Ford Just Rebuilt Its Funnel But Dealers Weren't in the Blueprint.

In November, it put certified pre-owned vehicles on Amazon. In early March, it launched a serialized campaign engineered for Apple TV's sequential ad format. Days later, it replaced Chevrolet as MLB's exclusive automotive partner after a 20-year run. Top of funnel. Middle of funnel. Bottom of funnel.

Ford entered 2026 with active partnerships across 10 MLB clubs — Yankees, Red Sox, Braves among them. The league-level deal consolidates that patchwork into a single national-exclusive position spanning Opening Day, All-Star Week, the postseason, Minor League Baseball and the Little League World Series.

MLB CMO Uzma Rawn Dowler sold the value in distribution language: "the national scale of our content" would drive engagement for the new partner. A league executive pitching reach over regionality tells you where MLB thinks its audience lives now.

The math supports that confidence. MLB's team sponsorship revenue hit $2.05 billion in 2025 — up 68% since 2022, the second North American league to cross that threshold behind the NFL. National-exclusive category deals don't get sold at those multiples unless the league can deliver a national audience without 15 regional carriers.

🆘 SOS Insight: Ford dealers were among the largest categories of regional sports network advertisers for decades. The RSN collapse broke the economic loop connecting national brands to local retail.

But baseball isn't a national sport...

Baseball is the most regional of the four major sports. Nobody roots for "baseball." They root for the Tigers, the Cardinals, the Mariners. The emotional attachment lives at the team level, and the RSN model worked because it matched that geography exactly. A Tigers fan watching a Tuesday night game on Bally Sports Detroit saw a Suburban Ford ad with a local number and a weekend sales event. Emotional context — my team. Commercial context — my dealer, my market. One easy loop.

Ford's MLB deal is calibrated to the tentpole layer: Opening Day, the All-Star Game, the World Series. Those events deliver national audiences. The World Baseball Classic pulled 10.78M viewers for USA vs. Venezuela on FOX which are broadcast-tier numbers that justify league-level pricing.

But the regular season is 2,430 games across 162 nights. The Reds hosting the Mets on a Tuesday in June is a regional product serving a regional audience on a regional carrier that may not exist next year. That was the dealer's inventory. The tentpole has never been.

A Ford spot during the World Series builds brand equity for Dearborn. It doesn't drive lot traffic in Dearborn. And the loss is more immediate than the macro story suggests. Under the old model, the local dealer borrowed the team's identity — "proud partner of your Detroit Tigers" on the showroom banner, in the pre-game radio read, woven into the community sports fabric. That was local brand equity the dealer couldn't buy on its own. Now Ford corporate owns the MLB relationship.

The creative was built to exclude local inventory

Ford and Wieden+Kennedy New York launched "Every Ground Is Our Proving Ground" on March 5, timed to the first F1 practice session on Apple TV. The campaign uses Apple's sequential ad capabilities to unspool a micro-docuseries across a race weekend — episodic spots that build on each other from Friday practice through Sunday's Grand Prix.

"We knew that standard commercials wouldn't cut it for the F1 audience," Ford CMO Lisa Materazzo said. Michael Cope, Ford's senior director of consumer marketing, described the sequential format as placing a 30-second introduction followed "with more of an engineering explanation of what's required in order for us to compete at the very highest level."

A tier two dealer co-op cannot buy into a serialized narrative on Apple TV. The format is the strategy. By designing creative that only functions inside a streaming platform's sequential architecture, Ford built a mid-funnel campaign structurally incompatible with local ad inventory.

The showroom that Amazon built?

Ford's Amazon Autos partnership launched in three DMAs — Los Angeles, Dallas-Fort Worth and Seattle — covering roughly 11.2 million TV households, or about 9% of the national market. Buyers browse, finance and purchase Ford Blue Advantage CPO vehicles online, then schedule a dealer pickup. Robert Kaffl, Ford's executive director of U.S. sales and dealer relations, offered the approved talking points: dealers could offer inventory "through Amazon's accessible digital platform, while maintaining the benefits that customers enjoy" from dealer relationships.

The math beneath that reassurance is thin. Three markets. Nine percent of the country. Of Ford's roughly 2,900 U.S. dealers, about 160 to 180 expressed initial interest. Around 20 had launched at announcement — 0.7% of the dealer network covering 9% of the addressable geography, on used inventory only. Against Ford's 2.2 million annual units and 13.2% U.S. market share, a rounding error.

But Amazon didn't launch Prime Video in every market either. Ford told Bloomberg it would evaluate expanding to new vehicle sales — the same path Hyundai has taken on the platform. The current footprint isn't the story. The architecture and impact to local dealers is.

If MLB handles prestige and Apple TV handles consideration, Amazon is doing the work the dealer used to do: converting intent into a transaction.

Breaking down what's left

Ford isn't abandoning its franchise network. The MLB deal includes Little League grants in plant communities. Amazon Autos handles only CPO inventory today. Chevy branding stays on the Comerica Park fountain through a separate dealer agreement — the old local model literally coexisting with the new national one inside the same stadium.

But the structural logic compounds in one direction. When a brand historically dependent on local distribution centralizes its sponsorship strategy, designs creative that only works on national streaming platforms and opens a direct-to-consumer retail channel through the world's largest e-commerce company, the question is no longer whether the local layer is under pressure.

Industry insider Amber Daniel added that "The Regional Sports Network collapse broke the connective tissue between the national brand and the local dealership. We used to borrow the team's identity. That mattered in ways that are hard to quantify but very easy to feel now that it's gone."

In her role as Chief Revenue Officer at Cognition, Amber is having conversations with the entire automotive value chain, daily. From 'how do we measure our full media investment' to advising agencies on best-practices for supporting local dealers, Amber's perspective is unique adding that "Ford can't simply abandon the franchise model. The dealer network is the last-mile infrastructure and who the customer has a relationship with".

Strategies for dealers

Tier two and three should consider strategies that either draft on the halo effect created by the tier one investment in national awareness and/or fill in the regional gaps with more broadly "unified" media planning to an addressable audience of streaming households in the market or areas you sell. For reaching sports audiences, they are still predominantly on linear television and the best approach combines consideration of both.

If you enjoyed this you may also enjoy this State of Streaming podcast with Ross Benes, Senior Analyst at EMARKETER about his research on where sports viewership really is.