Affiliate Marketing

11 Best Sports Affiliate Programs in 2024 (Top Offers)

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The global sports industry is estimated to be worth at least $614 billion, this amount spread across sporting goods and events.

Or to give you some perspective, roughly what the United States spends on defense each year.

Sports fans are more than happy to spend money once you connect them with the right products or services.

This is a massive market to tap into, especially if you can find a range of profitable sports affiliate programs to promote.

We’ve pulled together a roundup of 11 of the best sports programs to save you from doing all that research yourself.

Let’s look at what we found.

Sports Affiliate Programs

  1. Leather Head Sports Affiliate Program
  2. Under Armour Affiliate Program
  3. TaylorMade Golf Affiliate Program
  4. Gainful Affiliate Program
  5. Play Your Court Affiliate Program
  6. Mountain Hardwear Affiliate Program
  7. Sports Memorabilia Affiliate Program
  8. Jump Sport Affiliate Program
  9. Go Pro Affiliate Program
  10. X3 Bar Sports Affiliate Program
  11. Enigma Fishing Affiliate Program
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1 Leather Head Sports

Leather Head Sports Homepage

The founder of Leather Head Sports, Paul Cunningham, built his company on a simple ideal, a belief that “…the love of play is universal”.

What makes this company so different is they create custom-made vintage leather balls for baseball, football, basketball, rugby, and soccer.

These aren’t mass-produced knockoffs but instead a nod to the glory days when sports balls still had laces on them.

From a marketing point of view, that’s a pretty unique USP (unique selling proposition) especially in a time when people are looking to live simpler lives.

Their products have also proven to be very popular with customers, and affiliates are making good money promoting them – there’s a $165 average order value to stand testament to that.

What we like about this program, apart from the solid base metrics, is that even non-sports fans would like to own a Leather Head ball because they’re so unique.

Their Black Python football is a perfect example of this.

There’s just as big a market for sports collectibles as there is for active sporting goods.

2 Under Armour

Under Armour Homepage

Under Armour manufactures an internationally recognized range of sports clothing, worn by everyone from famous athletes to weekend gym warriors.

They’ve been around since 1996 when they created Prototype #0037, or what they referred to as “The Shorty”.

This shirt wicked moisture away from the body, making workouts a whole lot more comfortable.

But that’s as much time as we’re going to invest in their backstory.

How much money can you make promoting Under Armour’s products?

Their affiliate program (with Awin) pays 5% on all sales, with $100 average order value.

The TLDR here is that affiliates who promote Under Armour products stand to make a lot of money from their traffic.

3 TaylorMade Golf

Taylor Made Golf Homepage

The TaylorMade Golf Company began its life in a converted warehouse with three employees and an idea for a better golf club.

That was back in 1979, and since then the company has grown to the point where their golf clubs are used by some of the biggest names in the game, such as Rory McIlroy, Tiger Woods, Jason Day, Dustin Johnson, and 1,500 other PGA Professionals.

58% of golfers spend between $1,000 and $5,000 each year on their sport/hobby.

There’s a smaller percentage that spends way more than that, so the 6% commission paid by TaylorMade might seem small, but 5% of a $5k sale is $300.

And if you can tap into the golfing market you can expect to make commissions like that on a regular basis.

4 Gainful

Gainful Homepage

Do you know what’s in that protein powder you chug after each workout?
Is it even the right protein powder for your physiology i.e. are you an ectomorph or a mesomorph?

Gainful has created a range of flavored protein powder blends tailored for your individual needs.

They even provide you with a quiz to figure out which protein powder best suits you, and you can then choose what flavor you want your personalized protein shake to be.

Affiliates make $30 per sale, and promoting this program should be pretty easy if you can send relevant and qualified traffic their way.

Having gone through their marketing funnel we have to say it’s pretty clever and compelling enough to make a casual visitor consider making a purchase.

5 Play Your Court

Play Your Court Homepage

Play Your Court, founded by tennis professional Scott Baxter, has been in business since 2008.

As with most brilliant ideas, the concept for Play Your Court is disarmingly simple – they send a qualified tennis coach to your neighborhood court to train you.

This saves tennis novices the headache of having to find a local professional that offers lessons and then driving to their club.

Each of their coaches is PTR or USPTA certified and will have several years of experience in coaching people at all levels and abilities.

As of last count, 18 million Americans play tennis and of that number, many of them would love to play at a professional level.

This means there’s a ready market for what Play Your Court offers, and you’ll earn $15 per sale for customers you refer to them.

$15 per sale is a relatively small amount, but remember you have 18,000,000 customers to target, with new players taking up the sport every year.

After all, how hard is it to pre-sell a terrible tennis player on the idea of improving their game without ever having to leave their neighborhood?

6 Mountain Hardwear

Mountain Hardwear Homepage

Their brand name might lead you to believe this company sells climbing ropes, harnesses, helmets, carabiners, and other climbing equipment.

But what Mountain Hardwear actually sells is a range of clothing, tents, sleeping bags, and backpacks for climbers and hikers who don’t want to compromise on quality.

So you wouldn’t be promoting products aimed at an extreme sports niche, but rather products that would be of interest to hikers, climbers, outdoorsy types, and even preppers.

There’s a lot of demand for high-quality products that also don’t weigh very much, which is exactly what this company sells.

A good insulated jacket can cost $500 – $1,000 but hikers/climbers will have no problem paying that amount because that jacket could literally save their lives.

Based on that, affiliates can expect an average order value of $140 per customer, with an 8% commission paid on each sale.

The EPC for this program isn’t huge, but their network earnings are, which will balance things out in terms of your site’s revenue.

7 Sports Memorabilia

Sports Memorabilia Homepage

SportsMemorabilia.com sells…well…sports memorabilia.

This niche market has always been a valuable one, but online retail opportunities have seen it flourish even more.

The US market for sports memorabilia is worth in the region of $5.4 billion, which is way more than we thought it might be.

A sizable amount of that money is spent on eBay, but dedicated memorabilia retailers also account for hundreds of millions of dollars in sales.

Anyone with a sports-related website can benefit from this affiliate program because they sell everything from balls, shirts, and caps to trading cards.

And every item is certified 100% authentic, so you know your visitors are getting a good deal.

They also have an average order value of $220.18, and hundreds of thousands of items in their data feed, all of which pay you a 10% commission.

8 Jump Sport

Jump Sport Homepage

Jump Sport is a family-owned business that’s been around for 20 years.
They also patented and manufactured the first safety enclosure for trampolines, which has saved a lot of people from potential injury.

Trampolining is a sport in as much as it is a fun activity for kids, and Jump Sport is capitalizing on that with their range of products.

They sell everything from large family backyard trampolines to the smaller individual trampolines used in gym classes.

You might be wondering how profitable a trampoline offer could possibly be, and in that case, we’d like to draw your attention to their average order value of $519.03.

Even those small fitness trampolines can cost anywhere from $250 – $600 each, so there’s a lot of scope here for making money.

The demand for trampolines is usually seasonal, but that’s only for the outdoor models – gym trampolines are in demand year-round.

9 Go Pro

Go Pro Homepage

Go Pro needs no introduction, or at least they don’t if you’ve watched YouTube for more than 10 minutes.

Everyone seems to have a GoPro camera these days, from extreme sports enthusiasts and hunters to families just out for an afternoon hike.

Recording everything outdoor activity you do seems to have become an obsession for some people, although they do say that memories are priceless.

Nobody could ever have predicted the sheer size of the market for a personal video camera you can take anywhere, including underwater.

Go Pro is also a top network earner on Commission Junction — the fourth-most-popular affiliate network, according to our affiliate marketing statistics — with an EPC of $81.56 based on a 5% sales commission.

Again, this is a product range you won’t have to pre-sell because Go Pro uploaders have amassed almost 2 billion views on YouTube.

All you need now is the right type of traffic to send their way.

10 X3 Bar

X3 Homepage

The X3 is a complete home gym system created by Dr. John Jaquish, but he’s also the creator of the new X3 Bar product.

These products are aimed squarely at people who want to get fit from home, or for those who simply don’t have time to get to the gym, for various reasons.

His X3 Bar product is actually kind of interesting because it reduces a full home gym down to a footplate, a metal bar, and some resistance bands.

What’s important for you as an affiliate is they have a ton of social proof you can use in your marketing campaigns.

Success stories boost conversions better than just about any other type of recommendation.

The fact that the guy who created the X3 system is also ripped AF is additional social proof you could use.

As you can see the X3 bar has an EPC of almost $300, and an even stronger 7-day EPC of over $400.

This figure is due in no small part to a unit price of $594 (as of the time of writing), so you should only send pre-qualified traffic to this offer i.e. they already know how much the X3 Bar costs.

But it is also a perfect product to start a “personal journey” blog or YouTube channel around.

  • URL: X3 Bar affiliate program (via Commission Junction)
  • Commission rate: 15% per sale
  • EPC: $281.68
  • Cookie duration: 45 days

11 Enigma Fishing

Enigma Fishing Homepage

Enigma Fishing was started with the goal of taking the sport of fishing to the next level.

They wanted to facilitate everything from helping new anglers find a great rod at a reasonable price, to helping rising stars find the sponsorship they so badly need.

49 million Americans take part in recreational fishing each year, so you can 5x that to factor in your potential global audience.

Anglers spend around $7.4 billion per year collectively on their sport and another $7.8 billion on food and lodging during fishing trips.

You could promote everything from fishing gear and tackle, to flights and hotel accommodation to this audience.

So what you might have considered an annoying “hobby” could actually be a goldmine for affiliates with the right approach.

This opinion is backed up by an average order value of $213.18 for warm traffic referred to the Enigma Fishing site.

The 20% commission on offer is also pretty generous – Amazon pays a 15% commission on sporting goods.

Signing up with Enigma Fishing could potentially add an extra 5% to your gross website revenue from the same amount of traffic you have right now.

Conclusion

We did our best in this roundup to present you with a range of sports affiliate programs that would appeal to either a very niche audience in the case of fishing, tennis, and golf.

Or, to a much broader audience in the case of sites like Hidrate Spark, SportsMemorabilia.com or Gainful.

What’s worth remembering here is that sports fans are usually beyond being mere “fans” in relation to their respective hobby – they’re almost zealots.

And being able to engage with a market like that can help make you more money than you thought possible from a single website.

But if you’re still at the stage of, “I have no idea how this affiliate stuff works”, then we’d like to invite you to join our free training session on how to build what we call “authority sites”.

You can register for the training session here, and don’t worry there are no sales calls afterward, or any of that guru nonsense.

about the author

Niall is a Senior SEO Specialist who excels in on-page optimization and off-page link building campaigns. He's been in SEO so long that his experience predates the existence of Google. 

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