Beyond TV: SBS builds wider advertiser platform after record World Cup

SBS has fired the starter gun on Australia’s 2027 upfront season, using the momentum of a record FIFA World Cup year to unveil a broader advertiser proposition that will push its content, commercial partnerships and audience reach well beyond its own screens.

At an event at Sydney's Town Hall, the public broadcaster announced a raft of new partnerships spanning outdoor, creators, retail and consumer measurement, while confirming it has secured exclusive Australian rights to the FIFA World Cup 2030.

The deals with oOh!media, Fabulate, CommBank iQ and others sit behind a strategy SBS describes as taking advertisers from “couch to community to counter”, allowing campaigns that begin around its television and streaming properties to extend into out of home, social, creator and retail environments.

But managing director Jane Palfreyman positioned the strategy around a bigger argument: Australian brands need to pay closer attention to the changing makeup of the country if they want to find their next wave of growth.

“Last year I stood here and said 2026 would be our biggest audience year in SBS’s history, and it was,” Palfreyman said.

“But what stayed with me wasn’t the audience; it was what that audience revealed about Australia.”

The FIFA World Cup she said was an example of that trend. SBS' coverage reached more than 18 million Australians across linear TV and SBS On Demand, generating 209 million hours of consumption, with around 55% coming through digital.

Palfreyman said the tournament showed an Australia comfortable supporting the Socceroos while simultaneously embracing the dozens of other nations now intertwined with the country’s cultural identity.

“The biggest risk facing Australian brands isn’t missing audiences; it’s misreading Australia,” she said.

“Growth won’t come from talking to the same audience more efficiently; it’ll come from recognising the Australia that’s emerging and making sure your brand grows with it.”

That argument underpinned much of SBS’s pitch for 2027, which was noticeably less confined to the broadcaster’s own inventory.

Palfreyman said advertisers were grappling with fragmented consumption, pressure to demonstrate return on every dollar and an increasingly difficult battle for attention.

“We’re prepared to think beyond SBS because your audience doesn’t live on one platform, and your idea shouldn’t have to either,” she said.

“That’s why we’re partnering with oOh!media, The Guardian Australia, MCO and Fabulate. We’re helping your brands move from couch to community to counter, from television and streaming into out of home, retail and the creator economy.”

Going beyond the SBS screen

The strategy is most visible through two new relationships with oOh!media and Fabulate.

On the commercial side, SBS and oOh!media will jointly take specialised 2027 Tour de France sponsorship packages to market, allowing advertisers to extend campaigns around the cycling property into outdoor environments.

SBS CulturalConnect national manager Kate Young said during a media briefing ahead of the upfront that the companies would collaborate behind the scenes to build the proposition as a single buying plan.

“So we’ll collaborate with those partners in the back end,” Young said.

“With, for example, the oOh! partnership and the Tour de France sponsorship, we’ll build out the schematics as one buying plan. So it makes it easier.”

The agreement sits alongside a separate editorial partnership that will take SBS News beyond the broadcaster’s owned channels for the first time.

SBS News will appear across some 6,300 oOh!media lift and lobby screens, plus airport and university environments around Australia. The companies estimate the partnership has the potential to reach more than 10.6 million people over 12 months and generate 5.28 billion impressions.

Palfreyman linked that expansion directly to trust, arguing it had become increasingly valuable in a media environment awash with information, content and artificial intelligence.

“We live in a world where information is abundant, content is everywhere, and AI is transforming industry. But trust still has to be earned,” she said.

“That’s why I’m incredibly proud that SBS News is Australia’s most trusted commercial news brand, and from today, I’m excited to say that you’ll be seeing that trusted SBS News brand more when you’re out and about.”

Creators enter the picture

A new partnership with Fabulate pushes the same thinking into the creator economy.

The arrangement will allow advertisers working with SBS to tap creators through Fabulate and extend campaigns into social environments beyond the original broadcast property. Fabulate says its Australian network includes 1.45 million creators.

SBS tested elements of the model during this year’s World Cup through the Hisense Hangout, which brought creators into the fan experience and extended the sponsorship into social conversation beyond the television broadcast.

Young said SBS would not simply hand creators branded material to distribute. Instead, CulturalConnect would work from the original advertiser brief, develop a creative through-line and then work with selected creators on how it should translate into their own communities.

“We would brief them in and go, ‘This is our overarching creative concept, and then how do you bring that to life within your own ecosystem?’” Young said.

“It’s very bespoke based on the briefs that come through, but it’s about meeting audiences where they are.”

Food and sport are expected to provide some of the more natural early opportunities, while Young said integrations involving more sensitive editorial environments would receive considerably more scrutiny. Creators would also be vetted in consultation with SBS editorial teams.

From audience to outcomes

If oOh!media and Fabulate broaden where an SBS-backed campaign can travel, new data partnerships are designed to prove what happened once it got there.

SBS is expanding its Data Lab through agreements with CommBank iQ and HYP, giving eligible advertisers access to measurement incorporating aggregated consumer spending behaviour, visitation and online engagement.

CommBank iQ will add category and brand insights, campaign sales measurement and more than 500 spend-based SBS audience segments. HYP will allow advertisers to compare exposed and control groups to assess whether campaigns subsequently drove website or physical-store visitation.

Acting director of media sales Lee Fifoot said marketers were increasingly being asked to connect media investment with real business outcomes.

“For us this year, and it has been really in the last few years, proving the value of the investment has been the number one focus for SBS,” Fifoot said.

The aim, he said, was ultimately to prove advertising activity “did generate something at the counter”.

SBS pointed to Rexona’s FIFA World Cup activity as one example. Working with Coles360 and InfoSum, SBS combined campaign exposure with in-store trade activity, with the combined media and retail activation recording a 186% sales uplift.

World Cup secured again

SBS also used the upfront to confirm it has retained exclusive Australian television, video and radio rights to the FIFA World Cup 2030.

The centenary tournament will be staged primarily across Morocco, Portugal and Spain, with opening games in Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay, and will extend the relationship between FIFA and SBS to 44 years.

Palfreyman said the enduring importance of the tournament to SBS went beyond sport.

“That’s why the FIFA World Cup on SBS matters, because when SBS is doing its job well, Australia sees itself a little more clearly,” she said.

“I can’t think of a time where that has mattered more.”

That theme returned at the close of SBS’s presentation, when Palfreyman urged advertisers not simply to look for more efficient ways of reaching audiences they already knew.

“Don’t just reach Australia. Understand it, and then go further,” she said.

“Go to the audiences you haven’t reached yet. Go to the communities that will shape your next decade. Go to the Australia that’s emerging right now.”