A marketer’s guide to sports at Cannes Lions

Sports are coming to France, and no, we don’t just mean the Olympics.

A month before the Paris Games kick off, marketers are convening further south for Cannes Lions, where there’s sure to be plenty of sports talk.

“It’s the only appointment viewing left in the world, and the audience that loves sport is global, diverse, influential, and it is a door opener to a lot of other conversations,” said Beth Sidhu, chief brand and communications officer at Stagwell, which is putting on its Sport Beach at Cannes for the second year in a row. “Rather than put up a tent and serve rosé and make it about us, we decided to do what we would suggest a client does, which is make it about an audience, and that is the audience that loves sports.”

Marketers interested in sports should keep an eye out for athlete-focused programming from agencies like Stagwell and Deep Blue Sports + Entertainment, as well as plenty of talk of women’s sports, sports tech, and the Olympics.

Beachball: In its second year, Stagwell’s Sport Beach will take up 60% more space in a physical sense, Sidhu said, and it is also bringing more content and athletes than in 2023. The lineup features more than 30 athletes, including:

• Soccer icons Megan Rapinoe and Mary Earps;
• Basketball stars Sue Bird, Draymond Green, Flau’jae Johnson, and JuJu Watkins;
• And Joe Burrow and the Kelce brothers from the football field.

For Cannes attendees who might be feeling inspired to embrace sport in an experiential sense, Stagwell will offer a run club and beach workouts each morning, as well as a pickleball clinic and tournament, a rock-climbing wall, flag football, bucket golf, and a Euros watch party. There will be more typical conference-type programming as well, with representatives from brands including Unilever, Snap, United Airlines participating in panels and conversations with athletes, Sidhu said.

Beach house: Deep Blue, the firm founded earlier this year by Giant Spoon partner Laura Correnti focused specifically on women’s sports, is making its official Cannes debut this year with the Women’s Sports House. It’s the second in an ongoing event series from Deep Blue and Axios focused on the future of the women’s sports business.

Like at Sport Beach, the athlete lineup at the Women’s Sports House is stacked, featuring Bird (Deep Blue’s CSO), Johnson, Mexican flag football team captain Diana Flores, two-time world champion soccer player Ashlyn Harris, Formula 1 driver Lando Norris, and NWSL and USWNT star Midge Purce. The list of execs includes Disney’s Rita Ferro, Sports Innovation Lab’s Angela Ruggiero, Ally Financial’s Bridget Sponsky, and X’s Linda Yaccarino.

Axios and Deep Blue will also host recess hours each day, Correnti said, so we hope you packed your sneakers.

Tech talk: It won’t be all fun and games and cocktails on the Cannes sports scene; the implementation of data and tech in the industry—which some execs say has been lacking on the sports marketing front—is also likely to come up during the week:

• Stagwell is working with Meta to let attendees play basketball and pickleball using its Quest goggles and showcasing the agency’s AR stadium product, ARound, Sidhu said.
• Stagwell is also teaming up with Gatorade for an activation having to do with its hydration technology, she said.
• Deep Blue and Axios have a day planned around tech and data innovation in women’s sports media buying and measurement, as well as data use and collection by teams and leagues, Correnti said.

Olympic dreams: With the Paris games coming on the heels of Cannes, the Olympics is sure to be a popular topic of discussion as well—although Paris was likely more top of mind for marketers at the festival last year, Sidhu pointed out. This year, they may be more focused on the World Cup and the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.

“There’s no better time than the present to begin to think about the build up to that,” Correnti said. “For many Olympians, it’s a once-every-four-year opportunity to capitalize and build these partnerships from a financial standpoint. I think with the continued interest in the space, talking about what those opportunities look like in between every four years [will be] another area…that I know we’re going to be prioritizing the conversation around.”