Aug. 18, 2007

Overall, advertising to sports fans is largely expected to continue to grow for the next four years.

In North America, eMarketer estimates that sports sponsorship investing will increase to $13.2 billion by 2011, up from $8.9 billion last year. The data was gathered from the IEG Sponsorship Report as a benchmark, eMarketer said.

For its part, the IEG Sponsorship Report estimates that sports sponsorship spending in the U.S. and Canada will represent about 65 percent of the projected $14.9 billion that will be spent on all sponsorships in 2007.

Overall, sports' share of this market hasn't changed by more than a few percentage points since six years ago.

Additionally, IEG predicts that this category will continue to dominate sponsorship spending well into the future.

Traditionally, TV advertising is another key driver of the sports economy. eMarketer estimates that broadcast television, national cable and regional cable advertising revenues on U.S. sports media will total about $10 billion in three to four years from now, up from $8.2 billion in 2007.

According to eMarketer estimates, and although so-called 'old-fashion' advertising channels will continue to make up a major share of sports marketing spending, it is largely expected that the Web will continue grow at a faster rate than any other medium through to 2012.

In four years from now, between 9.9 and 10.2 percent of advertising revenues on sports media will accrue to sports Web sites, up from about 5.1 percent last year.

Source: eMarketer