What if an important piece of measuring sports broadcasts was missing?
Imagine two basketball games. Game A has 10 million viewers mostly passively watching, checking phones, ordering food, or chatting. Game B has 6 million viewers on the edge of their seats, emotionally invested, holding their breath during free throws, and screaming at the TV. Which game delivers better results for advertisers?
If you chose Game B, you’ve embraced the future of sports measurement.
Measuring sports is more than just counting eyeballs; it’s about valuing emotions. At Mediaprobe, we reveal how we measure the emotional power of live sports, going beyond traditional metrics to uncover what truly engages fans and benefits broadcasters and brands.
The importance of comprehensive sports measurement, beyond just counting eyeballs, grows every day. Broadcasters and streamers are making massive investments to license sports content, and advertisers continue to prioritize ad and integrated marketing investments in sports media rights, growing to surpass $60B in 2024. This was made abundantly clear during all the recent upfront presentations a few weeks back.
The Problem with “Just Views”: Are You Leaving Value on the Table?
For too long, the media measurement landscape has relied on traditional metrics like ratings and gross impressions to assess the value of content. While these provide a basic picture of ‘who’ and ‘how many’, they tell us little about ‘how’ audiences are engaging or the true emotional impact of the programming. In a world where live sports thrive on their ability to generate intense viewer passion and excitement, this narrow focus on rating alone simply doesn’t cut it. This leads to inaccurate ad and sponsorship valuation, suboptimal content strategies, and inefficient advertising.
The Science of Sports Emotions: How We Measure What Matters
At Mediaprobe, we’ve pioneered a fundamentally different approach to sports measurement. This approach captures what’s actually happening in viewers’ bodies during the emotional rollercoaster of live sports.
Here’s how we do it: our panelists watch sports content at home while wearing Mediaprobe’s proprietary biometric sensors that capture Galvanic Skin Response (GSR/EDA) data, measuring the emotional intensity of the content. This raw signal feeds into our automated processing pipeline. The result? A precise, objective, and comparable measure of emotional intensity, second by second, capable of objectively distinguishing between game-changing, emotionally charged moments, like a crucial goal in a World Cup soccer final, from other impactful but common moments, such as a touchdown in an already decided college football game.
The Power of Context: How Metadata Unlocks Deeper Insights
Measuring emotional response is powerful, but its true value is unlocked when we understand the emotional driving factors. This is where our meticulous metadata enrichment comes into play. As we generate the EIS timeline, we synchronize it with detailed, time-stamped metadata to classify and categorize every broadcast moment from editorial content, sponsorship integrations, and commercials.
This comprehensive tagging process transforms raw emotional data into actionable intelligence. By knowing exactly what was happening on screen when an emotional peak occurred, we can provide unparalleled insights into content effectiveness, advertising impact, and sponsorship ROI. Armed with this level of precise, contextual detail, we can now truly confront and dissect the unique complexities that make measuring different sports a captivating, yet challenging, endeavor.
Beyond Metrics: Unlocking Transformative Value in Sports Media
At Mediaprobe, we don’t just measure; we empower a strategic transformation in sports media, moving beyond traditional metrics to unlock unprecedented value and address industry pain points directly:
- Elevating Content Strategy: Gain definitive, objective insights into what truly emotionally engages audiences, enabling data-driven decisions to optimize programming, production elements, and content acquisition.
- Revolutionising Revenue & Valuation: Justify premium ad inventory and strengthen media rights and sponsorship negotiations with emotion-backed proof, ensuring every asset is valued for its true, demonstrated impact across all platforms.
- Precision in Advertising & Sponsorship: Pinpoint the most emotionally charged moments for optimal ad placement and brand integrations. This granular understanding allows for optimizing advertising effectiveness and demonstrating undeniable ROI for campaigns.
- Cross-Platform Optimization: Establish a consistent, objective standard for comparing and strategically optimizing audience engagement across both linear TV and streaming, for a cohesive cross-platform media planning and investment.
The Future of Sports Measurement: It’s Time to Play a Smarter Game
At Mediaprobe, we believe the future of sports measurement isn’t just about counting eyeballs – it’s about valuing emotions. Our Emotional Impact Score provides the missing link between audience size and impact, transforming how sports content is created, distributed, monetized, and valued.
We’re not just calculating different numbers by measuring emotional engagement. We’re redefining how the sports media ecosystem understands and captures value. For the brands, broadcasters, and properties that embrace this new measurement paradigm, the competitive advantage will be game-changing.
The question isn’t whether engagement-based measurement will become the industry standard; it’s whether you’ll be ahead of the curve or playing catch-up when it does.
