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I’ve been at SportsPro for nearly 16 years.
In that time, the conversation in our industry has moved on from sponsorship, licensing, media rights and live events to DTC, AI, data, technology and private equity. The breadth has exploded, but so has the noise. And people looking for a shortcut to success.
I opened SportsPro London 2026 with eight things I think many in and around the industry appear to be excited about – and the reality (I see) when I look at what’s really happening and the various datapoints that validate that sentiment.
Dream one: Media rights will keep driving growth
Reality: Media rights may have driven the growth of the industry for a generation, but they will not underpin the future at the same rate. Rights revenues are hyper-concentrated at the very top, and even there the picture is getting harder, including in the Premier League, where the per-game rights value has dropped.
France and Belgium offer further warning signs. DAZN’s exit left a broadcasting void that has been difficult to fill, and the financial impact may never be recovered if current trends continue. New competitions continue to launch on the assumption that they will break the mould, but they won’t.
Ligue 1 launched its own DTC streaming service after its broadcast deal collapsed (Image Credit: Getty Images)
Dream two: Investors will save sport
Reality: Across most legacy sports that have received investment, the money has been a short-term release valve, paying off debts, giving easy exits and buying time. Launching new sports has been even harder, with more failures than successes.
The deeper issue is a structural mismatch. Sport is not built for venture capital. You cannot have eight out of ten investments fail and call it a success. Sport needs a generation to settle, not a year to prove itself.
The investment world’s assumption is that media rights will pick up the bill later, or that things will work themselves out because sport has such cultural relevance, but neither of those theories are reliable.
Dream three: More money in means more job opportunities
Reality: I’ve never had more people reaching out for support around work and have never seen more solo advisory and consultancy operations spring up than in the last four months. Expectations are growing on the back of incoming investment and the industry is being challenged to cut costs.
In addition, expertise is increasingly being pulled from outside the industry, which in some cases is needed, but some never comes to grips with the nuances of how sport actually works. The unintended consequence is that industry experience is being undervalued at a moment when it is needed most.
Many athletes now command bigger social followings than the teams they represent and leagues they compete in (Image Credit: Getty Images)
Dream four: Sport is thriving on social and big tech platforms
Reality: Engagement on these platforms is real but the commercial case is not. Sport is a leaky bucket on social, where engagement does not translate into revenue without commercial structures that most rights holders are yet to build.
The platforms themselves are part of the bind. They want sport doing more on social because it performs incredibly well. And the longer audiences stay, the more the platforms earn. Their argument is that real fandom now lives between the live moments, but the economics still sit around the live event.
That gap is one of the most foundational monetisation problems sport currently has.
Dream five: Creators and athletes are the future of sport’s content
Reality: The truth is that this is already happening. Official channels do not get the same engagement that creators and athletes do. Content with no sporting relevance often outperforms official content.
The Sidemen charity match sold out Wembley in hours and attracted millions of concurrent viewers, delivering reach that most rights holders dream of.
However, sport is increasingly leaning on audiences it does not own. When the engagement is on someone else’s channel, the rights holder is simply renting the relationship.
Dream six: New revenue streams will unlock the next wave of growth
Reality: The fundamental problem is that fans do not like paying for things. Attention alone is a privilege in 2026, and the concept of “owning the fan” is overused and largely false. In some markets, where piracy is a major issue, fans are openly proud of not paying.
The old model – best reach, sponsorship, indirect monetisation – is in many cases still the most effective one. The hunt for the new revenue line is real, but the headline numbers often cited do not bear the scrutiny.
Dream seven: AI is the next major top-line revenue driver
Reality: AI is already delivering immense value to the industry, but mostly through efficiencies, cost savings and productivity, not top-line growth. The exception is AI as a sponsorship category, where rights holders are signing deals across the AI sector at scale. However, for now, the broader view that AI is about to become a major new revenue driver for most rights holders doesn’t hold up.
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Dream eight: Technology will solve sport’s biggest problems
Reality: It can and in many instances it does. But too many tech decisions are driven by who pays, rather than what fits. Tech-led sponsorship deals are growing and will keep increasing. They can drive innovation and transform ways of working when there is genuine partner alignment.
However, that can also result in square pegs in round holes, especially if the deal isn’t renewed two years later. Sport that needs new technology has to bring in the right solution, rather than the cheque alone.
Final thoughts
We spend too much time as an industry looking at the exceptions for inspiration. There’s still huge opportunity in sport, but the path through is harder than it has ever been, and the gap between the LinkedIn version of the industry and the operating reality is widening.
Most planning conversations I’m hearing about right now still rest on at least one of these assumptions. It’s worth checking out which ones are sitting inside yours.
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