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Digital engagement is the front door to fandom
Digital fandom is transforming from gameday moments to year-round engagement. Discover how forward-looking teams like the San Francisco 49ers are reinventing fan experiences through personalized platforms, seamless stadiums, and data-powered ecosystems that open new paths to loyalty and growth.
AI and AI agents in sports: The game behind the game is changing
From AI-powered coaching decisions to hyper-personalized fan engagement and autonomous operations, leading teams are embedding agentic AI to gain a competitive edge on the field, in the front office, and across the fan experience.
Membership is the new season ticket
Ticketing is moving beyond a transaction and becoming a gateway to loyalty, flexibility, and fan trust. Explore how leading teams are shifting from one-off sales to membership-driven models, using subscriptions, perks, and transparent pricing to unlock sustainable demand and long-term value.
Can league structures keep up with evolving athlete economics?
Athletes are gaining new economic power—from equity deals to external incentives—reshaping how teams and leagues manage compensation and control. Discover why traditional salary cap models are under pressure and how player ownership, NIL-style dynamics, and new revenue-sharing approaches could impact the industry.
Faster, leaner, smarter: The new sports operations model
By 2028, we predict sports organizations will likely unlock significant profit growth through smarter, leaner operations. Early adopters like Formula 1 are proving the model. Now, investor pressure is pushing leagues and teams across sports to follow suit—making operational efficiency the defining driver of future profitability.
Private equity and institutional investors have become some of the most influential forces in global sports. With ownership stakes spreading across football clubs, US leagues and even mega-events, investors are applying the same lens they bring to portfolio companies: grow margins, not just revenues. At the same time, the costs of travel, talent, and technology continue to rise. Global expansion—with leagues stretching calendars to reach new audiences—makes old operating models unsustainable. Together, these pressures have created the catalyst for change.
For years, Formula 1 was structured around a focused calendar. Equipment often returned to headquarters for maintenance. Race operations were mostly managed through legacy systems. Processes lived in the institutional knowledge of long-tenured crew. As the calendar expanded to 24 races across the globe, that model wasn’t feasible anymore.
Working together with PwC, Formula 1 is reinventing its race operations model to move faster and position F1 for long-term, sustainable growth.
Shared media rights may redefine sports media economics
Sports leagues are entering a new phase in how they manage media rights. Over the next three years, leagues around the world may shift from traditional auction-style bidding processes toward equity-driven partnerships with distribution platforms.
In the current model, some leagues hold limited ownership of live rights products through such outlets as NFL Network or NBA TV, carrying a portion of live programming while still selling the majority of national rights to broadcasters. The future could be very different, with leagues embedding ownership into distribution itself, creating shared control of fan data, expanded direct-to-consumer subscription offerings, and greater access to league-owned content libraries. The deal between the NFL and ESPN offers a clear signal where partnerships are heading. The NFL acquired a 10% stake in ESPN in exchange for control of NFL Network, broad rights to RedZone, fantasy offerings, and licensing of parts of its intellectual property library. Through equity participation, leagues now benefit from recurring revenue streams, deeper fan insights that can drive better advertising, and stronger alignment with the growth trajectories of their media partners.
Leagues recognize that long-term value cannot rest solely on live broadcasts. They’re elevating the role of their media libraries, packaging documentaries, in-game highlights, and behind-the-scenes content alongside live events to create more compelling digital offerings that drive engagement. As NBA commissioner Adam Silver recently noted, the NBA, “is very much a highlights-based sport,”1 emphasizing the need for leagues to deepen their relationships with the outlets that create and distribute the increasingly popular, customizable highlight reels. This aligns with the growing influence of sports content creators across the media landscape. As leagues and broadcasting networks strategically form partnerships that grant creators specialized access to produce unique programming, the relationship between media outlets and leagues will only grow more vital. In the age of social media, bundling live games with content tailored to younger audiences will further strengthen fan loyalty and enhance the behavioral data that powers personalized engagement, advertising strategies, and global expansion.
For networks, digital platforms, and fans, equity partnerships offer a lot of opportunity. Traditional networks can no longer rely solely on cash-heavy rights agreements, and equity models instead provide a more robust way to align with league growth strategies. Digital platforms earn guaranteed pipelines for premium programming and co-ownership of fan data that enable sharper, data-driven advertising. Consequently, as viewership for live sports on digital platforms continues to climb year over year, the shift in consumption toward online distribution will only continue to accelerate. Fans, meanwhile, will experience more immersive environments where live viewing connects seamlessly with curated archives, fantasy participation, betting features, and integrated ecommerce offerings.
Ultimately, this transformation around media assets signals a fundamental shift: Leagues are no longer simply sellers of their premium content, but co-owners of how that content lives, how it’s distributed, and how it engages fans.
Why the 2026 World Cup will kickstart global mega-events
A new era of global mega events is about to begin. The 2026 FIFA World Cup—spanning the United States, Canada, and Mexico—will be one of the largest sporting spectacles in history. Mega-events have long been catalysts for growth, investment, and cultural influence, but the scale of the 2026 World Cup redefines what’s possible. With 48 teams and dozens of host cities across three countries, the tournament presents opportunities for regions to showcase themselves and attract billions in tourism spending. It also introduces enormous complexity, from infrastructure concerns to changing consumer behavior. Addressing these challenges requires coordination across governments, leagues, and sponsors to transform a moment of spectacle into a foundation for long-term value.
The billions spent by Brazil and Qatar2 to build state-of-the-art venues underscore the reality that hosting rights hinge on readiness to stage the world’s biggest shows. The United States is well-positioned to compete, as illustrated by the World Cup Semi-Finals and Finals sites in Arlington, Texas; Atlanta, Georgia; and East Rutherford, New Jersey. These sites not only host NFL games but are in cities that have the infrastructure to handle the massive influx of fans. At the same time, leagues are accelerating their own international ambitions. The NFL will have staged nearly 25 games overseas by the close of the 2025 season. The NBA played a preseason game in Abu Dhabi. MLB and the NHL have experimented with global-style tournaments designed to highlight their international stars. Abroad, Italy’s Serie A is planning to play a league match in Australia in February.
This global shift changes the nature of fandom. Increasingly, fans cheer for stars and storylines rather than home-country teams. Fandom is also consumption. Today’s fans are enthusiastic consumers who buy tickets and merchandise, stream highlights, engage on social platforms, and travel for experiences. When that base multiplies across borders, the economic and cultural impact of a mega-event grows exponentially.
For stakeholders, the implications are clear. Cities should view mega-events as opportunities to accelerate infrastructure, civic engagement, and long-term growth. Leagues should balance the traditions of local fandom with the undeniable pull of global expansion. Sponsors should recognize that their activations will increasingly play to borderless audiences, requiring new levels of creativity and scale. Mega-events can be opportunities to accelerate infrastructure, civic engagement, and long-term growth. Leagues should try to balance the traditions of local fandom with the undeniable pull of global expansion. Sponsors’ activations may increasingly play to borderless audiences, requiring new levels of creativity and scale. Mega-events will continue to proliferate, and their success may depend on the ability to deliver experiences that create lasting economic and cultural impact.
Youth sports super platforms take shape
A new wave of strategic M&A, private capital, and tech integration is setting the stage for the emergence of youth sports’ super platforms that could reshape how tens of millions of American families play, train, and engage with youth sports. The US youth sports market exceeds $40 billion annually, growing at nearly 10% a year. Yet the software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions guiding the backbone of all core youth sports processes—scheduling, payments, communication, recruiting, and video—remain fragmented across capability, sport, and region.
For a typical family, registering for a travel baseball team may involve one platform for sign-up and payments, another for team schedules and communications, a different service for relatives to live stream games, a separate portal for uniforms, multiple apps for training, and even more sites to upload recruiting highlights. And this fragmented, multi-app experience may look completely different once hockey season comes around.
This friction offers opportunity. Consolidation that began over the past few years is reaching an inflection point, as investors and incumbents shift from siloed products to bundled platforms. This year won’t yield a single “super app,” but the few players who lay the foundations will likely emerge as the digital backbones of youth sports. The challenge: Youth sports are still hyper-local, with fragmented governance across leagues and states. Building national platforms requires solving for sport and regional integration complexity, not just user demand.
Still, risks remain. High churn from participation steadily declining through high school, seasonal dependent revenue cycles, and regulatory fragmentation could challenge retention and margin expansion. Monetization sequencing matters: SaaS and payments may prove sticky, while advertising, NIL, and fan engagement are longer-term bets. Ultimately, the convergence of technology, investment, and operational innovation is setting the stage for a new era of professionalized and optimized youth sports. Those who stake their claim early have a better chance of improving market share and can help define how millions of families experience sports.
Creator-led storytelling is redefining sports media
Sports consumption is shifting rapidly, with user-generated content and athlete-led media rising as a powerful complement to traditional broadcasts. In the years ahead, leagues and broadcasters are likely to deepen their collaboration with sports content creators, blending conventional coverage with new digital storytelling approaches that broaden audience reach and unlock new commercial value.
As social media platforms and podcasts continue to grow, fans are increasingly drawn to personality, authenticity, and immediacy in ways legacy models often struggle to match, fueled by the accessibility of free, platform-native content on YouTube and TikTok that lowers barriers to participation. The average person now spends 2.5 hours per day on short-form video platforms, underscoring why media executives should diversify their monetization strategies to include snackable, shareable, and interactive formats. Creator content is becoming more mainstream. In 2024, YouTube paid close to US$2.8 billion to Indian content creators. Consider: Amazon’s Twitch co-streams of Thursday Night Football and the NFL's first creator co-streamed game on YouTube, featuring IShowSpeed, highlight how digital-focused storytelling is being embedded in flagship sporting events.
Looking ahead, creator access clauses will become more normalized in rights deals throughout 2026, and broadcasters will invest in fully staffed creator studios to produce branded content, identify talent, and manage new sponsorship opportunities. Athlete-owned IP will emerge as a critical layer of the sports media economy, while generative AI will accelerate scale through hyper-tailored fan feeds, predictive insights, and personalized highlight experiences. Creator-led storytelling is no longer a supplement to official broadcasts, but a redefinition of a new critical sports media asset class itself.
How sports-anchored mixed-use districts are reshaping urban development
Sports venues are no longer just for game days. Increasingly, they’re designed as catalysts for dynamic, year-round districts that blend residential, retail, office, hospitality, and public space to generate broader economic and social impact.
These mixed-use developments tap into the consistent foot traffic, emotional loyalty and brand equity that sports teams uniquely offer. On game days, restaurants, hotels, and retail benefit from fan-driven spikes in activity. Between events, offices and residences sustain steady engagement, helping to diversify revenue streams and support long-term planning.
Successful districts are designed to integrate with their surroundings. Walkability, public transit, and well-activated spaces like parks and plazas extend engagement beyond the stadium. Increasingly, developers are also incorporating flexible entertainment venues, community programming, and esports or fitness concepts to broaden relevance across audiences and seasons.
For cities and public-sector leaders, these developments can offer new tools for revitalization, tax base growth and infrastructure upgrades—provided incentives are structured to deliver community benefit through inclusive hiring, local business participation, and housing access.
The model has shifted from building a venue to building a neighborhood. And over the next decade, we expect at least half of major league teams to operate within or lead some form of mixed-use district. This signals a long-term expansion of the stadium as a platform for year-round value creation.
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