How apps like Snapchat are rewriting the rules of sport

With almost 4.9 billion people – 60% of the global population – owning sophisticated cell phones enabling instant access to the internet and social media apps, the living room TV no longer dominates the way in which viewers engage with that weekend’s big Premier League match or mass audience events like the Olympics.
The enhancement also gave Channel 4’s advertising partners an opportunity to reach sports fans, with commercial branding in and around what users see onscreen.
“Snapchat is in the business of making money, so we have to monetise our content,” he tells C21. “We serve video ads in there and we revenue share with our partners, whether that’s publishers or creators.
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“The power of sports and creators, combined with social media, is a big opportunity to grab. We know that the power of influencer marketing comes from the voice of the creator which people have chosen to trust.
As social media apps transform how audiences consume sports content, C21 examines how Snapchat works with broadcasters, rights holders, brands and creators to monetise this paradigm shift.

“In the sports industry, there’s always the challenge of its historical need for immediate money in the bank, but the longer-term play is to think of it more as building enduring relationships with audiences. Once you make a Snapchat user a fan of golf or whatever, they’re going to be lifelong fans.

“Adam Hill playing with the AR lenses was an amazing moment of linear TV royalty and social media innovation coming together,” Harbinson tells C21. “That gamification element really took off and we had five million users during the games. We see Snapchat more and more not just as a broadcast platform but as a community builder.
With the all-too-familiar media mantra of ‘adapt or die’ ringing in the ears of legacy media execs, now is the time to harness the power of social media and shortform content before millions more viewers continue the inexorable migration away from terrestrial TV and streaming, never to return.
Those combined factors make Snapchat an attractive partner for agencies looking to bring brands, creators and influencers to the table.
During 2022, more than 285 million Snapchatters used its FIFA World Cup AR lenses so they could see themselves in the official shirts of their favourite national football team.
Before we drill into the ways in which Snap leverages and monetises that engagement with Gen Z, let’s first look at some research that helps to contextualise the rapidly shifting area of sports content consumption.

The same survey by Snap indicates that 55% of respondents believe that the way we consume sports has evolved drastically over the past decade. While older die-hard sports fans are fiercely loyal to just one team or favourite athlete, younger social-savvy consumers are less exclusive and more likely to find their way into sports through adjacent cultures, such as fashion, influencers, creators and brands.

Last summer, Channel 4 debuted ‘Snap-first’ programming from the Paralympics on the platform. The partnership aligned with the broadcaster’s Future4 strategy to prioritise digital growth over linear ratings. Content was delivered by Channel 4’s Leeds-based digital-focused 4Studio, while Snapchat and the pubcaster’s commercial team, 4Sales, shared sales rights on the shows.
With such exhaustive coverage of the summer’s major sporting spectacles on Snapchat, it’s no surprise that 65% of Gen Z users say that their interest in sports has grown in the past year.
This article is based in part on interviews and sessions from Content London 2024.

Snap’s Summer of Sports campaign also saw broadcasters such as NBCUniversal (NBCU) and Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) make highlights from their Olympics and Paralympics coverage available through the platform. Arcadia, Snapchat’s AR Studio, partnered with NBCU to offer AR experiences to Snapchatters. The tie-in also offered real-time stats and introduced users to Team USA athletes and their Bitmojis (personalised Snapchat emojis).
Macaulay says that Snapchat offers both short- and long-term return on investment for producers, broadcasters, brands and creators.
There are two different types. The first, facial lenses, have technology that allows transformation of the user’s face. They can enable Snapchatters to engage with brands by ‘trying on’ make-up, jewellery and clothes. The second, world lenses, appear on the external camera and enable users to interact with 3D objects superimposed on the environment around them. They also allow product features to be displayed through the camera.
Luke Whalley
Senior director of international digital ad sales
WBD Sports Europe
Joe Harbinson
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If you’re a sports industry executive reading this and becoming equal parts excited and terrified, great. This is the correct response.

“The sports industry knows it cannot fight against this audience trend, so in 2025 it will start to adapt to it – or it will lose ground to other forms of entertainment which do.”

“Sports dominate the big screen, but our phones dominate our attention. The trend we will see in 2025 is for sports to abandon the notion of ‘first screen’ and ‘second screen’ and put more emphasis into winning the battle for both screens at the same time.
“The Snapchat sports experience is very different to other platforms,” says Snap’s Macaulay. “There’s a much more fluid fandom around athletes, personalities, style and fashion that comes to life on the platform.

The report says: “Nothing is more sought-after by broadcasters than sports rights, but televisions are no longer anyone’s primary viewing platform. Smartphones have that crown.
Joe Harbinson
Distribution and partnerships senior lead
Channel 4
During 2024, Snap ramped up partnerships with broadcasters and sports organisations to optimise a year packed full of major events, including the Summer Olympics and Paralympics in Paris, as well as the UEFA European Football Championship, hosted by Germany.
“That [strategy] means putting content where viewers want to see it and tailoring it to the audiences on those platforms. Our Paralympics coverage was a great example of how we did this.
Rak Patel this month starts his new role as Channel 4’s chief commercial officer. Heading the sales division, one of his key challenges is to expand into new areas of digital growth. Harbinson believes leveraging the power of social media apps like Snapchat, combined with branded content initiatives, will help the pubcaster diversify its revenue streams.
“There are brands now acting as commissioners and going out there to engage with production companies. Bringing brilliant UK creative talent to brands is a very authentic way to bring content to social channels and online platforms.”

Lewis Wiltshire

“Our partnership with Snapchat complements the storytelling on our own platforms, helping to connect millions of new fans with inspiring athletes, unmissable sporting moments and exclusive behind-the-scenes content that we know audiences new and old love.”
Technology is revolutionising sports, but we’re not talking about soccer’s highly divisive Video Assisted Refereeing, or the Hawk-Eye computer vision system commonly used in tennis and cricket. Instead, the smart phone is transforming the way in which audiences consume sports content.
Kahlen Macaulay
As part of Channel 4’s 2024 Paralympics coverage, the broadcaster’s Snapchat profile used the feature to let users try out multiple events through the AR lenses, with venues and sporting equipment overlaid on to the real world. Adam Hills, host of C4 chatshow The Last Leg, joined in the fun by trying his hand at disciplines such as archery and athletics.
Luke Whalley
The IMG report indicates they face a battle to command viewer focus, as audiences become more preoccupied with consuming shortform sports content on social media platforms such as Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram.
Founded in 2015, London-based The Goat Agency claims to be the world’s leading influencer marketing agency, delivering social-first marketing strategies and data-driven influencer campaigns for clients including UEFA, Formula E and Major League Baseball.
UK commercial pubcaster Channel 4 has been a close collaborator with Snap since 2018, when it was launched shows on Discover, Snapchat’s curated content platform. Shortform clips of Channel 4’s most popular programmes such as First Dates, Married at First Sight UK and Hollyoaks were made available via the platform.

“We have a dedicated social sales team, which is out there landing TV inventory deals, and that has now been folded under our streaming division, so we’re now selling linear, streaming and social ads as one package,” Harbinson says. “It’s become a full service.

“We have a really holistic way of working with all social platforms, Snapchat included,” says Joe Harbinson, distribution and partnerships senior lead at Channel 4. “Our Fast Forward strategy is supercharging our digital transformation on the way to becoming a digital-first streamer. By 2030, it’s our goal for half of our revenues to be from digital and we’re well on target for that.
“With Snap specifically, we wanted to make sure we did something quite different, which led to bringing our viewers and Snapchatters into the Paralympics with a very Channel 4 project using AR lenses.”

According to Snapchat’s Macaulay, a certain degree of complacency has contributed to the sports industry being somewhat slow to catch on to the trend for shortform.
Ellie Hooper
Beyond the Olympics, a weekly sports show was launched on Snapchat, localised for France and the UK, which showcases the best sporting content from the WBD portfolio including the biggest tennis, football and combat sports competitions.
It predicted that the household TV set will lose its crown to smartphones as the first screen through which viewers will consume sports content in 2025. The report suggests viewers’ phones will instead dominate their attention – a forecast that will come as bad news to the broadcast and streaming giants that are spending billions on securing live sports rights.
Lewis Wiltshire
Senior VP and managing director, digital
IMG
“Next to that we have an effective sponsorship partnership and branded content team under Four Studio, which is working closely with creatives and agencies.

Kahlen Macaulay
Senior manager of international sports partnerships
Snap Inc

“Brands understand the lifetime value of fans and consumers. That philosophy creates revenue opportunities far into the future.”
Tapping into this paradigm shift can be daunting for broadcasters and producers from the legacy TV industry, but the rewards are potentially lucrative. By working with social media platforms, brands and creators, TV executives can tap directly into one of the most evasive demographics in the entertainment business.
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Our partnership with Snapchat complements the storytelling on our own platforms, helping to connect millions of new fans with inspiring athletes, unmissable sporting moments and exclusive behind-the-scenes content.
Now, the proliferation of social media apps and video-sharing platforms means that they have become less of a temporary distraction and more of a first-choice portal for viewers who want to engage with their favourite athletes and teams.

“Shortform content is now a primary way that many fans engage with sports, and rights holders must tap into its media and sponsorship value,” says Daniel Kirschner, co-founder and CEO of LA-headquartered Greenfly, a provider of shortform media software platforms for over 500 sports teams and 40 leagues around the world.
“If you’re a sports industry executive reading this and becoming equal parts excited and terrified, great. This is the correct response,” says Lewis Wiltshire, senior VP and managing director, digital, at IMG.
“There’s direct monetisation through our revenue share programmes, then there’s the brand pieces where you can bring commercial partners into content and monetise that.
“So, there’s a standard format that exists which is obviously more lucrative in different markets, depending on where our footprint is. For example, we’re absolutely massive in France, while in the UK 22 million people use the app. That’s a huge opportunity.
“In terms of content, the Snapchat app opens directly into a camera – encouraging users to create content. So it’s set up for creatives.”
“We work with organisations such as the International Olympic Committee, the Union of European Football Associations [UEFA] and the International Paralympic Committee to help them reach our young audience.
“There’s this myth that younger audiences are not interested in sports,” says Kahlen Macaulay, senior manager of international sports partnerships at US-based Snap Inc, parent company of social media app Snapchat. “That belief has now been debunked. Younger viewers are just consuming sports content in a different way, on their own terms as opposed to sitting down and watching a full two- or three-hour live sports broadcast. They’re instead consuming sports via shortform content.

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With Snap specifically, we wanted to make sure we did something quite different, which led to bringing our viewers and Snapchatters into the Paralympics with a very Channel 4 project using AR lenses.

“Traditionally, sport hasn’t had to evolve and be progressive because they already sell out the seating and tickets as well as the sponsorship and broadcast rights, so why should they care?” he says. “Historically, sport has extracted value in the immediacy without forming relationships. But there are many more valuable and long-term revenue opportunities.”
“He got around 76 million views on social media while combined content from the actual PGA tour only got a million,” says Hooper. “That’s the power of influencers.”
By way of example, Hooper points to Bryson DeChambeau, who has been labelled “the MrBeast of golf,” due to his popularity on social media. The two-time Majors winner has almost 1.7 million subscribers on YouTube and went viral recently while attempting to make a hole-in-one by whacking a ball over the roof of his house into the back yard.
“There’s a paradigm shift in viewing habits right now and the way that Snap is leaning into that is unique.”
Ellie Hooper
Head of client
Goat
Luke Whalley, senior director of international digital ad sales at WBD Sports Europe, says: “Our all-platform approach to distributing world-class coverage of the biggest events in the sporting calendar and telling the stories of the athletes competing is how we engage the widest possible international audience.