What Sports Marketers Can Learn From Working in a Sports Bar
Josh Bogdan of MLB partner Good Sports Creative suggests brands could find connections, emotional value, and solutions to consumer problems if they saw how ads played with fans
At noon on a Friday in early September, there’s plenty to keep sports bar screens busy if there’s an audience watching them.
At The Independent in Portland, Oregon, artifacts from the “Battered Bastards of Baseball” Portland Mavericks like a pack of Big League Chew—invented by Mavericks pitcher Rob Nelson and bat boy Todd Field in 1977—line the walls alongside pennants of local men’s teams and colleges. Though heading right into lunch hour in most other places, the Independent stands apart from most of the city’s office buildings and gets its noon traffic primarily from travelers checking out of the Benson Hotel just across Oak Street or waiting for check-in.
The bar’s 34 televisions feature either an early-season Premier League matchup between Liverpool and Ipswich or a US Open match between Frances Tiafoe and Valentin Vacherot.
During play, the scattered few assembled along the bar take in the logos of HALO, Standard Chartered, Barclays, Unibet, VisitMalaysia, Rolex, Chase, Emirates, IHG Hotels, American Express, Deloitte, IBM, and Polo by Ralph Lauren without missing a second of the action. When ad breaks begin, phones appear and heads look down.
When you sign a new partnership deal, that gives you the right to say something, but now you have to actually find something to communicate.
Josh Bogdan, chief creative officer, Good Sports Creative
Josh Bogdan thinks the brands buying their way into sports partnerships and broadcasts could better keep fans’ attention if they and the teams building their campaigns knew those fans’ habits and saw their reactions. Noting the empty seats at this hour of the day—and that sports bars in Portland typically remain that empty until roughly 4 p.m.—Bogdan has floated the idea of moving his team to The Independent—or other establishments, like its parent company’s Satellite Tavern on Portland’s east side with a summer-friendly outdoor space—to both give local sports bars additional revenue during slow periods and to see how both fans and brands’ ads function in their intended environment.
“When a brand comes in and is sponsoring an event or a team or an athlete, it’s adding value, but there’s just an inordinate amount of money pouring in and new partnerships being signed and too many of these new brands think that’s the end point,” Bogdan said. “When you sign a new partnership deal, that gives you the right to say something, but now you have to actually find something to communicate.”
Bogdan has spent roughly 20 years in marketing, with much of the last 15 dedicated to helping brands find their voice in sports. From 2012 to 2015, he was in the Bay Area with MUH-TAY-ZIK | HOF-FER helping introduce the world to the Golden State Warriors before Steve Kerr, Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, and Draymond Green built a dynasty. After shifting to Wieden+Kennedy in Portland in 2015, he joined teams that saw Kobe Bryant through retirement, celebrated multiple U.S. Women’s National Team World Cup wins, and rebranded Major League Baseball’s marketing into “Baseball Is Something Else.”
After launching Good Sports Creative in 2024 and serving as its chief creative officer, Bogdan continued working with sports partners—connecting MLB with Jay-Z and Alicia Keys and Pharrell for postseason campaigns and bringing in Adam DeVine to spark baseball through summer. But sitting at The Independent watching the US Open, Bogdan observes that a courtside logo can be important if it’s part of a broader story a brand is telling with the sponsorship, but is meaningless unless it’s bringing value to the fans’ experience.
If your brand can give fans something tangible that allows them to enjoy the sport more, great, but at the very least, Bogdan said, a brand should have a relationship with the sport they’ve partnered with that “isn’t the most superficial, cliche version of it that 95% of the other advertisers are also putting out there.”
“It’s finding places where you can allow those fans to be seen, where you can see you can have the fan watching whatever piece of content you created and be like, oh yeah, they get me, and the only way you’re able to do that is by being immersed in that sport’s culture,” Bogdan said. “That’s how you demonstrate that you are a fan too, [because] one of the things that irks me more than any other claim like a brand can make is ‘we’re fans too.’ Like, oh God, cringe.”
“If you have to tell someone you’re a fan, you are clearly not a fan: You are an outsider.”
Finding fandom
Sit around a sports business or marketing discussion long enough, and you’ll eventually hear someone refer to sports as “the last appointment television,” which is a 20th-century way of defining it as Bogdan does: “The last remnant of the monoculture.”
In short, it’s the last portion of entertainment that’s going to be viewed by a broad swath of people whose attention brands don’t have to seek out in niches. While it’s true that sports still hold a captive audience of millions, that doesn’t mean a brand can just throw a logo or a funny ad into the ether and have it reach that big audience equally. It may look like the monoculture of old, but it functions within a siloed society.
“The difference between 2026 and 30 years ago in the ‘90s is how close fans get to the athletes, to the teams, to the sport in general,” Bogdan said. “Back in the ’90s, you would see an athlete show up in some highlights, for a couple of sound bites from a press conference, and maybe a couple of 30-second ads, but now fans see those athletes post to four different channels six times a day and listen to a three-hour podcast with them—they know them intimately.”
Fans can now sniff out a casual or ignorant brand. If sports marketing hits a false note, it can work against a brand and indicate that they may be paying more attention to player contracts and media rights deals than they are to fans’ emotional relationship with teams and athletes. After bringing Good Sports Creative in to work for brands as well as leagues and teams, Bogdan said a key to finding a sports message that breaks through is realizing that brands and their sports partners have different objectives.
If you have to tell someone you’re a fan, you are clearly not a fan: You are an outsider.
Josh Bogdan, chief creative officer, Good Sports Creative
Brands need to tell their story, while leagues and teams are trying to protect assets while promoting their product. The entire equation is important, but comes with points of friction. Bogdan says it’s up to the brand and its agency partner to find points of overlap where its story elevates players, teams, or the sport itself.
Sometimes the answer is obvious: Your brand’s sports drink hydrates athletes. Other times, the connection isn’t so clear and a brand will default to slapping “Official Sponsor” onto a variation of its existing marketing. Bogdan said that “Official Sponsor” only tells fans you signed a contract to speak on behalf of a league and use their logos, but doesn’t connect the brand to the game.
“You have them thinking in contractual terms when you want to get them in that emotional space,” Bogdan said. “Job 1 when you have a new sponsorship, when you just ink that deal, is how do we talk about it in a custom way that makes sense for this brand? ‘Official Sponsor’ as Step 1 is just taking you out of the space where you want to fit.”
The three-point play
For a brand to not only sponsor a sports team, league, or figure but feel like an active, natural part of their world, Bogdan suggests asking three questions.
- Where does the brand realistically overlap with the sport, athlete, or team being sponsored? “Not necessarily what you wish it were, or what you want it to be, but what it truly, authentically is,” Bogdan said. If it’s obvious, express it in a new, unique way. If not, do the work.
- What tangible or emotional value are fans receiving from this sponsorship? This isn’t a brand’s opportunity to tell fans what they believe or why it’s here: It’s a window to show fans what the brand adds to the experience. “That’s part of the work of agency partners of going back and forth with the client, collaborating to really find what we can bring to these fans,” Bogdan said.
- What is the brand and the fan’s common opponent? In the more cortisol-fueled function of sports—where fans are deriving pleasure from defeating an opponent—a brand can position itself as a means of removing an obstacle between fans and their enjoyment of the game. “You’re up against the thing that just makes it harder to watch or to enjoy or to express your love of the game or the things that just irk you as a fan,” Bogdan said.
What does a win look like? Bogdan points to a March Madness ad he helped create at Wieden+Kennedy that featured University of Kentucky fans losing their access to a game broadcast during a blackout, but finding a working television down the street—at the home of a rival Kansas fan.
The Kentucky faithful initially get a door closed in their face, but offer a six pack of Coca-Cola in exchange for spots on the couch and floor. Not only is a six-pack the price of admission, but it’s shown bringing fans together to the greater benefit of college basketball—a victory for all involved.
It’s finding places where you can allow those fans to be seen, where you can see you can have the fan watching whatever piece of content you created and be like, oh yeah, they get me…
Josh Bogdan, chief creative officer, Good Sports Creative
Taking an L, however, is much easier. If you want to get Bogdan ranting about the lack of creativity in sports marketing, bring up tennis legend John McEnroe. On June 22, 1981 in a match against Tom Gullickson at Wimbledon, McEnroe disputed the call of chair umpire Edward James and unleashed his now-legendary rejoinder “You cannot be serious!”
McEnroe went on to defeat Bjorn Borg in the final, but “You cannot be serious” remained etched in sports marketing to this day. In 1985, it sold Bic razors. In 1995, Pizza Hut stuffed crust pizza. In 2002, Heineken. In 2005, the SEAT Altea in the UK. In 2006, All Bran cereal. A year later, American Express. In 2014, a Chase mobile app. In 2015, Jublia toenail fungus medication. In 2016, Verizon Fios. In 2021, DirecTV and Uber Eats.
True to the game
While all of the above has built a great and enduring brand for McEnroe, Bogdan questions if having 15 to 20 examples of McEnroe referencing one rant from 45 years ago does anything to help brands that want to tie into sports.
“That was just like a prime example of just looking at the surface, of having access to McEnroe, doing about two seconds of research, and saying ‘Oh, he’s the guy that rants,’” Bogdan said. “At least get a new take on it. That’s one of my examples of things that are clichéd that allow a fan to just tune out immediately.”
If a brand is worried about falling into that trap, Bogdan suggests some simple tests to see if its creative work will be effective in sports. Coming off of the McEnroe example, if you swap your brand’s logo out with a competitor’s and the ad still works, you haven’t established a unique place for your brand within the sport.
That was just like a prime example of just looking at the surface, of having access to McEnroe, doing about two seconds of research, and saying ‘Oh, he’s the guy that rants.’
Josh Bogdan, chief creative officer, Good Sports Creative
There is a second test that Bogdan suggests brands employ before partnering with athletes in particular: The “Fuck Off” Test. He notes that brands often don’t acknowledge why an athlete appeals to fans beyond their popularity, which often results in that athlete being thrown into a campaign ill-suited to their personality or lifestyle.
If a fan sees a fairly clean-living athlete suddenly promoting a snack or alcohol product, or a wealthier athlete connected to more aspirational goods pitching a discount retailer, they’re going to react with appropriate, forceful skepticism.
“That is real. Trusting that instinct when you see a piece of work, and if it makes you go, ‘Oh, fuck off!’” said Bogdan, who noted that brand and agency marketers are often too close to the work to make the distinction. “If you show it to a real fan who understands who that athlete is, and you are coming at it with a false note, then you are going to fail The ‘Fuck Off’ Test.”
