Sports Affiliate Marketing: Tips for Buying Traffic During Sporting Events 2024

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Sports affiliate marketing is not only about promoting sporting events. Advertising during major tournaments and matches is a proven way to drum up conversions for iGaming, VPN, Utility, E-commerce, or Subscription offers.

I you’re a media buyer or affiliate searching for multiplying your marketing output, check this post. We’ll share a sports calendar for affiliate marketers and list pro tips for acquiring traffic.

Sports affiliate marketing: Why invest in traffic?

There are at least 5 reasons why iGaming operators and affiliates increase conversions on the eve of the major tournaments:

• You know almost precisely when traffic will soar
• Millions of users are in high feather
• Relevant traffic: online users consume goods online and play games like no other
• Streaming websites and other sports-related platforms invest in driving more target traffic (organic, PPC, social)
• You can win quality clicks and conversions outside the mainstream competitive channels

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Platforms for sports affiliate marketing

When looking for advertising sporting or iGaming offers, you must observe the market in 2 dimensions:

• best platforms for sports affiliate marketing offers
• best traffic sources for your offers

Speaking of traffic sources, we can recommend Adsterra as one of the most reliable networks for iGaming and Sports verticals. For over a decade, Adsterra publishers have been attracting massive audiences, boosting traffic on sporting, streaming, movies, and gaming sites. Users tend to engage with all content appearing on these sites on the eve and within the best tournament dates.

As for the best sporting affiliate programs, you need to consider the following criteria:

• Easy access to all features
• Transparent payment terms
• No hidden fees
• Various monetization options: CPA, CPL, RevShare, Hybrid
• 24/7 support
• Personal managers (usually available for top-performing partners)
• Minimum payouts and payment frequency
• Postback and backlink options
• Stats transparency

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Sports calendar 2024 for affiliate marketers

Users get highly engaged during the biggest world sporting events and willingly pay attention…and money if you offer something in their interest zone. Adsterra has built a sports schedule that embraces matches and championships taking place in 25+ countries. You will undoubtedly find a fresh source of high-intent audience for your offer.

Major sporting events in 2024

• ⚽ Football
• 🎾 Tennis
• 🏅 Olympics
• 🏏 Cricket
• 🚗 Motor Sports
• 🏋️ Weightlifting
• ⛳ Golf
• 🚴 Cycling
• 🏀 Basketball
• 🥊 Boxing
• 💪 MMA/UFC
• 🏉 Rugby
• 🏈 American Football
• 🥋 Judo
• ⚫ Biathlon
• 🏒 Ice Hockey
• 🎮 Esports

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Best ad formats for promoting sporting events & iGaming

Popunders

Popunders are winners when it comes to testing traffic or embracing massive audiences from any location of the globe. Adsterra sends 11.9B+ average monthly ad views from Pops (desktop and mobile devices.) Sports-related websites from Gaming, Streaming, and Entertainment niches widely use Popunders.

Social Bar

Social Bar is Adsterra’s proprietary ad format that also includes In-Page Pusn and Interstitials. When advertising at major sporting events, resort to this format after achieving stable output with Pounders. Why so? Mainly because Pops are more friendly for beginners and don’t require designing creatives.

Social Bar, with its 9.9B+ monthly ad impressions, is the best for scaling marketing campaigns. It allows for including up to 15 creatives per test, enhancing the impact of your message.

Adsterra gives free access to over 20 template creatives for Social Bar. Need a push-like message for your VPN/App campaign? Select In-Page Push skins. Want to draw full attention to your e-shop’s sale? Use Interstitials templates. In search of an alternative way to display your iGaming offer? Select Custom Widget + Interstitial + In-Page Push. It’s all up to your fantasy.

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Top tips for running sports affiliate marketing campaigns

Let’s focus on how to buy traffic outside the main competitive channels. So, how can you cash in on this traffic?

Ensuring your offer is neat and relevant

Whether advertising an in-house offer or taking it from an affiliate network, testing the promoted product as a potential user is highly recommended. What to check:

• Landing page load speed and lead forms. If the page you lead all your traffic loads slowly, you will lose potential leads and deposits. The signup process must be smooth and easy to complete. 
• Payment systems: players will deposit more often if you offer convenient payment options. Therefore, check if your local audience uses specific payment systems.
• Conversion flow: if you’re an agency or an affiliate, checking what you will be paid for is a must. Ensure you’re able to drive enough traffic to deliver such conversions. Installs and trials are easy-flow conversions that require little effort or payment. Deposits and credit card submissions are hard-flow conversions, as they demand entering payment data.

Final arrangements

Be on the alert for a selected match or tournament before 1 or 2 weeks.

• Design several ad creatives to start a test campaign without delays,
• Ensure you have enough money for the test ($100 will be enough in most cases for the test, except for the biggest sports events like SuperBowl). And stay prepared to increase your bid when entering the most competitive
• Ensure your advertising network supports integration with your tracking system or allows adding third-party trackers.

Running a test campaign

1. Start with Popunder ads, as they serve the most abundant traffic and allow you to land users directly on your landing page without extra steps.
2. If you run an iGaming campaign in a big country, make sure you don’t target cities or regions that prohibit such ads within your geo. If there are some, apply for city targeting and exclude the unwanted cities. 
3. Set up one campaign per geo in your list; avoid adding multiple countries to one campaign even if the rest of the settings don’t change.
4. In the same way, create one campaign for mobile and desktop traffic, one for iOS and one for Android devices. 
5. Avoid using too many traffic filters during testing to ensure maximum user coverage.
6. Add daily spending limits to control your ad budgets.
7. Match the offer’s conversion flow with a pricing model. With hard-flow conversions like deposits start with CPM pricing. Easy-flow conversions (software trials, app installs) are better to test with CPA pricing.

Pro tip: when you target a massive segment of traffic with conversions as your KPIs, apply intelligent tools like CPA Goal. CPA Goal will optimize the traffic you acquire for conversions while you will be paying for impressions (CPM) or clicks (CPC.)

Campaign optimization

Optimization is about repurposing your budgets to the best-performing traffic while eliminating the low-performing. Here are some basic steps to follow:

1. Ensure you have enough data for optimization. With CPM campaigns and hard-flow conversions, you’ll need at least 5 to 7 days for a test. Fast conversions will come in the first hours after you launch a test.
2. Avoid making global changes or altering several settings at once. Otherwise, you will get confused by the results and unable to check which move was successful and which yielded.
3. Add a time range to your targeting to exclude dull hours when users may view ads but not take any actions.
4. Scan through all ad placements and pick those with the highest results (clicks, conversions, deposits, etc). Apply Custom Bid to increase payouts only for these placements. In the same way, you can minimize bids for the lower-performing traffic sources.
5. The optimization stage is perfect for forming blocklists and whitelists, adding the latter to a separate campaign with bumped-up payouts.
6. Refresh creatives and pre-landing pages if you notice a drop in clicks and conversions.
7. Finally, drop a line to Adsterra managers in the chat to unlock more tricks you can apply within your campaign to save money.

Bidding tactics

Despite we don’t recommend overbidding at the start, to win the best traffic in the event’s eve, you will have to compete. The amount of traffic usually soars one week before the match or tournament. You can multiply ad views and conversions, as well.

Here’s how ad views grow when one of the major cricket and football events is approaching:

Which bidding tactic to try, taking into account the increasing competition? Two bidding strategies are possible for your sports affiliate marketing campaign or alternative campaigns (e.g., VPN, E-commerce, iGaming):

• Smart CPM bidding. This tactic turns on right after you launch the campaign. You will need to enter a maximum bid for 1,000 of ad impressions. Smart CPM will pay higher than the next highest bidders to win auctions and acquire ads at the lowest possible cost.
•  Manual bid adjustments. After testing traffic for a while, you will have a list of ad placements that perform nicely and those with insufficient results (it’s only possible when you enable conversion tracking). You can increase payouts only for those traffic sources that deliver maximum output. This is called Custom Bidding, and Adsterra provides a tool to apply this tactic.

Remember to reassess your bids, especially when the event is about 5 to 6 days away.

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What’s the best platform for sports affiliate marketing?

For a smoother start, we’ve prepared this updated list of high-profile affiliate programs with iGaming and sporting offers on board:

1. PlayCash

PlayCash collaborates with affiliate teams and offers 24/7 support from a personal manager. Their profile is iGaming and Sports only, providing selected offers from direct advertisers.

• Payouts: $200+ CPA, CPL up to $20, RevShare up to 65%
• Minimum payouts start with $100
• Traffic accepted: Europe, Latin America, CIS countries, Oceania

Advantages:

• Special payment conditions for top partners sending 20+ deposits per day
• Minimum payment hold or no hold
• Quality support for all partners

2. Pin-Up Partners

One of the most recognized sports affiliate marketing platforms, Pin-Up Partners focuses on serving loads of trending events every minute, including eSports (or cybersports). The platform is easy to use for both newbies and pros.

• Payouts: $25-50 CPA, RevShare up to 50%, RevShare+, Hybrid
• Minimum payouts start with: $50
• Traffic accepted: the US, Latin America, CIS Countries, India, Bangladesh, and others

Advantages:

• Payouts every 2 weeks (CPA) or upon request (RevShare)
• Lots of exclusive promo assets for affiliates
• Increased bonuses for top affiliates
• User-friendly workspace for desktop and mobile users

3. Entain Partners

Entain Partners hosts offers from multiple well-known sports brands like BWIN, Coral, Ladbrokes, Neds International, and Sportingbet and iGaming brands like Foxy Bingo, Gioco Digitaleas, Gala, and many others. They put partner loyalty first, developing lucrative conditions for affiliates and providing exclusive gaming experiences to players. Some 10K+ affiliates have joined Entain Partners, so far.

• Payouts: RevShare up to 35%
• Minimum payouts: your RevShare should exceed $100 in a calendar month so you get paid on time; if the amount is less than $100 the platform may withhold the payout till next calendar month.
• Traffic accepted: worldwide with focus on strategic markets: Italy, Greece, the UK, Spain, Canada, Brazil

Advantages:

• Premium brands and exclusive offers
• Multiple options for payout withdrawal
• CPA options available on request
• Multiple tools and helpful assets for affiliates, including trackers, banners, and a rich selection of creatives localized in multiple languages

4. GG Affiliates

world-renowned advertiser. This sports affiliate marketing program embraces over 50 countries and provides beneficial partnership terms for those who attract referrals (you will earn 5% on all income of attracted affiliates).

• Payouts: CPA, Hybrid, 40% to 60% RevShare for Sports/Esports offers and up to 55% for iGaming
• Minimum payouts start with: $20
• Traffic accepted: worldwide; Germany, Poland, and Switzerland for its main direct GG.BET offer

Advantages:

• A direct advertiser with lots of promo assets at your service
• Almost lo limits to geos and traffic sources
• Weekly payments
• 24/7 partner support
• Increased RevShare earnings for best-performing partners depending on the FTD number

5. 1WIN Partners

Another widely used sports affiliate marketing platform is 1WIN Partners. The platform strongly emphasizes communication with partners, offering local call centers, VIP and support hubs, welcome bonuses, and loyalty programs. With over 10,000 sporting events per day, it has already attracted over 100K affiliates.

• Payouts: CPA up to $250, RevShare from 50%
• Minimum payouts starts with: $100 with RevShare or a payouts per 10 qualified CPA players
• Traffic accepted: India, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Côte d’Ivoire, Kenya, Turkey, Azerbaijan are top-converting geos

Advantages:

• Payouts every 2 weeks (CPA) or upon request (RevShare)
• Lots of exclusive promo assets for affiliates
• Increased bonuses for top affiliates
• User-friendly workspace for desktop and mobile users

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FAQ about sports affiliate marketing