Live sports have always delivered unmatched attention for marketers. But securing exposure in these high-stakes moments meant multimillion-dollar sponsorships or upfront commitments planned months in advance.
That’s quickly changing. As streaming TV and programmatic converge, brands of all sizes can now show up in premium, appointment-based moments without the heavy lift.
At the recent ADWEEK House Racquet Club, Andrew Casale, president and CEO of Index Exchange, sat down with Ryan Joe, editor in chief of ADWEEK, to explore how programmatic is leveling the live sports field.
Expanding premium live sports inventory
Viewers are increasingly streaming live sports, which brings more premium supply to programmatic. Streaming TV publishers like MLB, DirecTV, Spectrum, Fubo, Sling, and Univision are already making live sports inventory available programmatically, with more on the way.
That influx to the programmatic ecosystem creates new opportunities for brands of all types and sizes, noted Andrew. Campaigns that used to take months of planning and major budgets can now be activated quickly, precisely, and flexibly.
“Programmatic, for any marketer or brand, is just fundamentally magical when you marry it with TV. If you compare it to the alternative of buying linear, putting one spot in front of a huge population is very inefficient.”
Andrew Casale, President and CEO
Index Exchange
Thanks to the advanced targeting and powerful attribution programmatic brings to streaming TV, marketers can address every ad, on every device, to every consumer simultaneously.
Leveling the playing field for every brand
One of the most exciting shifts is accessibility. For the first time, smaller brands can show up in premium, appointment-based sports moments—without massive upfront buys.
“Small and medium businesses historically have been blocked out of television or live sports. This is dropping the barriers to entry. It creates a new, compelling opportunity to bring sight, sound, and motion to businesses that were prohibitively incapable of doing it before because the commitments were too high, or the cost of production was too significant.”
Andrew Casale, President and CEO
Index Exchange
Andrew noted another accelerant to this trend: AI. SMB brands haven’t had the resources to create TV ads, but with AI-powered creative, they can quickly spin up tailored video spots.
Local businesses can now reach regional fan bases with authentic, relevant creative—think a neighborhood pizza shop in New York running a promotion for game-day slices during Knicks games.
Brand scale with performance accountability
Live sports have always been an elite branding vehicle. Programmatic brings something else that television never could: outcome-based accountability.
With logged-in viewers and advanced measurement, marketers can now prove what works—down to conversions and sales. Brand impact and performance no longer have to be separate goals.
“You can still deliver that national branding moment with programmatic, and you can do it better than before because you can also measure it with determinism. The difference is you can now also drive outcomes. You can address a message to a device, to a small locality, or augment with data. It lends itself to performance, too. That doesn’t take away from branding—they leverage the same capabilities.”
Andrew Casale, President and CEO
Index Exchange
Overcoming today’s challenges
Despite the promise, some technical hurdles remain to fully realizing programmatic in live sports streaming.
Live streaming creates punishing spikes in ad requests—millions of simultaneous calls during a single break—that programmatic infrastructure wasn’t originally designed to handle. Plus, ad breaks are often unscheduled and unpredictable, like during overtime or when a timeout is called. That technical pressure has led to occasional missed impressions.
We’re working with the IAB Tech Lab and industry partners to develop standards that solve these issues. The Tech Lab’s Live Event Ad Playbook (LEAP) is a set of proposals designed to provide the technical foundation to improve reliability, maximize monetization, and elevate the live streaming experience.
So, when will we see the first national programmatic Super Bowl?
“We have to prove the channel out more. There can’t be ‘moments of zen.’ We have to fill every pod perfectly. There can’t be hiccups. I think we probably have another year, year and a half to just prove it out, and then you have the biggest stage of all, realistically speaking, probably in two years.”
Andrew Casale, President and CEO
Index Exchange
The bottom line for marketers
The programmatic era of live sports is here—and it’s moving fast. For buyers, this is more than just access to premium media. It’s the ability to plan with flexibility, activate with precision, and finally measure outcomes in an environment that was defined once only by exposure.
As Andrew put it, “It’s not just about buying media. It’s proving that it works.”
At Index, we’re building advanced technology to power the future of streaming TV. From seamless live events to targeted ad podding, we handle the technical complexities so you can focus on what’s most important—maximizing performance and connecting with audiences in the moments that matter.
