Sports brands didn’t miss the gaming revolution, but many are still misplaying it.
Over the past decade, leagues, sponsors and marketers have poured increasing budgets into esports, creator partnerships and in‑game placements. On paper, these strategies appear progressive. In practice, however, the same mistake keeps repeating itself: treating gaming as just another media channel instead of a place where people actually spend time.
This misunderstanding is easy to spot, and once you do, you can’t unsee it.
Sports brands discovered gaming as a marketing channel a long time ago. There are now many ways to get involved. In esports tournaments, leagues from the NBA to Formula 1 have run parallel digital competitions. In-game advertising, with stadium-style placements inside titles such as EA Sports FC and NBA 2K, reaches hundreds of millions of players. With influencer and creator campaigns on Twitch or YouTube, even a single streamer’s authentic endorsement is far more effective than a broadcast advertisement. And last but not least, there is social media, which increasingly merges the feeds of gaming and sports.
The most significant shift has been the move toward integration. Today’s gamers don’t just want to see a brand logo; they want to experience the brand within the game or event itself. Today’s audiences also expect brands to provide real value. If there’s no added benefit or meaningful engagement, they simply won’t pay attention.
Each of these channels has matured into a legitimate discipline. However, there’s a new layer underneath all of them, and most brands still don’t know what to do with it: virtual worlds.
Roblox, Fortnite and Minecraft: These are platforms where the audience doesn’t just watch or scroll — they inhabit them. The question isn’t “How long did they look at our ad?” but rather, “How long did they choose to stay inside our brand?” Generations Z and Alpha spend more time on Roblox and Fortnite than on social media, including 39 percent more time than on TikTok and YouTube combined. These platforms are the future of gaming. They’re where these generations already live.
This is exactly why the wrong question here is: “Where should we put our logo?”
Gaming sponsorships don’t work anymore by just placing a logo. It was probably never the right model to begin with, but it’s especially counterproductive in virtual worlds. If your brand appears as a banner on a loading screen, you haven’t sponsored anything. You’ve announced that you don’t understand the space.
What does a real activation look like?
In January 2025, the German soccer league DFL (Bundesliga) became the first European sports league to launch on Roblox. A new creation, the Bundesliga Clubhouse, offered an authentic experience through the integration of the brand within five distinct, high-traffic Roblox environments. These environments included obstacle courses, a free kick simulator, and a virtual hub where ESPN and Topps had their own interactive presence. Fans could collect exclusive user-generated content (UGC) items, customize their avatars, and immerse themselves further in the Bundesliga brand through gameplay. In the first four days alone, the initial integration received over 1.3 million visits. The full campaign reached 15 million unique users, who spent an average of nine minutes and 45 seconds on the platform.
Nine minutes and 45 seconds! Compare that to a preroll ad that people skip after five seconds.
The critical deciding factor wasn’t the budget or the platform — it was the philosophy. The experience had to be native, not imported. Peer Naubert, the Bundesliga’s International CEO, put it precisely: The goal was to meet fans where they already are and create something that feels authentic to them, not just recognizable to the league.
The pattern is spreading — for better or worse
FIFA and Gamefam brought all 13 teams from the 2025 Club World Cup to Roblox. They created an experience that mirrored the real-world event, complete with authentic sponsors, branded merchandise, and live bracket updates. The results? 20 million gameplay sessions and 5.5 million hours of engagement. Of the surveyed players, 61 percent said that playing the game made them want to watch the 2026 FIFA Club World Cup. This figure should make every sports marketing director sit up and take notice.
This case shows that games in virtual worlds, such as Roblox, Minecraft, and Fortnite, can inspire real-world broadcasting. The virtual world influences the physical one.
Meanwhile, more than 600 brand activations took place on Roblox in 2025 alone, with more than 210 brands having a presence on the platform. This volume signals that the platform has transitioned from an experimental stage to becoming standard practice. However, quantity without quality produces noise, not results.
The authenticity problem nobody wants to name
Here’s what I tell every client that comes to us with a gaming brief: These communities have extraordinarily sensitive authenticity detectors. Brands can gain access to a creator’s community if they give the creator the necessary freedom. Brands that don’t allow creators to be themselves and support them organically will find that their message falls flat and fails to effectively reach the audience. The same principle applies to platform activations. If you show up on Roblox and act as if you were on a stadium perimeter board, the community will either ignore or mock you — to the point of negatively affecting brand perception!
Three things determine success
First, commit to the platform’s logic, not yours. Each platform has its own aesthetics, economy, and social dynamics. Learn them or fail.
Second, build for repeat engagement, not a one-off spectacle. The average number of activations per brand on Roblox increased to 1.8 in 2025, up from 1.4 in 2023. Brands are realizing that a single campaign is merely a trial and not a long-term strategy.
Third, measure what matters. Impressions are a vanity metric in virtual worlds. Session time, repeat visits, UGC item collections, and community-generated content around your activation tell you whether you have built something that people actually want to spend time in.
Virtual worlds are not the next social media. They’re more demanding than that. Social media allows you to broadcast. Virtual worlds, on the other hand, require you to participate; they’re a form of social gaming. That’s a harder task. But it’s also a far more valuable one.
Alexander Albrecht is co-founder and managing director of Build A Rocket (creators of the Bundesliga Clubhouse). Now part of Sportfive, the agency operates internationally with 70 people across six offices.
