The Hashtag Sports Awards set the benchmark for effective fan and consumer engagement. The red carpet awards ceremony takes place during the annual Hashtag Sports Festival in Las Vegas, NV in the United States.

The awards spotlight and celebrate top trends and proven practices in fan engagement in order to inspire the global sports media, marketing, and entertainment industries to raise the bar of the fan experience.

A diverse group of judges reviews entries for each panel. Judges include brand marketers, league, team, and club CMOs, media luminaries, agency heads, athletes, and creators.

Together, the judging panels comprise the Engagement Academy of Sports x Entertainment, a prestigious honorary organization designed to put the fan first and push the industry forward with values of inclusivity, diversity, and authenticity.

Judges will review and score entries based on the following criteria: engagement; creativity & innovation; and results & impacts.

Individuals and organizations who win Hashtag Sports Awards will be viewed as experts in engaging the modern sports fan—a highly coveted consumer. Winning one of our awards will future-proof your organization in the increasingly digital sports landscape by showcasing engagement expertise and proving your work’s effectiveness in driving revenue & achieving business results—not to mention opening up the door for industry-wide exposure, new business, and more.

Click here to view the rules of the awards.

Entries open on January 5, 2022 and will close April 1, 2022. There are price increases set for February 1 and March 22. Judging will start April 20 and winners will be announced during the 4th Hashtag Sports Awards show.

The Hashtag Sports Awards will feature over fifty categories spread across nine topics: Content, Brands & Partnerships, Fan Experience, Impact, Campaigns & Marketing, Entertainment, Emerging, Sports Betting and Social Media. View a full list of categories with their descriptions on our website or in the "Categories" tab on the left.

Click here and begin by creating an account for our awards entry portal.

Yes! After creating an entry, you can save your progress and return to it later or edit it after submitting if needed. The deadline for all entries is April 1, 2022.

Of course! In fact, we encourage you to enter multiple categories—even for the same work. Our most prestigious award for organizations is the Outstanding Achievement in Overall Engagement. This award honors the single organization who is most highly-rated through a combination of total shortlist nominations and weighted scores of judges. Consider it our “Best in Show.”

You will receive a 20% discount on fees for all entries after the first entry. This discount is automatically applied upon checkout. If you’re entering the same work into multiple categories, all entries will be judged separately for each category it is entered into.

All entries require basic information about the entrant organization, engagement objectives and results, and samples of the work (for categories related to content or campaigns). We also require all entrants to submit an image (minimum 2400 x 1200 pixels) representing the entry for use in our winner’s gallery and public display of finalists on our website.

As part of our mission to recognize doers and creators, we require proper credits & contributors for all people who contributed to the entry. Those who do not properly attribute credit will be penalized in scoring. There is a fee to add contributors after finalists have been announced.

You can download a free entry template here.

If selected as a finalist, your content/campaign will be displayed in our gallery and shown during the live show. In order to maintain the highest resolution, we ask you to upload the original video file or provide a way for us to download the original file. For ease of uploading, we highly recommend uploading the video to Vimeo or Dropbox. If the video has the be password protected, make sure to submit the password within your entry and ensure the download link is not set to expire.

Yes, this is an option. You can upload the .mov or .mp4 file directly into our entry portal (maximum 500MB). However, please keep in mind that upload times are dependent upon your internet connection. If you already have the original file uploaded to Dropbox or Vimeo, it will likely make for an easier entry process to provide the video URL.

Judges will review and score entries based on the following criteria: engagement; creativity & innovation; and results & impacts.

If you have all your information ready, the application should take no more than 30-45 minutes. This does not include attachment upload time. Please ensure you have a strong and stable internet connection if uploading attachments.

You will receive a confirmation email within a few hours of submitting your entry which contains your entry ID. Use this if you need to make any additions or changes to the entry. Judging will not begin until after the last entry date (April 1, 2022). After the deadline has passed, you will receive an email from our team if you have been selected as a finalist.

Due to a high volume of expected entries, we may not be able to notify all entrants of their standing. Finalists will be notified in May via email.

Check your spam/junk folder first. If it’s not there, please contact hello@hashtagsports.com and our team can confirm whether your entry was successfully submitted. To see an invoice, navigate back to the "My Entries" tab.

Yes, Hashtag Sports prides itself on it’s large (and growing) international community. Submissions outside the U.S. are eligible in all categories.

We welcome content or campaigns that are produced in other languages. However, the entry form itself must be completed in English. We also highly recommend all non-English entries have subtitles or dubbing to aid our judges.

The fee for submitting a single entry is currently $495 USD during the Late Entry period which closes on April 1, 11:59pm EDT. After your first entry, there is a 20% discount applied to every successive entry.

Yes, if you submit more than one entry, a 20% discount is automatically applied to each subsequent entry.

No. If you enter at the current entry rate, each entry that follows the first will be $316 each (plus taxes and fees).

Yes. The discount will apply automatically when entering more than one awards category under the same user account. Please reach out to hello@hashtagsports.com with your first entry’s ID if you run into issues, and we’re happy to provide a special discount code for checkout.

You can reach out to our awards team directly at hello@hashtagsports.com and ask if your specific organization or company has already entered. Note that the email must come from an official company email and not a personal account; we will not disclose any information to personal accounts. If your organization has already entered, we will provide a discount code for the equivalent amount. We can not, however, provide retroactive discounts or refunds.

You will be charged the price for the period during which you submit your work. The starting date of the entry has no bearing on your entry fee.

For example: If you started entering your entry on the last day of the first deadline but did not submit it until the second deadline, you will be charged the second deadline entry fee since that is when you submitted your entry for consideration.

Your credit card will be charged at the end of the entry process after you select the payment button.

Oh no! This could happen if you clicked the payment button multiple times. If this happened to you, please email a copy of your confirmation receipt to billing@hashtagsports.com.

Invoices are available for download on the confirmation page after submitting your entry. Visit "My Entries" to locate your invoice. Please note that special requests for invoicing may take up to two weeks to process based on entry volume.

Entries may only be withdrawn if there is an issue due to copyright, hateful/hurtful language, inappropriate images, or other legal restrictions. We generally have a no refund policy. If you have any additional questions on this, please reach out to hello@hashtagsports.com.

Yes, entries will be open for changes until April 1, 2022. You can adjust any entry field or add additional file uploads up until that date by logging into the entry portal.

No. Hashtag Sports does not provide compensation for travel or expenses. However, we will share more information at the time of shortlist reveal on preferred hotel rates and conference ticket opportunities.

For all shortlisted entries (including winners), the following will be displayed on our gallery: Entrant Organization(s); Entry Title; Entrant Image; Video Content (if applicable); Individual Credits; Engagement Objective/Strategy/Results. Please ensure information that cannot be displayed is included in the "Confidential Information" section.

While attendance is not mandatory, it is strongly encouraged. The Hashtag Sports Awards typically take place in a blockbuster ceremony during the Hashtag Sports annaul conference. The live, invite-only show is as engaging as the creators, content, and campaigns it celebrates. Winners who attend are recognized onsite, although not all awards may be given or publicized in the same manner. Plans for the 2022 ceremony will be announced in the spring.

We wouldn’t call it The Hashtag Sports Awards if you couldn’t! Use #HSAwards and tag us @HashtagSports. High chance we RT (it’s effective engagement).

Definitely. Visit our brand resources page here for access to logos and branding assets/information.

Join our “Events” mailing list here.

Yep! In fact, that’s how we got our start. We curate a weekly newsletter that has become a go-to source for sports media and marketing professionals looking to reach/engage a new generation of fans. Subscribe here. Additionally, you can browse the case studies showcasing last year’s award winners here.

We do our best to spotlight as many entrants as possible throughout the calendar year on Engage, our digital publication. Winners are showcased through our case study Q&As. If you have a campaign, partnership, content, or news you would like to share about your organization, please submit here.

Yes, we will publish a press release announcing the finalists (after they have been individually notified) and showcase their work in a gallery—featuring case studies—on our website.

If you’re interested in sponsoring, please reach out to emily@hashtagsports.com.

Yes, follow along with #HSAwards to stay up-to-date and join the conversation!

We like creative thinkers! Send our awards support team an email at tracey@hashtagsports.com.

Judges will review and score entries based on the following criteria: engagement; creativity & innovation; and results & impacts.