How Brands Earn Attention Will Decide Who Wins

By Keith Gainsboro, CEO, Elevate Communications

Throughout January, our team at Elevate is taking a closer look at what is going to be a huge year in sports and how technology and the evolution of media consumption are changing the attention economy.

With the global viewership of the Winter Olympics and the FIFA World Cup (which is also giving an economic boost to our beloved city of Boston), as well as the annual obsessions devouring every moment of the Super Bowl, Formula 1, and the Grand Slams, 2026 will concentrate fan attention at a scale we have not seen in years.

But attention alone is no longer the name of the game.

How brands earn relevance during these moments will determine whether they break through or remain completely invisible.

The sports fan has changed permanently

Today’s sports fans no longer just watch games, they actively participate.

They stream across platforms, follow athletes and creators, react in real time, and increasingly engage through betting, prediction, and super fan experiences. 

Second-screen is even an old term. We are now at the point where our phones are the “first screen”. It’s the default portal to literally everything in our lives. We engage with our social feeds, multiple messaging platforms, and betting apps while the live game or event sits in the background. People now consume sports in fragments and moments, not just full games.

Sports betting platforms have accelerated this shift.

Apps like FanDuel and DraftKings have introduced constant participation into the viewing experience. Prop bets, parlays, and in-game wagers have created micro-moments that pull us deep into every play. And sports betting has also fed a new industry filled with analysis, odds, and live responses that all play into covering these sporting events.

The result is a fan experience that is faster, more fragmented, and more interactive than anything sports has seen before.

Media fragmentation has elevated the role of earned media

Don’t get me wrong, linear broadcast is still a dominant presence in the ecosystem, but fans now have more control of their experience and can lean into discovering deeper content through highlights, creators, podcasts, social commentary, athlete channels, and betting-driven analysis. Distribution is decentralized. Attention resets constantly.

In this environment, paid reach alone cannot sustain relevance. Earned media rooted in strong narratives, credible voices, and cultural context has become one of the few forces capable of traveling across platforms and audiences.

Earned media does not just amplify moments. It is constantly providing the foundations on earning attention, an attention that is a constantly moving target.

Sponsorship and partnerships are being rewritten

Sports sponsorship is no longer evaluated by visibility alone.

Brands increasingly expect engagement, earned amplification, creator alignment, and cultural relevance. The most effective partnerships are built around participation and storytelling, not placement.

When sponsorships are integrated with earned media, creators, and organic social, they stop feeling like advertising and start feeling like part of the experience. Modern fans notice that difference.

Why this matters in a World Cup and Olympic year

These global sports events do way more than create a temporary spike in attention during a news cycle, they permanently influence behavior.

The Winter Olympics show how international events still drive local engagement through social platforms, creators, highlights, and earned storytelling. The FIFA World Cup, hosted partly right here in our back yard, will magnify these dynamics locally, driving measurable economic impact, ticket demand, creator activation, merchandise sales, and will drive a long term interest in soccer from the viewers to active participation in the sport.

Brands that carefully plan to manage the narrative and not just media buys, will own the share of mind, wallet and fan attention.

The bottom line

2026 will reward brands that understand how earned media, creators, organic social, and partnerships work together. Those that hold onto outdated ideas about reach and fan engagement risk becoming yesterday’s news. 

At Elevate, we have spent more than 20 years helping brands earn attention, and we are well prepared for where sports communications is headed next.