Without Fame, Sport Can Die a Slow Death And So Could Your Brand
By Pippa Glucklich
Without Fame, Sport Can Die a Slow Death And So Could Your Brand
Seeing ads for the BBC Proms and the Notting Hill Carnival is always a reminder of the end of summer. They also mark the end of the sporting summer so it begs a question: of the multiple major sporting events of summer 2025, which make it onto the mental shortlist? Which genuinely have fame?
The Lionesses’ victory in the Women's Euro 2025? Definitely.
The Fifa Club World Cup? Probably not (unless you’re a Chelsea fan, which I am).
The men’s Test cricket series against India, or the men’s Tour de France? Certainly not.
The Women's Euros and Fifa Club World Cup were full of twists and turns, gripping narratives and human stories of triumph and failure. Long-range screamers and last-minute winners. Essential viewing.
“Slow sport” such as Test cricket (up to 25 days for a five-Test series) and Grand Tour cycling - the three-week tours of France, Italy, and Spain - aren’t sports designed for short attention spans. Strategy plays out on a truly grand scale. Fortunes ebb and flow, day to day, week to week.
And yet… these sports face an existential threat. They’re not built for the TikTok generation. Without a constant supply of new fans, they risk irrelevance. That’s where fame comes in. Fame attracts audiences, rights money, sponsors, talent, and innovation. Without it, sports wither.
And here’s the bridge to brands: the same is true for businesses.
What Happens Without Fame
The 2005 Ashes, on Channel 4, gripped the nation. The audience peaked at over 8.4 million viewers for the series climax. Freddie Flintoff became a national hero overnight. Everyone was talking about it.
Then, in 2006, the rights moved behind a paywall. No doubt Sky did a great job on production quality, but cricket’s fame evaporated. The sport slipped from mainstream conversation to niche interest. By 2015, comparable Tests on Sky were attracting fewer than 500,000 viewers — a 94% drop in audience.
This isn’t limited to cricket - it was a commercially driven decision, so the audience decline was to be expected - but it’s the indirect effects that are most interesting.
It’s about what happens when reach disappears: cultural relevance fades, broader participation declines, kids aren’t inspired to take up a sport, and investment dries up. In short, it was no longer famous.
Cycling now faces the same peril. After more than 40 years on free TV — first with Channel 4, then ITV — it’s moving behind a paywall in 2026. From then on, if you want to watch the Tour de France, Vuelta or Giro, you’ll need to pay £30.99 a month for TNT. And fans are already reacting. Reports suggest a sharp rise in piracy and VPN usage as viewers seek ways to keep watching. When access disappears, audiences disengage.
And here’s the point for marketers: fame is more than awareness. It’s about shared understanding and shared emotional engagement. It’s about giving people something they all know, care about, and talk about. Without it, your brand risks becoming invisible.
Lessons for Brands
In sport, putting content behind a paywall reduces reach, cultural salience, and participation. In marketing, the equivalent risk comes from chasing lots of small sparks instead of big fireworks.
In today’s fragmented world, the temptation is to go narrow and scatter budgets: dozens of TikTok assets, micro-influencers, niche activations. But sparks alone don’t create fame. Something has to touch everyone.
Mass doesn’t always mean expensive. It means memorable. It means building ideas big enough to spread — ideas that glue everything together.
How Challenger Brands Can Build Fame on Lean Budgets
Fame isn’t about having the biggest budget. It’s about being brilliantly focused. Here are five practical steps challenger brands can take:
1. Do Fewer Things, Bigger and Better
Spreading yourself thin rarely works. Concentrate your investment on fewer channels and fewer ideas, executed brilliantly. IPA data shows brands that commit 60–70% of spend to one or two hero assets are significantly more likely to achieve long-term fame.
2. Glue the Funnel
(Electric Glue’s sweet spot)
Fame is built cumulatively. Every touchpoint — TV, social, OOH, search, even the sales environment — should come from the same brand ingredients. Consistency compounds impact.
A System1 & IPA study found that creative consistency delivers +27% more brand effects and +28% more business effects — worth up to £3.47 billion over five years.
3. Target Your Core, Then Build Outwards
Talking to everyone from the start risks blandness. Begin with your most valuable audience — the superfans, the high-intent buyers, employees — and build fame from the inside out.
Think Lego or Red Bull – their brands reflect core values of creativity or passion for sport.
4. Find Clear Media Space
You don’t always need to compete head-to-head. Sometimes you can be famous by choosing a different moment, format, or cultural context from your competitors.
5. Think Partnerships, Not Just Placements
Partnerships bring more than media value — they can unlock access to talent, production, or content ecosystems you couldn’t afford alone.
Take Aldi’s partnership with Channel 4’s Paralympics coverage: a modest budget leveraged brilliantly to create cultural impact.
Don’t scatter sparks
If sport teaches us anything, it’s this: without visibility, you fade. Without cultural salience, you die.
This isn’t about squeezing every last half-point of incremental reach from your budget. It’s about creating something worth talking about.
If you want your brand to be famous, don’t scatter sparks. Light fireworks.
Fame requires distinctive, motivating, and truthful ideas — ideas that people care about and want to share. Focus on fewer, bigger, better ideas. Build fame deliberately, even on lean budgets. Because without fame, someone else will take your place in the conversation.
At Electric Glue, that’s where we start. We help brands find the big idea, and then glue the funnel so that idea travels consistently across every channel.
