Nielsen Sports Evaluates Sponsor-Placed Media

Nielsen Sports Monday released a comparative analysis that lets sports franchises and sponsors evaluate the effectiveness of sponsor-placed media across multiple sports.

The analysis, based on measurements from Nielsen’s “Sponsorship Scorecard” service, compares the top three sponsors in four major sporting events during the past year: the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing’s Daytona 500, tennis’ U.S. Open Men’s Final, the National Football League’s Super Bowl and the NCAA Rose Bowl. Sponsors were ranked by average number of televised impressions per hour among viewers ages 25-54.

Sponsorship Scorecard enables clients to gauge their return on investment by matching impressions across different sports. For example, the No. 1 sponsor at the U.S. Open, JPMorgan Chase & Co., achieved 162 million impressions per hour compared with the Super Bowl’s top sponsor, Motorola Inc., which achieved nearly the same at 157 million impressions.

Lowe’s Cos. Inc. and Citigroup Inc.’s Citibank, the top sponsors in the Daytona 500 and the Rose Bowl respectively, achieved 110 million and 95 million impressions, respectively.

Sports franchises and sponsors can also determine which in-stadium locations provide the greatest number of impressions during events. In the case of the U.S. Open Men’s Final, JPMorgan Chase’s brand appeared on both end court and arena stadium ads. However, the end-court ad location generated more impressions than the arena stadium ad (461 million versus 7 million).