Soccer is the most popular sport in terms of sponsorship agreements across the Americas region. EA Sport is the most active tech brand in the region, and one of the key drivers of its deal volume is its partnerships with several American football teams, including the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Philadelphia Eagles, and Kansas City Chiefs. With a partnership worth an estimated total of $1.6 billion, the brand’s top annual value deal is with the National Football League (NFL), which makes it the biggest spending tech brand across the Americas, reveals GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company.

GlobalData’ s latest report, “Sponsorship Sector Report – Technology Americas 2024”, reveals that American brands generated the highest annual deal value within the technology sector. EA Sports deal with the NFL accounts for almost 90% of the brand’s total annual value from sports partnerships.

Olivia Snooks, Sport Analyst at GlobalData, comments: “EA Sports has clearly focused their sport sponsorship spend on American football, which is unsurprising given the popularity of the sport, especially the NFL, across the Americas. In terms of value, their deal with the NFL is over double the annual value of the next highest deal, which is the National Basketball Association’s (NBA) partnership with 2K Sports.”

Technology brands’ partnerships with sporting federations bought in 50% of the total annual estimated revenue, despite having less than half of the total number of team agreements in place. Much of this was generated from the NFL’s deal with EA Sports, the NBA’s deal with 2K Sports, as mentioned, and the NFL’s deal with Microsoft. Despite teams only occupying 24% of the tech brands’ spend, they account for 429 of the deal volume, which is significantly higher than both venue and federation deal volume.

Snooks continues: “The dominance of annual spend by tech brands with the top four sports leagues across the Americas reflects the popularity and high commercial value of the leagues. Other significant sports leagues outside of the top four, including Major League Soccer (MLS) and Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) have some high value partnerships. It is evident that teams within the big sports leagues within the Americas are a key target for tech brands to sponsor.”

Particularly, tech brands from the US generated the highest annual deal value within the sector. SAP and Acronis were significant drivers of deal volume amongst brands headquartered in Europe, while also generating a combined annual sponsorship spend of $52.21 million.

Snooks concludes: “Some of the biggest tech brands have their headquarters in the US, including Microsoft, Apple, and EA Sports. With sports being very popular in the US, this provides tech companies, who have been responsible for a significant amount of technical innovation over the last several years, fantastic opportunities for sponsorship and brand awareness.”