5 Key Takeaways from The Midterm Playbook: Winning with Live Sports
Live sports remain one of the few true appointment-viewing experiences in today’s fragmented media landscape, bringing together large, engaged audiences. In our recent bipartisan webinar, in partnership with Campaigns & Elections, we explored how campaigns can make sports a smarter part of their 2026 media strategy in The Midterm Playbook: Winning with Live Sports.
Watch the recording below!
Here are our top 5 takeaways
1. Live Sports Deliver Attention When It Matters
In an increasingly fragmented media environment, sports provide something increasingly difficult to find: scale, sustained attention, and emotional engagement. They also bring together valuable voter groups, including younger and irregular voters, suburban families, and regional working-class audiences. The opportunity extends beyond traditional sports; for example, F1 viewership is up nearly 25% among voters under age 50, creating an additional way to reach younger audiences.
2. Campaigns Must Think Beyond a Single Sport
Football may dominate the fall, but a winning strategy shouldn’t stop there. WNBA, golf, racing, MMA, soccer, and other sports can provide valuable opportunities to connect with voters in a less cluttered environment. For example, if your campaign is trying to connect with Hispanic voters, our proprietary data shows they are 10 times more likely to watch MMA than the average voter. A great strategy builds a diverse sports mix based on where your voters are actually spending their time, not just the biggest games on the calendar.
3. Sports Can Extend Reach Beyond the Voter File
No voter file reaches 100% of an audience. Live sports can help campaigns reach irregular voters, non-voters, and audiences that may fall outside traditional voter-targeting strategies, while adding valuable behavioral context around where those audiences are actually spending their time.
4. Match your Message to the Moment
Audiences are in a unique mindset when they’re watching sports. They’re there to experience the game, not another news broadcast. Instead of simply repurposing a political spot, think about the emotion of the moment, the audience’s team and league affinity. This less intrusive approach can make a political message feel more relevant and authentic without taking viewers out of the game.
5. A Multi-Sport, Cross-Platform Playbook
Sports fans move across leagues, platforms, and devices, so campaigns should too. Major sporting events provide the scale and attention to drive powerful reach, while a broad mix can help extend incremental reach to voters campaigns may be missing elsewhere.
The strongest approach is to work with a partner that brings together multi-sport access, audience data, transparent measurement, and the flexibility to optimize as things change. As premium inventory becomes more competitive closer to Election Day, planning early can help secure the opportunities that matter most.
Whether you're looking to reach a broad sports audience or align with the leagues, teams, and moments that matter most to your voters, Optimum Media can help your campaign strategize critical live sports play.