Wimbledon 2026 TV ad volumes rise 30% as CTV draws a broader advertiser base
TAM AdEx reports that Indian linear TV ad volumes during Wimbledon 2026 were 30% higher than in 2025. CTV carried 21 advertiser categories and 25 advertisers, versus nine categories and 10 advertisers on linear TV, signalling a wider premium-video ad mix.
What happened
TAM AdEx found Wimbledon 2026 advertising volumes on Indian linear TV rose 30% year-on-year, while Connected TV attracted more than twice as many advertiser
Key facts
- Linear TV ad volumes indexed at 129.5 for Wimbledon 2026 versus 100 in 2025, a 30% increase
- CTV carried 21 advertising categories and 25 advertisers
- Linear TV carried 9 categories and 10 advertisers
- Wimbledon aired across 8 linear TV channels in 2026 versus 12 in 2025
- Mutual funds represented 14.5% of CTV ad volumes and 8.7% of linear TV ad volumes
- William Grant & Sons India held 9.7% of CTV ad volumes
- ICICI Prudential AMC held 8.7% of linear TV ad volumes
Why this matters
CTV’s ability to attract 25 advertisers across 21 categories makes sports-rights, streaming-distribution and ad-tech partnerships more strategically valuable.
What to watch
- CTV CPM and sell-through trends versus linear TV during later cricket, football and tennis tentpoles.
- Whether the 25 CTV advertisers repeat across non-sports premium programming, indicating a structural rather than tournament-specific shift.
- Growth in retail, fashion, beauty, auto and FMCG advertiser share within CTV sports inventory.
- Ad-supported streaming reach, connected-TV household penetration and measurement standardization in India.
- Evidence that CTV exposure lifts commerce outcomes such as branded search, QR scans, store visits, app engagement and sales.
- Rights-holder moves toward shoppable formats, dynamic ad insertion, regional-language feeds or retail-media data partnerships.
- Build sports-event media plans around a two-screen sequence: CTV for audience targeting and interactive/QR-led conversion, linear TV for peak-reach bursts.
- Create event-specific creative variants by household, geography, affluence and shopping mission rather than running one television asset across all video inventory.
- Measure incremental store visits, branded search, app installs, marketplace traffic and first-party audience growth against exposed versus unexposed audiences.
- Secure premium CTV inventory and retailer/brand partnerships earlier, especially for finals, Indian-player match windows and high-intent evening slots.
- Prepare lower-cost contingency inventory in OTT, online video, retail media and social commerce if sports CTV CPMs rise faster than conversion efficiency.