Marketing on the FIFA World Cup stage

Whether you tuned in to the FIFA World Cup this summer for your favourite team or simply to catch some of the excitement, you likely saw more than the action on the pitch. During TSN’s broadcasts, brands were woven into the viewing experience through commercials, sponsorships and in-show features — reaching millions of Canadians. 

For Ian Davis (BCom ’08), senior manager of brand partnerships at TSN, those on-screen moments represented years of work behind the scenes. 

“After the Women’s World Cup in 2023, focus shifted to the first ever Men’s World Cup on home soil, but true planning began two years out,” says Davis of the preliminary discussions on how his team would approach brand partnerships for the event. “This is the largest sporting event in our country’s history. It’s the most expansive World Cup in the history of soccer, and I played a small part in helping to bring it to Canadians. That’s what makes me feel proud about it.” 

Bringing brand partnerships to life

In his role, Davis leads the team that partners with clients to develop and deliver TSN’s sponsorship and custom integration opportunities. 

For the World Cup, TSN developed a go-to-market package outlining multi-platform sponsorship opportunities for brands. This would include commercial placements, sponsor messages and in-show integrations throughout the broadcasts as well as extensions into the Bell Media ecosystem.

Davis’s team then worked with clients to understand their goals, develop a media and integration plan and manage the back-and-forth throughout the sales process. Once a campaign was sold, his team also helped bring it to life, from creating custom commercials and social content to executing the campaign and reporting on its performance. 

“If clients wanted something customized, like an in-game feature, that’s where my team came in a lot more,” Davis says. “We would come up with that concept, what it looks like, get it to the clients for approval and deliver from there.” 

While Davis and his team followed the same general process they use for other sports and events, the World Cup’s scale and complexity required additional resources. Davis brought on another team member and allocated workloads across his team to manage the demands of the tournament alongside TSN’s other major sports properties. 

“Clients in this World Cup spent more money, in some cases, than they ever spent on any campaign,” he says. “Because of that, there was an added pressure to deliver. There was also a higher level of attention during the tournament. It’s one tournament, so with any misstep clients want to know, ‘How can we get more value?’, so we also had to manage that.” 

The work behind the work

Helping bring a World Cup co-hosted in Canada to Canadian audiences was a once-in-a-generation opportunity. But for Davis, major sporting events are part of an ongoing cycle of work at TSN. The network also covers hockey, basketball, football, golf, tennis and motorsports, with major productions and new opportunities happening throughout the year. 

Davis has been a part of it all since 2016, moving through positions such as production manager and senior manager of programs and productions before stepping into his current role in 2022. His experience in media has also included international roles at Red Bee Media in the U.K. and as a freelancer with Foxtel in Australia. 

Whether he’s working on a World Cup, golf’s annual Lincoln Cup event or a weeknight Raptors’ game, Davis says he still relies on skills he developed at DeGroote’s Bachelor of Commerce program, where he specialized in accounting and finance. 

“It really comes down to foundation, because when you’re in the day-to-day, it’s not that you’re necessarily going to remember everything you learned in the textbooks,” he says. “But, for example, one of my first-year professors was extremely strict with reports, and what that did for me was foster a strong attention to detail.” 

His accounting education has also proved useful in a more practical way. During a DeGroote internship at steel producer Dofasco, Davis learned the concept of minimum technical solution (MTS). The framework identifies the bare minimum needed to complete a project before considering additional elements. Davis says he still applies that approach at TSN. 

“I’ve used MTS literally in every production that I budgeted, from when I started as a coordinator, to production manager, to today,” he says. 

Make your own opportunities

Drawing on his own experience, Davis offers pieces of advice for students interested in sports marketing. He recommends developing a broad understanding of sports and making genuine connections rather than networking solely to find a job. Davis also credits volunteering with helping him get his start in production, working as a runner and production assistant on a shoot. 

Above all, Davis encourages students to be proactive and find ways to stand out.  

When he applied for a production manager role, he says he treated the application like an actual production, creating a budget, photographing potential locations, and assembling the materials properly. That approach helped Davis make an impression — a lesson he still carries with him. 

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