Axios Event: Sports and fandom are winning audience attention

CANNES, FRANCE – Brands are using technology and live entertainment opportunities to win the attention of a distracted audience, speakers said at an Axios event at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.

Why it matters: Sporting events, other live events, and generative AI are increasingly being used by brands to successfully engage their audience, who now have more diversions than ever.

Axios' Sara Fischer and Kerry Flynn spoke with X CEO Linda Yaccarino, MNTN founder and CEO Mark Douglas, two-time Olympian and rugby player Ilona Maher, and Disney president of global advertising Rita Ferro at the June 16 event.

What they're saying: "You have the conversation back and forth, and that's super important. And that's why fandom lives on the platform, right?" Yaccarino said of X's ability to convene real-time conversation.

• X is positioning itself as a platform for live entertainment with a push into sports content.
• In 2024, there were nearly 4 trillion impressions about sports on X, Yaccarino said. "The fandom and the heart of sports is intertwined and actually inextricably linked on X."

Follow the money: The momentum around women's sports is drawing attention from both investors and brands.

• Women's sports have "grown triple digits just in the last 12 months, and the reason for that is that audiences are coming, [and] not only women," Ferro said.
• The star power behind female athletes like Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese have helped bring women's basketball to the forefront, Maher said.
• "I think that's what rugby needs, and right now I'm doing it," Maher added. "I really want more stars to come forward and people to see, because I think that's what's so special about women athletes, is the personality that they bring, the people that they are, and that's what fans are connecting to."

State of play: In addition to engaging audiences, brands are thinking through valuable ways to help advertisers get their message across different channels.

• X is known for its trends, Yaccarino said, leading the company to create a product for advertisers called Trend Genius. When a trend kicks in on the platform, Trend Genius finds an advertisement that matches the subject matter of that trend and automatically infuses it into the timeline.
• "Your content of your advertisement actually becomes the content because it's so natural, organic and part of the public discourse," Yaccarino said.
• MNTN is working to democratize streaming TV advertising for small and mid-size businesses, Douglas said, with 96% of customers never having advertised on TV before. "What they're focused on is driving revenue for their business — they don't view it as an ad budget, they view it as a revenue budget," he said.

What's next: "I think social media influencers are going to start to play a much bigger role in streaming TV," Douglas said. "And that there's a convergence that is starting to happen between social … and the television ecosystem."