumental Sports is doing some incredible things right now with avatars for different things right now, which is really cool. It took football in the UK 20 years to catch up to what the NHL is doing with electronic dasher boards. They had to be progressive because they're always kind of catching up on the sponsorship side. They're the fourth of the four big sports, so they've got to be aggressive and they continue to be aggressive with them."
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