Sport does not have a content problem, it has a sameness problem

Sport is not short of content. It is short of distinctiveness.

There is more access, more footage and more output than ever, yet a huge amount of sports storytelling still feels interchangeable. The same matchday beats, the same hype films, the same post-game emotion.

And that is the real challenge now. Brands must not aim to simply produce more content around live sport, or even just more behind the scenes, they must focus on telling better stories by getting closer to the layers that make sport matter in the first place - the backstory, the fandom, the rituals, the humour, the identity and the tension around the moment, not just the moment itself.

That shift matters even more with a World Cup on the horizon. The brands that stand out will not be the ones trying to dominate the conversation with another polished tournament ad. They’ll be the ones that understand football as culture first, media channel second, and build ideas that feel native to how fans actually experience it.

The best recent examples show what this looks like in practice.

 - Drive to Survive remains one of the clearest examples of sport storytelling working because it reframed the category for a broader audience. Nielsen found the series drove incremental F1 viewing in the US and helped convert new audiences into live fans, proving that narrative, personality and context can be just as powerful as the sport itself in driving attention.

 - UK Sport’s Athlete Creator Club is another smart signal. Its premise is simple: fans want more than medals, they want stories, personality and authenticity. That is why UK Sport built a programme to support athletes with content strategy, capture and distribution. In other words, storytelling is no longer a layer added on top of sport. It is becoming part of the infrastructure around athlete relevance.

 - Under Armour’s “Let Them Talk” partnership with RDCWorld points to the same shift from a brand angle. What makes it interesting is not just the collaboration itself, but the recognition that creator native storytelling can land with more credibility and cultural fluency than a traditional sports brand spot. Under Armour did not just borrow reach; it borrowed a format, a tone and a way of speaking to fans that already had traction.

 - And finally, Clash of Clans’ work with Erling Haaland shows how far this can go when a brand leans fully into participation. “Haaland Payback Time”, which won the 2025 Cannes Lions Grand Prix in Entertainment Lions for Sport, worked because it turned fan behaviour into the idea. Haaland was made the game’s first playable character, while fans and haters were invited to attack the village he had supposedly spent years building. It understood celebrity, sport, gaming and fandom as one connected ecosystem rather than separate channels.

For brands, the lesson is not tighter control, it’s smarter curation. That’s the bigger lesson for brands heading into major sporting moments, including the next World Cup.

The role of the brand is less about owning every word and more about creating the conditions for a story to travel: choosing the right angle, the right talent, the right creators, the right format and, crucially, leaving enough room for the culture around the sport to shape it.

Because the truth is, brands do not fully control the story anymore. Athletes, creators and fans are often closer to the audience, more culturally fluent and more naturally entertaining than the campaigns built around them.

The brands that win will work with the culture, not against it. They will move beyond generic tournament storytelling and look for the narratives that sit underneath: the pressure, the obsession, the rivalries, the communities, the superstitions, the side conversations and the personalities. They will treat creators and athletes as creative partners, not just distribution. They will make work that feels like it comes from inside the culture, not dropped onto it.

That is where distinctiveness comes from. In a category drowning in content, the brands that win will not be the ones saying the most. They will be the ones telling the story in a way only they could, and often by giving up just enough control to let sport’s culture do what it does best.

Mark Keisner is managing director of Multiple