How to monetise the moment

Hello folks.

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Right, onto edition 135.

This week, I’m diving into the new partnership between Transmit and Fandango around Bundesliga streaming, and how they’re planning to bring brands into live event moments without adding ad breaks.

Plus, our speed reads:

Let’s get into it.

I’m pretty sure you’re all sick of me saying I’m not a sports person, because, one, it’s not entirely true and two, I’m writing a lot about sports! I wrote previously about my time as a competitive swimmer, and how fundamental it was to me. Growing up, swimming was very much not a ‘spectator sport’. The only people who ever came to my meets were my family, the families of my swim-teammates, and occasionally a friend who was forced along because they chose the wrong weekend for a sleepover. 

Since my teenage years, though, swimming has become more of a draw. Swimmers themselves have cultural cachet in a way they didn’t in the early noughties. I like to talk about how exciting swimming is to watch, but I acquiesce it hasn’t got the same kind of heart-pounding, can’t-look-away moments as something like football or basketball.

Which is my brilliantly penned segue into the Transmit and Fandango partnership built around those hold-your-breath moments.

Fandango (yes, that Fandango, the one you know for movie tickets) is Versant’s free, ad-supported streaming service (in addition to being, you know, the ticket place!), and it’s now the US home of the Bundesliga. At least 30 matches are on USA Network, and every other game streams free on Fandango.

Transmit is an ad tech company that works with sports leagues, broadcasters and streaming platforms on monetising live sports and streaming video. Its technology looks for the points in a match when attention spikes, like substitutions, momentum swings and official reviews, and lets brands attach themselves to those moments without adding ad breaks.

Seth Hittman, Transmit’s CEO, talked about the World Cup hydration (cough: ad) break as his comparison. It works as a sponsorship because it’s “part of the experience, not an interruption to it.” The hydration break wasn’t exactly well received outside the States, but Transmit and Fandango’s plan seems more fluid in its execution (pun intended).

A survey reported by Advanced Television found that only 24% of viewers actually pay attention to streaming ads, while 76% feel the big platforms carry too many. 

And, to be fair, rights holders are listening. NFL RedZone halved its ad load on the opening Sunday of this season after fans pushed back on the double-box ads that debuted in 2025, according to Awful Announcing. And for fans, paying your way out doesn’t fully work either: as The New York Times has reported, live sports on the big streamers carry commercial breaks, whatever tier you’re on.

Meanwhile, streamers are projected to spend $14.2 billion on live sports rights in 2026, more than double 2022, per Ampere Analysis. Something has to pay for that, and selling the moment rather than the break feels like a much friendlier answer than simply adding more breaks.

Mandatory hydration breaks for every match were new at this summer’s World Cup, and broadcasters wasted no time treating them as inventory. Fox cut to full-screen commercials, and Powerade was named official sponsor of the breaks. Powerade is a natural fit for a sports match, and the break itself was already ‘built into’ the pace of the game, so to speak.

However, geography had an important part to play in this. Here in the UK, Ofcom’s advertising limits meant ITV skipped ads during the breaks. Instead, we were treated to more chat — for a die-hard football fan, that might be a good thing. (All it did was allow my partner and I, casual viewers, a chance to get a drink and pet the cats.)

Transmit’s strategy is based on the idea that a match is full of natural pauses, not just a few mandated ones, and that those moments make for far more fertile advertising spots.

There is data to support that strategy, too. In edition 111, we covered Genius Sports’ research, which found that ads placed after high-intensity moments roughly doubled unaided recall.

That means that the post-peak-moment inventory could command a premium, and that rights holders with the data to spot and sell those moments would be in the stronger negotiating position. Transmit is that idea packaged as a product.

It also picks up a thread from edition 88, where we looked at Genius and Publicis building ads triggered by live game events and fan emotion. Joe wrote then that sports could borrow from gaming, where brands have long bought moments rather than slots, so long as buying them was easy. The Fandango and Transmit strategy is test of exactly that: a free platform, a fresh audience and a simple way for brands to hop onto a moment.

According to Awful Announcing, the Bundesliga took roughly a $10 million hit on its US deal when it moved from ESPN to Versant’s Fandango, trading revenue for reach. A league that has made that swap needs a way to make up that delta.

Fandango viewers are casual, curious, and in all likelihood, meeting the Bundesliga for the first time. For a brand, that’s a rare chance to be introduced to a fan at the exact moment they fall for something. A sponsor attached to a last-minute winner becomes part of the memory, and that emotional connection fosters a much stronger tie. 

Transmit’s headline promise is more revenue without more ad load, which is clearly the right strategy given the audience’s response to increasing ad breaks. But it isn’t just a question of quantity; it becomes a matter of quality, too. 

Variety will be the secret, and necessary, ingredient. In Clutch’s post-World Cup survey, 58% of viewers who were annoyed by ads cited repetition as one of the main reasons. Tubefilter documented the Wingstop and Liberty Mutual spots played on a loop through the 2024 NBA playoffs. 

Where a ‘moment-based’ model has a natural planning advantage is because every moment is different; the sponsor can be too. On the flip side of the equation, the brands that treat each moment as their own creative brief will stand out — for the right reasons, not the wrong ones.

Every live format has moments fans already treat as sacred: a boss fight falling, a big reveal, a last-lap overtake (though swimming may still have a way to go for this). The brands that can capitalise on this will be the ones that know which of those moments they have a natural fit to be near. As we covered in edition 88, there are six key pillars for a successful placement:

Fans have shown they’ll welcome a brand that sits inside the match when the fit feels natural, and Transmit and Fandango have a free audience, a new league and a proving ground to show it. Let’s see how it goes!

The first-ever edition of The John Cena Classic will feature WWE’s biggest names across Raw and SmackDown against the brightest future Superstars from NXT

TL;DR

Why you should care

Here we are again with the product, digital and life layers! The belts are the product, the Netflix stream and live vote are the digital, and WWE World in Orlando is the life layer. Same shape, but this time it’s a film release date holding it together.

It’s also a different job from where this partnership began. In 2025, it was about where fans watch, with the ESPN App becoming the exclusive domestic home of WWE Premium Live Events for ESPN Unlimited subscribers. Two days at ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex is about what fans get to do.

WWE has been here before, too. We covered its Netflix move as a way to borrow a younger, global audience in edition 41, and its ReelShort microdrama as a test of a new one in edition 119. This is a similar strategy, and WWE is tapping into Marvel’s audience three days out from the Doomsday premiere.

Then there are the belts. A title belt does the fan-explaining on its own, much like the Darth Vader Raiders hoodie did, and the release has them on sale at WWE World, WWEShop.com and select Disney stores. If they’re limited, it’s a scarcity strategy, but if they’re everywhere for longer, it’s a breadth play; the information, so far, doesn’t specify, so I’m guessing it’s not a limited edition run. Joe flagged a particularly interesting post on LinkedIn by Nottingham Forest’s CMO. “Scarcity only really works when people care about what’s scarce. You need passion. You need an emotional connection. You need fans.” WWE and Marvel both have supremely dedicated fans, so in this case it’s the scarcity itself that’s the question.

There’s a side door here as well. Edition 132 looked at how the event around the IP now does audience-building work, and a Marvel fan who travels for the Doomsday edition of Worlds Collide meets WWE without ever having planned to. It’s the same pull we saw with a Star Wars fan being steered towards an NFL team.

As someone very much not into wrestling, though I love John Cena, the voting is the part I think is the cleverest. Fans decide who wins the night as WWE’s biggest names face NXT’s brightest future Superstars, and the only way in is to register for Club WWE. That covers two separate strategies: give fans “something to do, not just something to buy” and collect data while you’re at it. Fans are more likely to feel comfortable sharing their information if what they get in return is participation — and a hand in shaping the next generation of WWE stars. 

Adobe is putting licensed clips from Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group inside its free mobile editor

TL;DR

Why you should care

Most fan content starts with a sound. In edition 119, I wrote about ATP’s Tour Sounds and the fan-made FIFA playlist that racked up close to 158,000 saves. Here, the labels are going to where that fan content gets made, rather than waiting for the fan to bring the song to them.

The templates pair a track with a visual story, which turns “I love this song” into “I made something with it”. This is the same ‘give the fan something to do’ logic we liked in the Spotify listening-data campaign for Spider-Man in edition 122. Every finished video also does distribution work for the artist, which is the benefit both labels lean on. (Especially given there’s no comment about compensation for artists.)

The AI line caught my eye as well. The same app offers Firefly-powered tools to generate creative assets, and in edition 131 I wrote about the various places and ways fans will accept AI, most notably in the workflow, but not as part of the creative process, especially without disclosure. The release doesn’t make a specific point about labelling AI content, so I’m curious how a fan edit that mixes a licensed track with generated assets will be flagged.

Music is now a huge part of fan-made content, which we already know is a huge part of how IP awareness and engagement grows. It feels like a win-win for everyone involved, but the proof will be in what gets made, how it’s labelled, and where the attention - and revenue - goes.

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