Sound can be a bridge between you and your favourite athletes, sporting teams and brands. It doesn’t matter if you are the world’s biggest footballer or a sports star in the making, music will get your blood pumping – whether you’re watching or playing a game.

However, not only the public is affected by music. Athletes themselves can also take advantage of sound to boost their performance. Costas Karageorghis, professor and researcher at Brunel University, spent 25 years researching the effects of music on the brain. He concluded that the areas of the brain that light up when listening to music are the same areas critical for athletic performance.

In other words, music moves you and improves you. Want to see this for yourself? Have a look at our Performance Enhancing Music project, where we developed music to improve athletes’ performances. Spoiler alert: it worked.

Now, onto the question every sports brand should ask themselves. If sports and sound are like Kool & the Gang – meaning, they can’t live without each other – why are only a few sports brands in the industry using this to their advantage?

Sports advertising is built around strong emotions – excitement, pride and a sense of belonging. Fans in a stadium create a roaring sea of sound when singing a national anthem, or fall into blissful silence during the final moments before a goal. These emotions can easily be part of your marketing campaign and make your customers feel like they’re back in the stadium when they see your ad.

But, how does music fit into this?

An up-tempo ad is nothing without powerful music.

Plus, if music influences athletic performance, you can draw the direct parallel with advertising performance. There is one common factor between the two: emotion through music. Visuals paint the picture and get basic information across in your brand communication but, without music, you can barely convey the heightened emotions present in sports.

“Music is a stimulus that is good for introducing an emotional context for almost any information that is presented with it,” says Daniel Mullensiefen, music psychology professor at Goldsmiths, University of London. He describes music as the missing component when dealing with emotion in a marketing and branding context.

In other words, music has the power to amplify the emotional impact of your content by making it more memorable and distinctive, therefore boosting its effectiveness. Especially in the current saturated landscape of the sports industry, using emotion through music will unmistakably take your content to a new level.

The concept of sport is an integral part of someone’s identity. The type of sports we play, the tournaments we follow, the sports shoes we wear – everything says something about who we are as a person and how we want others to perceive us.

Whether you are a sports club, a league or an athletic clothing company, you want your brand to become a part of someone’s identity when it comes to sports. You want people to think of you whenever they play a certain sport or when they shop for new sports clothing.

Music and sound have the power to grow your community and reach anyone who identifies with your brand or the sport you represent.

Enter: sonic branding.

The Journal of Brand Management highlights that having a solid sonic identity can increase consumer loyalty. Music and sound are key to strengthen your brand and stand out from the competition. From club anthems to music for commercials, from digital UX experiences to music activations, the power of sound cannot be underestimated.

Sports are lived through sound. Not only does it help athletes to perform better – it also boosts your brand’s performance.

Whether we’re talking about ads, sports content or video games, enhancing the sound of sports requires a very specific skill set. At MassiveMusic, after having worked with biggies such as the UEFA Women’s Champions League, Nike and ESL, we don’t shy away from being challenged. We know exactly how to help you score with your branded content.

The rise of eSports provides us with even more opportunities. In the world of online sports, everything is built from the ground up – including every sound effect in the games and every piece of music that supports the gameplay experience. This allows your brand to have an all-round sonic identity that is flexible and ownable at the same time.

TLDR? Music and sound can:

• Boost the emotional power and effectiveness of your ads
• Nurture and grow a community around your brand
• Bring your sports ads and content to life
• Provide you with an unmistakably yours sonic brand identity

Are you ready to unlock the power of sound for your sports brand?

Click here to download our sports report – and join the club of brands who up their game through music and sound.