How Digital Advertising Helped Florida State Make Broadcast History
Florida State opened its 80th football season on August 29 against New Mexico State — a Week 0, non-conference matchup on the early-season schedule. What it delivered instead was a record: the most-watched sports broadcast in The CW's network history, averaging 1.96 million viewers and peaking at 2.4 million. The game also drew the network's largest sports audience in the key Adults 25-54 demographic (718,000 viewers), outperforming every scripted show that night on ABC, CBS, and NBC.
That record was built on more than one thing — an early matchup, strong broadcast distribution, and a program with a national fan base. But FSU wasn't leaving reach to chance. Alongside its existing broadcast placement, FSU worked with PAC Marketing to build a short, targeted digital campaign designed specifically to make sure fans knew the game was on, where to find it, and why to tune in before kickoff.
Building awareness in a five-day window
With the game airing August 29, the campaign ran from August 24 through kickoff — five days to build awareness fast, on a media budget that was a fraction of the cost of a typical local broadcast buy. It ran across Meta, Google Demand Gen, and OTT placements on platforms including Peacock, Netflix, and Fox Sports/Live Sports, and was geo-targeted across Florida, New Mexico, and El Paso, Texas — extending reach beyond FSU's core fanbase into New Mexico State's home and near-home markets as well.
In that five-day window, the campaign generated:
1,127,972 impressions
516,320 people reached
11,302 clicks
Numbers such as these are part of what makes digital campaigns useful to look back on: rather than confirming an ad simply aired, they show specifically who it reached and where — down to the market.
“The digital ads played an important role in expanding the game's reach beyond the existing audience. By showing up across different channels, we were able to create more touchpoints with fans and keep the matchup top of mind leading into kickoff”. — Dani Palazzo, Director of Seminole Clubs
What it added up to
On game night, FSU beat New Mexico State 34-17 in front of the largest sports audience The CW has ever delivered. That result came from the matchup, the broadcast, and a digital push that put the game in front of over half a million people in exactly the markets most likely to care, in the days right before kickoff.
It's also a good example of something worth noting more broadly: digital advertising's value in college athletics isn't limited to ticket sales or fundraising, where it's already well-proven. The same targeting and speed can be pointed at other goals a program cares about — tune-in, merchandise, subscriptions, etc. For FSU, that approach turned a Week 0 matchup into the most-watched broadcast in The CW's history.
Curious what a similar strategy could look like for your program? Talk to your PAC Marketing representative, or fill out the form below!
