When was the last time you watched a good old-fashioned game of badminton, a canoe slalom race, or an archery tournament? If you ever did, chances are it was around three years ago at the last Summer Olympics, when sports that most people would usually never imagine finding on ESPN suddenly got thrust into the international spotlight.

For some niche sports, the Olympics and Paralympics provide a welcome boost in sponsorship interest that doesn’t tend to come during non-Olympic years.

“Interest in general in the sport, it’s almost like it stays pretty flat, and then you have the Olympic Games, and it jumps in magnitudes,” Martin Branick, CEO of USA Team Handball, told Marketing Brew. “The closer we’re getting to 2028, the more we see a pickup in interest from corporate partners.”

While the Olympics and Paralympics certainly bring welcome attention to niche sports, their national governing bodies (NGBs)—as well as individual athletes—are still working year-round to make sure they can attract fans and sponsors without relying solely on the prestige of the games.

Training season: For USA Fencing, which has secured Paris qualifications across multiple men’s and women’s disciplines, the attention that comes from an Olympic and Paralympic year “certainly…has been helpful” for getting sponsors, CEO Phil Andrews said.

• In May of last year, the NGB announced its first non-endemic sponsor, Naked Wines, and it has seen a “pretty significant increase” in brand partners outside of the fencing space over the past couple of years, he said. Sponsors for the league include Avis, Mount Sinai, and Hilton, which came on as the organization’s official hotel partner last month and marked the NGB’s sixth new sponsorship deal this year.

Continue reading here.—AM

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Extra, extra, maybe don’t read all about it. If you’re on TikTok or Instagram, you’re probably not looking for headlines.

Less than half of users on TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram regularly visit these platforms for news content, according to Pew Research.

Four in 10 TikTok users say they get their news from TikTok, followed by 37% for Facebook and 30% for Instagram, according to Pew, which surveyed around 10,000 US adults in March.

The lone exception? Elon Musk’s X (fka Twitter), where 50% of users say they regularly get their news from the platform. Nearly two-thirds (65%) of users said that was the reason they use the platform.

TikTok came in second place, with 41% of users reporting turning to the platform for news.

So where are social media users getting their news from, if not from those platforms? About 68% of news consumers on TikTok said they get their news from influencers or celebrities rather than traditional news outlets, the report found, a higher percentage than on other platforms. On Facebook, 85% of users are likely to say they get their news from friends, family, and acquaintances.—RB

Slow and steady is the new name of the game for streamers.

Total SVOD subscriptions in the first quarter of 2024 increased 10.2% year over year, a considerable slowdown compared to 18.8% YoY growth reported in Q1 2023, according to Antenna’s State of Subscriptions: Pricing and Packaging report released this month.

Overall, though, 38% of all SVOD subscriptions were ad-supported as of Q1, a perhaps welcome sign for marketers spending on streaming. What may be less welcome: As growth slows, churn is still an issue, the report found.

To reckon with these new circumstances, streamers are experimenting with pricing variations, ad tiers, new content, and bundling to woo customers. Some are seeing better results than others.

“With their brands now well-established and with strong foundations of scale, SVODs have shifted their focus from pure subscriber acquisition to a more nuanced attention on profitable growth,” according to the report.

Read more here.—JS

Cookies leave crumbs . But first-party data leaves answers. Acoustic wants to help you better understand and connect with your customers through your datasets. They just published a super-handy report that offers top-notch usage strategies for first-party data, how to avoid common pitfalls, and how to navigate privacy and consent issues. Read it.

Executive moves across the industry.

• Dollar General hired Tony Rogers, a former Walmart exec who most recently served as CMO for Signet Jewelers, as SVP and CMO.
• Wavemaker hired Alycia Mason, formerly field VP of McDonald’s, to serve as US CEO.
• Microsoft’s chief brand officer, Kathleen Hall, is leaving the tech giant after 16 years.