The Shift from Display Ads to Affiliate Revenue in Sports Media

For most of the 2010s, sports websites made money in the same way as everyone else online. They put banners on the page, sold ad space, and got paid when people saw the ads. If there was traffic, the bills got paid. What readers did after they got to the page didn't matter.

Spending on sports media is going down. Readers scroll past banners without seeing them. Ad blockers stop many people from seeing the ads. More sports sites are competing for the same ad budgets, which pushes prices down even further.

Adverts on the website did not suddenly stop working. The numbers just kept getting worse, year after year. Many publishers only reacted when things got really bad.

Banners only pay when they are viewed. If 1,000 people see the ad, the site owner gets a set fee. The rate depends on the niche, the traffic source, and how many other sites are selling the same space. In sports, that rate has been under pressure for years.

It's partly because of a bad habit. People have learned to ignore banners. Researchers call this banner blindness. It's still here.

Then there are ad blockers. The exact number varies by survey, but around a quarter to a third of web users have one installed. The publisher doesn't get paid for that traffic.

Adverts on websites still make money. They are not useless. But because they're the main way the sports site makes money, they put publishers at greater risk every year.

That fits well with sports content. A football site already brings people who care about the game together. Some of them bet. If the site mentions a sportsbook in a match preview or a betting guide, the link is inside the piece the reader came for. It doesn't feel like an interruption, like a banner would.

• A display ad costs the same whether the person reading it is a casual reader or a serious bettor.

• You don't earn money from an affiliate link until someone clicks on it. But one person signing up is worth more than thousands of banner views.

• With RevShare deals, the site keeps earning money while the player stays active. One good recommendation can pay for months.

This is a big reason why the change has got faster. A banner impression is one time only. A RevShare referral is a link between the content and the player that lasts forever.

But there is one condition. The audience has to trust the site.

Some publishers found this out the hard way. They joined every programme they could find, filled pages with links, and pushed books they had never tested. There was less traffic. There weren't enough sales. The company made less money than they thought they would.

The publishers that make the most money from affiliate sales tend to do the same few things.

The content answers a question the reader already has. Here are some match previews. Odds breakdowns. This is a guide to one feature on a sportsbook. The link makes sense because the article is already about that thing.

They don't try to run twenty programmes at the same time. Two or three that match the audience beat a dozen that don't.

They put the programmes through their paces to see how they measure up. If a book isn't popular, it can still make less money even if the price is higher.

They mix and match different types of deals. Pay the CPA for cash now. This is a long-term investment. Some programmes offer a mix of both, which works well for sites with steady traffic.

This is not only a UK or US story. Sports media in Latin America, Africa and parts of Asia has grown quickly. A lot of newer sites in those regions started with affiliate from day one. They skipped the banner years and went straight to pay-for-results.

Mobile has sped the change up. Most sports content is read on phones now. Banners on a small screen are even easier to skip than on a desktop. They also slow the page down, and readers leave before the article loads.

Affiliate links work the same on any screen. A text link in a match preview takes no extra space, loads at once, and sends the reader to a signup page built for mobile. For sports media, that audience is almost everyone.

But that doesn't mean every sports website should remove the banners tomorrow. The display can still be used. But publishers that rely only on banners are finding it harder to make a profit. The ones who earn audience trust through affiliate marketing, by being honest and giving decent recommendations, are the ones more likely to still be here in five years.

The change has already happened. The only question left is how quickly the rest of the industry will catch up.