Sparkfly & PlayOn link school sports to retail data

Sparkfly and PlayOn Sports have agreed to a partnership that combines retail offer management and real-time marketing attribution with a large network of US high school sports audiences across digital ticketing, live streaming and sports data.

The deal integrates Sparkfly's offer and attribution platform into PlayOn Sports' ecosystem, which includes GoFan, NFHS Network and MaxPreps. The network spans more than 27,000 schools and reaches millions of fans, families and student-athletes connected to high school sport.

Retailers and restaurant operators have increased spending on digital marketing over the past decade, but many brands still struggle to connect media exposure to in-store visits and purchases. The companies are positioning the partnership as a response, aiming to link local community audiences to measurable transactions.

How it works

Merchants can run localised campaigns tied to schools, events or seasons. Campaigns can appear across PlayOn properties, including ticketing and streaming experiences. Sparkfly's technology then connects offer delivery and redemption to transaction records, enabling reporting on store visits and purchases.

The goal is to help marketers measure promotion performance beyond clicks and impressions, while also supporting customer acquisition through a community channel built around sports attendance and viewing.

Sparkfly says it has powered more than 4 billion offers across more than 20,000 locations, working with multi-site brands and integrating with point-of-sale systems and digital ordering platforms. PlayOn Sports operates products across the high school sports journey, from ticket purchase to live viewing and results tracking.

Attribution focus

The partnership centres on what the companies call closed-loop attribution-linking a marketing interaction to an observed transaction rather than relying on proxy measures. Merchants will be able to identify which offers and campaigns drove purchases, and which customers were newly acquired through the channel.

Catherine Tabor, CEO and founder of Sparkfly, said the deal addresses brands' acquisition needs.

"For years, brands have told us they need better ways to acquire new guests and fill their top-of-funnel," said Catherine Tabor, CEO and Founder at Sparkfly.

The agreement also gives PlayOn Sports a more direct commerce and measurement layer for brand activity within its network. It positions high school sports audiences as a segment with regular local purchasing behaviour, including dining out and shopping around events.

Luke Pagano, SVP, Sales & Brand Partnership at PlayOn Sports, said the partnership expands PlayOn's advertising offering with added measurement.

"PlayOn powers the complete high school sports experience, connecting hyper-engaged communities that rally around millions of young athletes who inspire on and off the field," said Luke Pagano, SVP, Sales & Brand Partnership at PlayOn Sports. "We provide brands with a unified access point to this incredible ecosystem, and partnering with Sparkfly allows us to enhance our advertising solutions with technology that provides real, measurable impact."

Local to national

Merchants can deploy campaigns at national, regional or individual school levels. This structure suits brands with large store networks that want consistent measurement while keeping promotions relevant to local communities.

A key question for marketers is how the partnership will balance personalisation with privacy and data governance across schools, parents and younger audiences. The announcement did not specify safeguards, but it emphasised transaction-based measurement and offer redemption rather than broad audience profiling.

The partnership also reflects a wider shift in media buying as some digital advertising becomes harder to measure. Retail media networks have grown quickly, while event-led and community-led marketing has remained difficult to attribute at scale. The companies are presenting high school sports as a large, structured environment where local identity and repeat engagement support more measurable campaigns.

Next steps

The firms plan additional integrations over time, including integrated offer wallets, added loyalty features, school fundraising platforms and achievement rewards. They also cited future work on audience segmentation, seasonal campaign automation and cross-platform loyalty integration.

Tabor said the combined proposition differs from conventional sponsorship or media-buying models.

"This isn't just another media buy or sponsorship opportunity," said Tabor. "This is intelligent, measurable customer acquisition. Merchants know exactly which school, which offer, which campaign drove each transaction. They can see net-new customer identification, understand true incrementality, and build personalized retargeting strategies-all in real time. That level of attribution has been the holy grail of marketing, and we're delivering it at scale."