Robbie Thain
Founder, CEO
AI-generated illustrative image. Not an official campaign image.
A 2026 Infobip study reveals that 57 percent of brands cannot prove sports fan engagement return on investment. Learn how strict tracking bridges this gap.
On September 8, 2026, Infobip released a global study of 500 marketing and digital leaders across 11 markets. The study surveyed professionals in retail, financial services, and telecommunications. Respondents also included leaders in travel and the food and beverage sectors. The research revealed that brands allocate an average of 13 percent of their annual marketing budgets to sports-related activations.
Despite this major financial commitment, 57 percent of respondents stated that proving the Return on Investment of sports-marketing investments is difficult. This gap creates immediate pressure because nearly 73 percent of these leaders expect their sports-engagement investment to increase during the following 12 months.
The core facts highlight a shift toward automated tracking systems to solve the measurement gap. Infobip recently launched PitchMate, an AI-powered fan-engagement solution for global football audiences. The platform operates on the company's AgentOS infrastructure to turn real-time fan interactions into trackable touchpoints. The announcement also cited a Claro Sports implementation in Latin America that relies on similar automated solutions.
Claro Sports uses an AI assistant built with the Infobip platform and Google's rich communication services technology. This assistant provides Mexican sports fans with live scores, athlete alerts, and interactive experiences through messaging channels. These systems attempt to convert fan interactions into identifiable touchpoints, helping brands link marketing spending directly with commercial results.
However, the study exposes a severe AI orchestration gap across the broader market. While 87 percent of respondents consider AI critical to the future of sports fan engagement, only 22 percent have the orchestration capabilities in place to support it. Furthermore, the research confirmed that a large segment of the industry struggles with basic execution during live events. Exactly 47 percent of surveyed organizations reported that they struggle to deliver real-time engagement during live sports moments.
At Makai, we view this data as a strict warning for consumer packaged goods and beverage brands that rely on physical marketing to drive trial. When brands sponsor a festival or activate a stadium lounge, they frequently default to reporting simple foot traffic. The central issue is not whether fans interact with a brand during an event. The true challenge is proving that the interaction creates a record capable of driving a defined business objective.
A stadium sampling experience or a high-traffic product demonstration can generate massive attention without producing usable evidence of lead quality, conversion, or revenue. A sports-activation measurement framework must distinguish among exposure, engagement, lead generation, and final commercial outcomes. Exposure metrics include simple reach or visibility, while engagement covers active participation or conversation. Traditional metrics such as reach are not useless, but they answer completely different questions from conversion metrics.
Brands must design activations for tracking from the outset to avoid wasting their budgets. Every product sample and retail demonstration must connect to a measurable commercial outcome. This requires absolute operational command over how sports sponsors capture live events data on the floor. We create experiential marketing programs built to connect emotion with action.
Our process blends creativity, strategy, and data to ensure every brand interaction drives measurable results. We craft experiences that engage all five senses, helping people not just see brands, but feel them, turning moments into meaningful business outcomes. This operational rigor separates immediate consumer engagement from delayed commercial impact. We build festival zones, premieres, and pop-ups that turn viewers into fans and fans into advocates.
We design moments people want to share, using music tie-ins, screenings, and live stunts to bring stories to life while our crews manage execution and track reach and response metrics. We provide clear reporting on reach, trials, leads, and sales to guide next steps in campaign optimization. Our measurement approach tracks awareness, engagement, and conversion, turning brand moments into actionable data that demonstrates business impact.
This strict measurement mandate directly forces field marketing teams to change how they execute trade shows, retail demonstrations, and massive consumer sponsorships. Managing thousands of attendees requires relentless logistical oversight to ensure data capture does not slow down the physical experience. We turned Kona Brewing's sponsorship at Santa Monica Pier 360 into a beach-themed branded environment built around product, giveaways, leis, and a place for attendees to spend time with the brand. Our team handled the on-site execution from setup through teardown at a festival with an estimated 50,000 attendees.
Executing at that scale demands a clear measurement architecture defined well before the event begins. Industry guidance commonly recommends tracking onsite activation footfall and dwell time. Field teams should also capture direct interactions, product trials, and competition entries. Additionally, managers must track staff conversations and QR-code scans.
Capturing this data on the floor requires trained ambassadors who naturally integrate tracking parameters into the interaction. Field managers must assign unique identifiers to every live activation element to isolate event traffic from standard brand traffic. By establishing a field measurement framework beyond footfall, teams can accurately validate their physical footprint.
Conversational channels can help close the measurement gap when they connect to consented data, campaign identifiers, and downstream conversion systems. However, field teams must capture appropriate consent while navigating complex event logistics. Brands must define data ownership and ensure that event identifiers integrate seamlessly with existing customer relationship management systems. Failing to secure the right information on the floor limits what teams can safely report about consumer behavior.
Once field teams secure the onsite data, they must connect those metrics to post-event outcomes. These outcomes include meeting requests, proposals, and renewals. They also involve upsells and closed contracts. One practical model is to calculate sponsorship acquisition cost by dividing total activation investment by the number of new customers directly attributed to the sponsorship.
This total activation investment includes rights fees, activation costs, hospitality, and staffing. That acquisition cost can then be compared with customer lifetime value, provided the attribution rules and value assumptions are clearly defined. Field operations must support this calculation by distinguishing a genuine retail shopper from a casual observer. Connecting event platforms with commerce systems ensures that automated interactions remain accurate and highly trackable.
The shift from one-way sponsorship exposure toward interactive, data-linked fan journeys requires absolute synchronization between digital tools and physical event staff.
Addressing this operational tension requires viewing every consumer interaction as the start of a structured journey. Ben Lewis, Infobip's VP of Marketing and Growth, characterized the industry tracking failure as an "infrastructure problem" rather than a "measurement problem." He proposed using artificial intelligence and conversational channels, such as rich communication services, to make fan interactions trackable. While this represents a specific vendor perspective, it correctly identifies the necessity of connecting physical marketing spend with strict digital reporting systems.
If your budget for live engagement increases next year, do you have the strict physical tracking protocols in place to prove that your stadium footprint actually generated qualified sales pipeline?
Increasing sports-engagement budgets without upgrading field tracking infrastructure forces brands to trade measurable pipeline for unverified stadium exposure. When consumer packaged goods marketers suffer from inefficient post event follow up and CRM routing, Makai connects physical interactions to trackable sales data. Under our Engagement Marketing capability, we turn audiences into participants with live and digital experiences that invite people to try, share, and act.
30 Years Experiential & Retail Activation Partner for CPG & Beverage Brands | Multi-Market Demos, Roadshows & Costco/Club Programs That Actually Sell
