In 2026, ScorePlay will participate in 108 events related to Sports, Media, and Technology. That’s one every three days. Those events represent 80% of our overall marketing spend for the whole year. It is by far our main marketing investment, our biggest acquisition channel, and surely the most fun one to work on.
Why events work for us
Sports is a live business. In this industry, whether you’re a team or club, a federation, a league, a tournament, or a broadcaster, the year is built around physical moments, such as the Olympics Games, NBA playoffs, the Champions League, Tennis Grand Slams / The Masters, the Tour de France, the Super Bowl… and millions of others.
The industry doesn't just attend events, it is events. So if you sell to sports media, the most effective way to reach the people who buy it is to meet them on their ground.
We meet them three different ways.
Conferences we attend
NAB in Vegas, IBC in Amsterdam, Sportel in Monaco, and many more. The right-buyers gather at the same handful of moments every year; the perfect rendez-vous for us to connect with people that matter the most to us. For each of those events, we measure success through the number of meetings booked by our sales team and the influenced pipeline generated.
Hospitality events we host.
Around the year, often anchored around a major sports event, we curate special hospitality events in an attempt to gather many of the industry's major leaders in the same room. We've also started building our own standalone format, Ahead of the Game, which we'll come back to later.
Sales invitations to specific events.
As part of our contract with right-holders, we usually negotiate several tickets for their major events, in order to invite prospects or clients in a more special and intimate setup. On top of this, we have a subsequent budget dedicated to building more of those unique moments. Turns out discussing over a drink at a Champions League game, at a Roland Garros semi-final or at a NBA game tends to deliver better business outcomes than a Zoom call. Who would have thought?
Our how-to-guide to a successful conference
Running a conference well takes weeks of work across our Marketing, Sales, Partnership, and Customer Success teams.
Sales starts six to eight weeks out. They pull the attendees list, identify any relevant key accounts / suitable prospect, and start booking meetings. By the time the conference doors open, each Account Executive has dozens of meetings booked across several days.
Our Customer Success department does the same with clients, because face-to-face time with folks who use our platform everyday is one of the most valuable things we can do.
As part of the conference, we often host drinks and/or dinner in a special location. Maria, who runs events at ScorePlay, puts it like this: "If we are inviting people to something, we need to give them a valid reason to come." The people we want to spend time with get five other invitations the same week, so ours has to be the easy yes. Our goal is to offer a refined experience through unique venues such as Monsieur Bleu or Bonnotte Club in Paris, Cuerno in NYC, or Delilah in Vegas.
But let's be real, none of this works without a strong Sales team, and we're genuinely proud of the one we've built. Sales people at ScorePlay are regularly on planes: industry conferences, sports events, League offices, federation HQs, club training grounds. People who do this well like traveling, thrive in in-person conversations, and can carry a 12-month enterprise sales cycle across a dozen touch points without losing the end goal. It isn't a fit for everyone, but for those who don’t like to get stuck in an office routine, this can be a pretty fun alternative.
From participants to main host: Ahead of the Game
The most ambitious move we made this year was building our own conference from scratch.
In April 2026, we launched Ahead of the Game in London, powered by partners including AWS, and ElevenLabs, and 776, Alexis Ohanian’s venture fund. Over 200 of the most influential people in sports media and AI joined to discuss the future of sports and tech.
The whole day was built around one thesis: AI is rewriting the rules of many industries, and sports is no exception. How can sports organizations leverage new technologies to deliver a better experience for the fans, at a time when expectations about access to content are increasing.
We brought two worlds into the same room: Sports leaders from UEFA, FIBA, Sky, Serie A, and Tottenham, alongside the AI founders reshaping their work: OpenAI, ElevenLabs, Synthesia, AWS, through a mix of workshops, debates and speeches.
London was definitely a success for us, so we plan to reiterate this event in new locations: we’re planning to target New York City and Riyadh in the next six months. A lot more to come!
What we're still figuring out
Attribution is the biggest gap. We track influenced pipeline carefully, but we'd like to be sharper on which event was the meaningful one when a deal finally closes. With multi-touch cycles that stretch up to 12 months, that's a hard problem to solve cleanly, and it's one we're investing in for 2026.
We also need a differentiated playbook per type of event. Some are technical, and people expect to demo our product on the spot. Some are more business-oriented, and it’s all about building connections. Also, our strategy must vary depending on the market and our local brand recognition. We can’t run an event in London the same way we’d do it in Australia.
We’d love to hear from you!
Whether you’d like to give us feedback on a past event, build the next one with us, or you’d just like to chat, feel free to send us a message: marketing@scoreplay.io
And if you’re looking for a new professional opportunity and you like what we do, we’re hiring!
