Affinity Solutions Launches Live Sports Outcomes Offering With EDO On Board

Affinity Solutions and EDO are getting deeper into the live sports space.

Today, consumer purchase insights company Affinity Solutions announced the launch of Fansactions™, a solution that aims to showcase sports outcomes, giving advertisers visibility into the relationship between sports media investment and consumer purchase behavior.

According to the company, Fansactions™ will enable advertisers to directly see and measure return on ad spend (ROAS) for real-world outcomes by combining online and in-store transactions with sports fan media consumption and ad exposure. This solution can be integrated with any media and measurement platform across linear TV and CTV to give advertisers more flexibility and opportunities to get better value from their investments.

TV outcomes company EDO will be the first to leverage Fansactions™ with its syndicated outcomes database so brands can quantify the end-to-end impact of live sports advertising, like brand searches, website engagement, and confirmed purchases.

Through joint research using Fansactions™, Affinity Solutions and EDO measured the impact of live sports advertising exposure on both mid-funnel engagement, such as brand searches and website visits, and lower-funnel outcomes, which include QSR purchases.

Initial results found that blending live sports into TV advertising campaigns can amplify brand performance. Adding live sports to a TV ad mix more than doubled sales lift from 8% to 17%, depending on the sports involved, per the research. According to the companies, the results showed how live sports advertising influences consumer behavior across the funnel, which can help brands identify which campaigns and markets are most likely to drive sales.

A full report with more findings will be released at a later date.

Affinity Solutions believes the Fansactions™ feature fulfills a “critical need” in the market by connecting significant ad dollars to the purchase.

“Every purchase tells a story—and like any good story, you want to know what happens in it,” Damian Garbaccio, chief commercial and marketing officer, Affinity Solutions, told ADWEEK. “Sports are a significant investment by several stakeholders. It’s the media companies—Disney, Telemundo, Netflix, and others and many of the clients of video as well as the brands—who are obviously investing a lot of time and money in sponsoring and advertising, and then the fans who engage and spend their time and effort when time is a hot commodity these days.”

Garbaccio said advertisers might not intuitively know what drives engagement or purchase, and the tool looks to fill that gap.

“It’s also a discovery piece that is that secondary value where they can understand pockets of their audience specifically related to sports that will help them drive engagement,” Garbaccio said.

According to eMarketer, digital viewing of live sports is projected to reach 127.4 million in the United States by 2027, with ad dollars expected to follow, while EDO previously reported that TV advertisers spent an estimated $12.4 billion on live sports last year—a 6% year-over-year increase.

“It’s not just about spending the money and having it go into a hole,” Garbaccio said. “We want to start providing: Are these investments worth it? Is live sports truly going to help drive? That happens to be a big impetus. We want to be telling you what happens. Luckily, we’re able to do that because of the data we have, the frequency that we get it, and the fact that it is an outcome, a new metric, a new currency that we want to add.”

Garbaccio added that teaming up with EDO made sense because of the company’s access to media viewership and ad engagement.

“Until now, advertisers haven’t had that clear line of sight into what those dollars actually deliver in live sports,” Laura Grover, svp, head of client solutions, EDO, said. “Through this joint research, EDO and Affinity Solutions measured how live sports advertising moves the needle not just in mid-funnel metrics like search or site visits, which EDO is capturing, but also those lower funnel outcomes that Affinity is able to capture.”

Saleah Blancaflor is a TV reporter at ADWEEK.