Both teams at the NFL Madrid game are Sports Illustrated Tickets clients
The Bengals and Falcons are both Sports Illustrated Tickets clients, and Ticketmaster is both teams' ticketing sponsor. That split shows NFL clubs selling fan experience as a category separate from primary ticketing.
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Key takeaways
Both clubs in Madrid work with Ticketmaster as their ticketing sponsor; SI Tickets is presenting sponsor for the Bengals’ fan party.
For club partnership teams, the useful question is which fan-facing rights sit outside the ticketing sponsor's category and can be sold on their own.
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The Bengals and Falcons have a sponsorship deal with the same company, and that company is not their ticketing sponsor.
Both clubs are Sports Illustrated Tickets clients, and both work with Ticketmaster as their ticketing sponsor, Ethan Joyce reported for Sports Business Journal. SI Tickets is extending its official fan experience deal with the Bengals to cover the club's game against the Falcons in Madrid this Sunday. It will be presenting sponsor of the Bengals' fan party there and will run other on-site activations.
That arrangement matters to anyone who sells or buys team partnerships. Ticketmaster holds the ticketing category for both clubs, and SI Tickets sponsors the Bengals' party at the same game. That suggests two ticketing brands can share one game when they sponsor different things.
So the real question is what a club sells when it sells "fan experience," and why that right travels so easily to a game abroad. The Bengals deal gives a fairly detailed answer.
A six-club footprint built on fan experience
SBJ describes the Madrid extension as the latest attempt by SI Tickets to find sponsorship opportunities around the NFL's international push. The company now holds deals at the club level and at the league level, and both kinds are in play this weekend.
Where Sports Illustrated Tickets sits in the NFL
Sports Business Journal; Sports Illustrated Tickets
Taken together, these deals suggest one possible route into the league: sign clubs as their fan experience sponsor, then carry those deals into the league's international events. In Madrid the two layers overlap. SI Tickets holds the league's fan experience role in Spain and the Bengals' club role at the same game, so one brand covers both the league's event and one team's traveling fans.
The company's own storefront shows why it comes in through fan experience and not primary ticketing. SI Tickets calls itself a "fan-first ticketing marketplace" and tells buyers that prices may be higher or lower than face value. Its Bengals page carries the NFL Ticket HQ logo and lists the Madrid game at Estadio Santiago Bernabéu, along with parking passes for home games at Paycor Stadium. The company sells tickets as a marketplace, and its sponsorship role covers what fans do around the ticket.
What the Bengals category actually includes
The Bengals relationship gives a concrete picture of what a fan experience sponsor gets. On the club's own site, a feature called Faces in the Crowd by SI Tickets lets fans find photos of themselves from a game. Through a portal at bengals.mymomento.com, they pick the event, enter their seat information and contact details, and get gameday photos back. It is a small product, but it's a branded touchpoint tied to a specific seat and a specific fan.
The party format has a history too. In September 2024, Cincinnati's 700WLW reported that the Bengals and SI Tickets, already described as an official fan experience partner, would host an inaugural Jungle Watch Party in the CareSource Club at Paycor Stadium during a game against the Kansas City Chiefs. The event promised special Bengals guests, mascot Who Dey and the Ben-Gals cheerleaders, plus a Sports Illustrated Digital Fan Cover for each fan. Tickets cost $99 and included $25 for discounted concessions.
That earlier event suggests the Madrid fan party builds on a format the two sides first tried at home at least two seasons ago. It also shows the category can produce revenue on its own: a paid event with a set price, a concessions credit and a branded keepsake, all without selling a seat to the game.
Three separate rights sit near the ticket in this story. The ticketing sponsor (Ticketmaster for both Madrid clubs) handles the club's ticketing category. The official fan experience sponsor (Sports Illustrated Tickets) gets parties, activations and fan-facing products like seat photos. NFL Ticket HQ is the league's licensed resale channel, and Sports Illustrated Tickets is part of it.
The fit is easy to see. A ticketing company gains from being in front of fans before and after games, and fan experience rights put it there without competing with a club's ticketing sponsor.
The case for reading it small
There is a fair argument that these are modest deals. Fan experience is a narrower right than ticketing, and no financial terms were reported.
Still, the small scale is what makes the model easy to repeat. A club can add a game abroad to an existing fan experience deal without reopening its ticketing agreement, and that's how this Bengals deal grew into Madrid.
Client opponents on the Bengals' November calendar
The company's client list also overlaps with the Bengals' own season. The Madrid opponent, the Falcons, is also a Sports Illustrated Tickets client. The Bengals head to Spain at 5-2, second in the AFC North, according to SI.com.
The overlap continues after Madrid. SI Tickets' own Bengals listings show the Steelers visiting Paycor Stadium for Sunday Night Football on Nov. 15, followed by a Monday night trip to the Commanders at Northwest Stadium on Nov. 23. Both clubs are on the six-club list SBJ reported. The Bengals opened the season on Sept. 13 against the Buccaneers, a fourth client, according to the club's fan photo galleries.
Those matchups are a coincidence of the schedule. They are also what a six-club deal looks like on a calendar: in three straight November weeks, the brand's fan experience clients are on both sides of the Bengals' game. For a sponsor, that means the same activation playbook could appear for both fan bases at a single game.
When scoping a ticketing-adjacent partnership, list which fan-facing rights sit outside the ticketing sponsor's category. Madrid shows a club can sell those separately and keep both partners in the same building.
The next marker is the league's next international schedule. If other clubs' fan experience deals follow the Bengals' into international games, fan experience could become a standard part of an international game's sponsorship package.
Sources
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