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Sports have always been about culture, conversation, and community — and today, that experience thrives on YouTube.
From live games and highlights to reactions and debates, more than 40 billion hours of sports content are consumed annually on YouTube globally. Views of sports content in the living room have surged more than 45% year-over-year1 as fans increasingly turn to YouTube to stream, share, and come together around the biggest screen in the house.
The game has changed for brands too. YouTube uniquely enables them to connect with the complete sports experience, aligning audiences, strategy, and moments to become unmissable during cultural peaks and stay top of mind far beyond game day. Here are three brands doing just that.
Lucid: Launching a YouTube-first playbook
Lucid’s YouTube-first approach demonstrates how brands can turn cultural relevance into measurable business growth.
As a growing player in the electric vehicle (EV) space, Lucid wanted to elevate its brand perception and recognition. By tapping into the YouTube’s NFL Lineup, Lucid ensured its ads ran against live NFL games, clips, and highlights to engage sports lovers and technology enthusiasts at scale. The result? A whopping 255% relative search lift for their brand and 130% more car purchases year over year in the first half of 2025 alone.
On YouTube, Lucid was able to reach a highly engaged audience of potential EV buyers who share its passion for innovation.
“To achieve our ambitious growth goals, we looked to step out of our comfort zone and the approaches we’d used in the past. We’d just finalized a new brand campaign, ‘Compromise Nothing,’ and were excited to reintroduce ourselves to our audience on their terms,” said Bryson Shellito, head of growth for Lucid. “By anchoring our strategy on premium YouTube sports content, we were able to reach a highly engaged audience of potential EV buyers who share our passion for high performance and innovation.”
These results gave Lucid the confidence to go all in during September’s kickoff weekend game in Brazil, streamed exclusively on YouTube. Lucid’s YouTube-first approach mirrored the playbook of marquee sports moments, complete with buzz-building teasers and a premiere designed for maximum cultural impact. With a brand story featuring Timothée Chalamet, director James Mangold, and the driving team of “Ford v Ferrari,” Lucid tapped into YouTube’s full ecosystem to build a cinematic arc. Short-form teaser trailers in the days ahead of the game seeded early buzz, a YouTube Masthead featuring a director’s cut from the film set the stage before kickoff, and the global debut of the full film during the game itself delivered a premium, big-screen reveal.
Watch the video
Lucid presents, “Driven,” a brand film featuring Timothée Chalamet and directed by James Mangold.
By extending the campaign across formats during a tentpole cultural moment, Lucid turned a campaign into an experience, driving brand love and awareness with leaned-in audiences at scale in ways that traditional media can’t match.
State Farm: Driving more than awareness on the fairway
To create a viewing experience that felt authentic and cohesive from beginning to end, State Farm leveraged a Cultural Moment Sponsorship around the PGA Championship on YouTube, putting the brand in front of fans before, during, and after the tournament.
That journey included 100% share of voice through Takeovers on fan-favorite creator channels Good Good and Grant Horvat Golf, as well as a spotlight for high share of voice on content around the tournament, making State Farm unmissable when fans were searching and streaming golf-related content.
They took the campaign one step further with a branded sponsorship of Caddie & The Kid, a new YouTube series where golf personality Michael Collins and baseball legend Ken Griffey, Jr. travel to iconic golf courses and destinations with creators and celebrity friends. The sponsorship even included paid media cutdowns of “Jake from State Farm” on the golf course, talking clubs and insurance bundling with the show’s talent.
Beyond tapping into YouTube for reach and awareness, State Farm also used Demand Gen, retargeting, and Search to ensure its message stayed with fans beyond a single moment, turning interest into impact for the brand.
Watch the video
“Jake from State Farm” visits “Caddie & The Kid” to install them in the Bundle Hall of Fame.
Results were strong. By combining cultural sponsorships, creator partnerships, and a full-funnel approach, State Farm became a consistent part of the PGA Championship experience across touchpoints. The campaign drove a 28-point surge in unaided awareness, a 2.6% lift in consideration, and a 4.7% boost in brand association with “Caddie & The Kid.”
“At State Farm, we see marketing as a way to have a genuine connection with our customers, not interrupt what they’re watching,” explained Alyson Griffin, head of marketing at State Farm. “Partnering with Google to sponsor ‘Caddie & The Kid’ gave us a unique chance to weave our brand into a golf experience that truly speaks to fans. Using Google’s advanced audience insights and predictive tools, we delivered the right message to the right people at exactly the right time. This shows how combining data with authentic passion points helps us build real connections that matter.”
IHG: Capturing attention across sports
IHG Hotels & Resorts, one of the world’s leading hotel companies, showed how brands can use YouTube to extend their presence across multiple sports seasons and fandoms.
To do it, they combined content and audience-based YouTube ad solutions surrounding two different sporting moments. First position on the NFL lineup gave IHG the first ad spot on official football content, allowing it to reach fans when they were most engaged. Meanwhile, a Formula One Takeover delivered 100% share of voice on racing content, forging a powerful connection between IHG and F1 fans.
YouTube helps unlock more opportunities to easily align IHG’s brand to the culturally relevant content that viewers love.
The brand effectively captured attention by being front and center on the content most relevant to its target audience. The YouTube campaign delivered unique reach over linear TV and achieved lifts in IHG brands for ad recall and brand awareness that were 2X the YouTube benchmark.
“YouTube is a prime destination for viewers during popular moments,” said Chris Copp, VP of paid media at IHG Hotels and Resorts. “We’re excited that Takeovers unlock more opportunities to easily align our brand to the culturally relevant content that viewers love.”
Watch the video
A short video from IHG Hotels & Resorts shows off the beautiful destinations available to its guests.
How to reach sports fans on YouTube
From the course to the track to all of the surrounding moments, YouTube delivers what no other platform can: a complete experience in one place. Because when fans love a sport, they don’t just watch it, they live it. Here are three ways for brands looking to tap into these engaged fans.
- Align with sports via YouTube Select Lineups, which include content from the top 1% of creators and partners like the NFL, NBA, and MLB, as well as programming on YouTube TV, like the all-new Women’s Sports and College Sports Lineups, now in pilot.
- Own the moments with sponsorships on influential creators and popular content, only on YouTube. Spotlights provide high share of voice on relevant videos trending during the world’s largest events, while Takeovers give 100% share of voice on top creators, like football’s Deestroying or basketball’s Jesser, to build lasting connections with their fans.
- Drive attention with high impact placements like First Position during priority brand moments to secure the first ad slot for your campaign for maximum breakthrough with fans.
By aligning your brand with the content and creators that fans love, and activating across the many formats that surround the game, you can meet fans where they’re most passionate and where the conversations continue long after the final whistle.
This new playbook isn’t just for winning in sports but for winning in any cultural moment where passionate fans converge — and it all happens on YouTube.
