Jeremy Carey is stepping up to the plate for team Omnicom.
Today, Omnicom Media North America named Carey president of Optimum Sports (OS), the holding company’s in-house sports media and marketing group. Carey, a long-standing Omnicom veteran, joined OS in 2005 and most recently served as the chief investment officer, a role he held for three years. Carey takes over from cofounder Tom McGovern, who established OS in 2002 and is transitioning into a consulting role within Omnicom Media.
Carey has generated significant momentum for OS over the years. As CIO, he led the
evolution of the sports marketing arm beyond scale and presence toward culture relevance. He has overseen the group’s expansion into new areas of partnerships, from NIL deals to athlete-centric stories. OS manages sports media and marketing investment and strategies for clients across the Omnicom client roster, including campaigns for The Home Depot, AT&T, State Farm, Nissan, Uber and Eli Lilly. In 2025, OS handled 25% of Super Bowl LIX ad spending on Fox.
Most notably, Carey oversaw the launch of Omni Sports, OS’ proprietary intelligence platform. Powered by Omnicom’s Omni platform, it connects media exposure, cultural relevance and commercial outcomes for a data-backed performance approach. Omni Sports was “further strengthened by the expanded data and identity unlocked through Omnicom’s acquisition of IPG” and the integration of Acxiom RealID, according to the company’s statement.
McGovern credits his successor’s history with the company as a strong foundation for his new leadership role. “I am incredibly proud of what we’ve built together, and I have complete confidence that under Jeremy’s leadership, Optimum Sports will continue to push the category forward and deliver even greater impact for Omnicom clients,” McGovern shared in the company statement.
During the 2026 CES, Campaign spoke with Carey at Omnicom’s dedicated space. He shared an under-the-hood view of OS’ business approach and strategy, including a look at what the group’s typical Super Bowl night entails and how athletes have evolved beyond mere influencers into their own media companies.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
What role does Optimum Sports play in the bigger Omnicom strategy?
I’ll take it back a little bit to our formative years. In terms of how we looked at things, there was a ton of money being spent on sports. The numbers were going up rather dramatically every year — exponential growth in terms of the valuation of broadcast rights and what that means. So we looked at sports as a larger opportunity to activate.
When you think about the fragmentation taking place in the marketplace, athletes as influencers, teams, leagues — these are their own media components. So how do we build something more holistic? How do we build specific sports platforms?
First, we look at the research — a data-informed approach that may identify certain sports. We also need to have an understanding of that sport — what are the openings? Is there white space? Is there green space for us to activate and operate in? Are we buying it, or are we building it? All these things come into play for us as we try to find what the right opportunity is for any given client.
So we go from saying, “It’s a messaging play in the media space” to saying, “Hey, we’re building this holistic platform that surrounds sports in many ways and hopefully makes the brand feel more endemic to that sport to be able to capitalize on the engagement — the fan engagement that we know is just booming right now.”
Aside from the talent and the expertise, what’s a big point of differentiation for Optimum Sports compared to other agency sports-centric offerings?
Notably across the industry, there’s no other sports marketing agency at this stage in terms of development that sits within and is closely knit into a media holding company.
We have visibility into every dollar that gets spent across the media space. [For example], someone’s spending $20 million, and they feel like it’s just a mass play or a brand play or a commercial play — how do we take that and build that into something totally different? It may bring in experiential. We may look at it and say, “There’s an opportunity here for us to bring these clients on the ground and do an in-person activation around the Super Bowl,” and show them what it means. Show them the fandom that surrounds it. Show them all the NFL activations that surround the weekend itself and what that could mean in terms of activating their brands and their consumer approach.
Are there any sports or leagues you see that could get some more traction this year? For example, the Professional Women’s Hockey League is emerging.
Yeah, we love it. We’ve done a lot of work with the NWSL, both from the property side and on the media side. Big supporters of the continued growth around women’s basketball on the college side and the WNBA. We’re doing a lot in NIL partnerships.
Our approach to [women’s sports] generally is that we feel like we have a responsibility to help grow it. We’re not looking at this [space] and saying, “What’s out there and how do we take advantage of it?” We’re looking at it and saying, “What’s out there and what can we bring [from] our brand to help grow it?” So that’s always been the approach: to build and develop a larger, more diverse audience.
Are there any misconceptions about the value of media buying in sports and its ROI?
Historically, people thought that owning IP, owning a corporate partnership or any sponsorship was a holistic brand play. “Hey, your logo is slapped up there.” But now we’re getting deeper into understanding what the impact of that [media buy] is through tracking image recognition and social awareness through our Omni Sports software.
On the media side — [brands] once thought of and looked at sports as a scale play. We don’t think of it like that. Sports can be upper funnel, mid-funnel or lower funnel. Sports can serve all those needs for any given client at any given point.
The content side of it is really about targetable scale. Whereas most brands are looking at it like, “We’ll still go in and buy that linear, non-targetable inventory across sports,” we’re saying, “No, whatever is targetable, we want to be smart about utilization on it.”
There needs to be connectivity. [For example], if I’ve got Jalen Hurts on my client roster, and I know my spot airs here and there’s a big play going into halftime, we can do like a real-time war-room and do social activation utilizing pre-built Jalen Hurts creative that’s going to blow people’s minds and totally resonate. We did that stuff early on with P&G’s Tide in the Super Bowl. A lot of that was pre-recorded. But it’s [about] understanding beyond this commercial space to truly activate in a sports environment because there are so many different touchpoints.
Your client roster kind of doubled [with the IPG acquisition]. Does OS come into play later on or are you currently having to onboard new clients?
Optimum Sports is a paid service. Clients opt into it. Our stance across the board is that every client should have some level of sports marketing services. We understand we’re not the only sports marketing service out there. There are other sports marketing services within Omnicom, but we are closely connected to media activation and that’s really the special sauce in terms of how to do it the right way.
Doing these things in isolation leaves client teams feeling like they’re a little out of touch with what’s going on. They’ve got a specific sports marketing team that handles one side and they have a media team over here that handles the other side. We can bring that together for them and make sure that one side sees the benefit of bringing the other side closer into the negotiation.
What does Super Bowl night look like for your team? Is there a war room?
It’s mostly done on the brand level. We’re very tight with the agency teams that sit within Omnicom. We have people in the suite who are monitoring the game. In the suite, there’s a phone that [connects] to the trucks. They know what’s going on. We’ll know in real-time if they need to push the “floater” (an advertising slot purchased with flexibility in scheduling) out of the first quarter into the second quarter, or [if] they need to skip a unit or slide a unit up.
Even when the clients who purchase the game are sitting in the seats, there’s usually someone on our team sitting near them. If there’s an issue with the spot, they’ll let them know right away. When you’re out there and you’re spending tens of millions of dollars on this type of investment, the level of service needs to be there.
Creators are playing a bigger role in the sports world in general. How are you working that into your strategy?
Professional athletes are their own media companies. They’ve got their own production companies doing all these different things. They’re pushing out content. They know the value of their own individual brands, just like any other network or environment understands what is the value of their brand. They’re bringing people into their home. They’re showing them their cars. They’re doing all of this stuff in real time with huge [production] teams.
We’ve got over 100 athletes under contract right now. We’re striking a lot of partnerships with college athletes in the NIL space. We have a long-standing relationship around the Heisman and we are having conversations with the new Heisman winner. There’s a ton we’re doing with the athlete space. I say “athlete as influencer,” but really it’s “athlete as talent.” It’s another media company.
