As Sports Ad Market Stays Hot, Warner Bros. Discovery Bets Big on ‘The Match’

Alex Weprin
·4 min read
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The weather in Las Vegas on Thursday is scorching, with a high of 102 degrees. It’s the type of weather that would keep most people inside.

But at the Wynn Las Vegas, Warner Bros. Discovery Sports will be live on the golf course for the latest edition of The Match, its celebrity-driven golf franchise. The latest installment features Kansas City Chiefs stars Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce facing off against Golden State Warriors stars Steph Curry and Klay Thompson.

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The made-for-TV event will see them playing golf, yes, but its also about the banter and trash talking between the players. And for WBD, it’s about the brand integrations as well.

“Maybe I’ll get a few Coors Lights to kind of calm me down,” Mahomes said during a virtual press conference for the event. The headcovers for Mahomes’ clubs will also bear the Coors Light logo, with the beer brand serving as a sponsor of The Match, while the players will be shuttled to the course in brand new Jeep Wagoneers.

The TV advertising market remains choppy, and hopes are fading that the second half of the year will bring a stark improvement. But one piece of the TV ad puzzle has remained strong: Live sports. And in the case of The Match, it’s a sport that is wholly controlled by WBD.

That means title sponsors (the official name for the event is Capital One’s The Match), brand integrations from the likes of Apple, and sponsors that include AT&T, Microsoft Bing, DraftKings, ZenWTR and others. The company says the event is sold out of inventory.

And while advertising on live sports from the NFL, NBA, NHL and other major leagues remains a top priority for marketers, The Match presents its own opportunities.

“There’s no church and state,” WBD ad sales executive VP Jon Diament says in an interview. “We encourage sponsors to activate around this, because it’s our IP, we can we can make the decision based on what they can and can’t do. There is no league involved, we are the league.”

In other words, if a major sports league has an official soft drink partner, that could limit the opportunity for other soft drink makers. That isn’t the case here.

The Match is also early to the game in what could become a lucrative new opportunity for TV networks and streaming services: The AI ad.

“We have an AI partner this year, which was all the buzz out at Cannes [Cannes Lions, the annual marketing festival held each June],” Diament says. “So Microsoft Bing will be doing some predictive things with Charles Barkley.”

Microsoft will use the event to tout its new Bing search engine, which is now powered by the same OpenAI tech behind ChatGPT.

“Help me talk trash to myself so I play better” Barkley, the NBA on TNT analyst asks Bing in one version of the ad.

“You should change your name to Charles Bogey,” Bing tells him.

The irreverent ad is meant to connect with the tone of The Match. While it is a golf competition, it’s also about bringing together big personalities. While Mahomes, Kelce, Curry and Thompson tee off, they will be tailed in golf carts by NFL star Von Miller and NBA star Draymond Green providing commentary and behind the scenes looks.

“I just hope to highlight the football guys in in a positive light you know, these are my guys, even though we battle each other on the football field, off the field it’s all love so I want to be a foundation of support for our guys,” Miller tells The Hollywood Reporter. “The bad shots, when we need to talk about certain things you have to talk about it, but I’m I’m gonna ride with Travis Kelce and Patrick Mahomes to the end.”

And of course, there will be trash talking.

“I mean, that’s what this whole format is about,” Curry said in a virtual press conference. “We’ve got all the different perspectives from the commentating booth, all the TNT guys, our conversations, our back and forth. So probably the golf might be secondary to the trash talk and to the actual conversation that’s going on, which I think would be fun for everybody.”

And the 2023 installment will not be the last. Diament says WBD is already thinking about future installments of the series, which could take place around other culture-defining events, like the Super Bowl.

“Our sponsors love it, our fans love it, and we do we do expect to do more of them,” he says.

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