As voters abandon scheduled TV and split across platforms, live sports remains one of the few places campaigns can still buy real-time attention at scale.
Political advertising has a reach problem. Voters do not sit still in front of one screen at one time the way they did even ten years ago. Media is splintered across apps, feeds, and on-demand libraries. Campaigns can still target with precision, but they increasingly struggle to deliver one operational requirement that elections depend on: synchronized repetition.
Live sports is the exception. It is one of the last remaining environments where millions of people watch in real time, often together, with their attention locked on the moment. For campaigns trying to build name recognition, define a ballot choice, or drive late persuasion and turnout, that is not just a media opportunity. It is a strategic safe haven.
Most campaign media plans are now built from a patchwork: digital video, connected TV, social, search, linear, and email or SMS. That mix is necessary, but it creates a discipline problem. You can buy reach, but not always attention. You can buy impressions, but not always timing.
This is where live sports changes the math. Nielsen data has shown seasonal live sports can materially shift viewing back toward ad-supported television, with football helping boost broadcast share during key periods. That shift matters politically because campaign persuasion is time-sensitive.
Late-deciding voters and low-propensity voters do not respond to a slow drip. They respond to a message that shows up repeatedly in a short window, when the stakes feel immediate. In plain terms, live sports is a rare place campaigns can still execute a “show up everywhere at once” strategy without relying entirely on a fragmented web of buys.
Campaigns routinely evaluate ads using impressions and household reach. Sports breaks that model because the audience is often not alone. Comcast Advertising reports that 57% of ads shown during live sports are seen by groups of two or more. Separate Comcast analysis also notes that 67% of sports viewing involves two or more people at a time.
For campaigns, the implication is straightforward: a sports buy can deliver more real human exposure per delivered ad than standard programming. That matters in the final weeks of a race, when a campaign is trying to (1) confirm its supporters, (2) demoralize the opponent’s marginal voters, and (3) push a final rationale to persuadables.
It also matters for down-ballot campaigns operating under budget constraints. Co-viewing can stretch the value of a premium inventory purchase, especially when the campaign’s goal is simple name recognition and issue association rather than niche persuasion.
The second advantage is not just reach. It is attention, and live sports is now carrying that attention into streaming. Comcast Advertising’s analysis finds viewers are 10% more likely to pay attention for the full duration of an ad during a game, which is a meaningful edge in an environment built around skipping and multitasking. But the bigger shift is that this “watched in full” advantage is increasingly available on Connected TV, not only on legacy broadcast and cable.
Premion’s October 2025 study with Advertiser Perceptions shows live sports is already embedded in modern CTV buying: 78% of CTV advertisers surveyed are running campaigns in live sports on streaming platforms, and 79% of current sports buyers say they are likely to increase spend in the next 12 months. Among current live sports advertisers, 77% say live sports is more valuable than other premium CTV content. That is the market telling you, in plain language, that sports is no longer a niche add on. It is becoming the premium layer inside the streaming plan.
For campaigns, “watched in full” is not a feel good branding metric. It is operational throughput. A political ad has to land identity, contrast, and a reason to act in one tight sequence. If voters only catch the first five seconds, the persuasion ladder collapses. Live sports improves the odds the whole narrative lands, and now CTV makes it easier to pair that attention with the targeting and measurement that streaming buyers want.
The constraint is access. Even Premion notes the friction points are still cost, buying complexity, and limited programmatic access in some pockets of sports inventory. Translation for campaign ops: treat live sports on CTV as a high intent placement that you plan for early, then use programmatic pathways where available to scale without getting trapped in a last minute pricing spiral.
Live sports now operate as one of the few media environments that voters engage with willingly, even as trust in political institutions and political media continues to erode. As live games migrate to Connected TV, that trust carries with them. Research shows advertisers already view live sports on CTV as more valuable than other premium content, not just because of scale, but because audiences arrive attentive, emotionally invested, and far less defensive. That creates a credibility adjacency effect that campaigns cannot manufacture elsewhere.
The game broadcast is not the campaign, and the commentary team is not the candidate. But the environment feels legitimate, communal, and culturally neutral. Ads placed inside that setting register less as political intrusion and more as part of the shared backdrop of civic life.
For voters who are burned out on politics and primed to tune out persuasion attempts, this distinction matters. Live sports ads are more likely to be watched in full and processed without immediate resistance, which is operationally critical for campaign messaging that depends on narrative completion rather than quick brand flashes.
Campaigns do not need athlete endorsements to benefit from this dynamic. They benefit simply from being present in a space where viewers are not actively bracing against persuasion, and where attention is already locked in. As access to live sports on CTV expands and buying becomes easier for non-national advertisers, this broadcast booth effect is becoming one of the most reliable trust proxies available in modern media planning.
Live sports is no longer anchored to linear television. It is moving rapidly into streaming and connected TV, and that migration is reshaping how campaigns have to plan. On the upside, sports on CTV opens access to younger viewers and habitual cord cutters who are otherwise difficult to reach at scale. Industry data already shows live sports becoming a core pillar of CTV strategy, with a strong majority of advertisers active in sports and many planning to increase spend. The value is not just audience size, but the combination of real time viewing, higher ad completion, and a less defensive mindset that campaigns struggle to find elsewhere.
The downside is fragmentation. Streaming rights are scattered across platforms with uneven political ad policies, creating coverage gaps at precisely the moments campaigns want maximum saturation. Buying live sports inventory on CTV also introduces complexity across platforms, apps, and programmatic marketplaces, with compliance and disclosure risks layered on top.
The strategic lesson for 2026 is that campaigns must treat sports like field operations: plan early, build redundancy, and lock in inventory with compliance baked in from the start. Late stage scrambles leave campaigns boxed out, priced up, or pushed into inefficient substitutes. Live sports should not be treated as a luxury add on. It should function as the backbone of modern persuasion and turnout when a campaign needs reach, frequency, and sustained attention at the same time.
Live sports is valuable because it solves the central problem of modern political communication: the collapse of synchronized mass reach. When voters time-shift everything else, the live game remains appointment viewing. And when attention is scarce, the places that still guarantee it become politically decisive.
For 2026 and beyond, the safe haven status of live sports will only grow as more of the electorate lives inside streaming ecosystems and campaigns fight to maintain message discipline across fragmented channels. Sports will not replace digital, field, or influencer strategy. But it will remain one of the few environments where campaigns can still buy the “guaranteed gaze” that makes every other channel work harder.