The future of sports

In addition to revenue, profitability, and structural characteristics like collective bargaining risk, salary caps and revenue sharing, these investors also look at fan-specific criteria, including:

• The stadium’s economics, quality, and ownership construct
• Strength and growth trajectory of the league in which the target franchise participates
• Strength and size of local market and fanbase
• Brand value
• Operational efficiency

Plus, everyone’s competing, down to the wire, for strategic relationships that drive value.

The right partnerships for brand innovation

Today’s partners demand more from sports leagues and teams to prove the value of their relationships. Sports organizations need to exercise strategy and data analysis to select the right partners, and appeal to them.

The best way to win them over is with deep insights into fans and their preferences, including how sports teams are building fan trust to demonstrate value back to partners.

Other partner trends in sports include globalization, which opens partner options beyond borders; however, pursuing them will require tailored expertise and processes from the right advisory team. Additionally, while leagues and teams have traditionally driven brand growth, social media influence has sparked the dominance of player-driven brand growth and partnerships.

7 strategies to leave your mark on the game7 strategies to leave your mark on the game

1. Maximize new and existing revenue sources

Data can help you drive profitable growth in existing revenue streams as you adjust your growth strategies. But one revenue source you can’t afford to ignore is your fans, who you want to turn into lifetime customers.

They have endless options on where to spend their money; but you can capture a larger portion of fan dollars with:

• Ticketing and in-venue revenue: First-party purchase data can help organizations personalize food and beverage recommendations and boost revenue.
• Merchandise: Consider new commerce channels where strategic partners (advertisers, athletes, brand reps) can sell products to fans.
• Broadcasting and media: Viewership data that demonstrates fan engagement can help inform deals negotiations with broadcasters and streaming companies. By showing proof that your league is growing, you can use this to your advantage in contract negotiations.
• Real estate: Real estate ownership within a district can work to a sports organization’s advantage during games and events. They can collaborate on promotional initiatives with neighbouring restaurants, transit stations, hotels, tourist attractions, and shopping malls to capture more interest and ticket revenue.
• Partner-shared models: Organizations can work with their partners to serve new or existing customers through a combination of capabilities.

2. Use data to get to know your fans again

When you get to know your fans, you can reinforce their loyalty as lifetime customers. Sports are part of Canadian culture, whether it’s memories of childhood street hockey or signing up your kids for swimming or sports leagues. But this universal experience cannot drive fandom and revenue alone.

Today’s fans have grown accustomed to more personalized experiences — and they can pick from more competition than ever in the sports industry.

Sports organizations need to build an emotional connection that sparks fans’ passion for sports while simultaneously keeping up with advances in tech and marketing that can humanize their experience and make them feel like more than just a ticket.

The best way to do that is to study your fans at every step of their customer lifecycle, from social media analytics to purchasing behavior at games. Loyalty programs can also capture first-party data to help you learn more about fan preferences. Proprietary data from corporate and food and beverage partners can offer third-party data on purchase patterns.

With this data, you can use more targeted marketing to reawaken past fans with specialized offers and personalized content.

You can also leverage existing fan data through targeted “lookalike” audiences. These are audience segments with similar demographics and behaviours as existing fans that you can target to maximize marketing returns, acquire new fans, and boost revenue.

As for in-game, interactive experiences? Onboard your new teammate, GenAI.

3. Make GenAI your heavy hitter for fan experiences

Personalized marketing brings fans to your venue; GenAI ensures they keep coming back with:

• Personalized recommendations and offerings, based on the people fans bring to a game suite (friends, family, co-workers). Prompted with preferences, staff can prepare curated experiences for fans. This might look like loot bags with figurines if there are children in the group, or specific food and beverage options when requested.
• Game-day experiences that offer curated experiences based on fan preferences and partnerships across different global and local categories.
• League or team apps that deliver interactive experiences and fan choice, like exclusive content highlights, search functions for games and scores, fan history data, and interactive, video-game re-enactments.
• Tailored streaming recommendations based on third-party data from streaming partners.

4. Redesign operations with AI to drive fan outcomes

Leagues and teams are not solely focused on revenue as they have been in the past, given changes in workforce planning, partnership models, and sports leaders’ emphasis on Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization (EBITDA) growth.

This requires a full-faceted approach to operational execution across traditionally siloed business departments that now require coordinated delivery and collaboration. Mature executives are overhauling and streamlining processes to find faster ways to inform customer-focused action.

These new ways of working will help organizations inform deal strategies and concession pricing, manage venue operations, respond to maintenance needs, and support more aggressive operational goals.

85% of sports leaders see AI as the most prominent market trend for the next 5 years

Underpinning these new ways of working is a focus on accelerating change with AI.

But organizations can take a strategic approach to partnerships, which can help them get value faster from AI while strengthening considerations for governance and privacy.

Take a note from the International Olympic Committee’s8 playbook, who prioritized a consolidated AI strategy to identify key use cases for greater efficiency and delivery. They invested in the technology and training needed to execute the strategy, and found AI-driven efficiencies in:

• Timekeeping for performance analytics; 
• Personalized content generation
• Sustainability planning
• Inclusivity across athletes; and
• Data storytelling.

5. Don’t leave your staff on the sidelines

Any investment in technology requires one in your people, too. You might have new, AI-embedded workflows, but how does that impact the way your people perform their jobs?One part of the equation is staff training on new technology:

26% of organizations see a lack of technical skills as a barrier to adopt AI⁹

But the second part is supporting your employees to feel comfortable and confident to adapt and become agile.

Consider a sports venue’s suite experience:

Today, GenAI will give your service staff access to customer demographics, preferences, and purchasing patterns. But they’ll need training to know how to use that information in their day-to-day work and more efficiently reflect the cultural shift to personalization within their service.

This might look like asking customers about their documented preferences, and changing the script to expand on that personalized service.

From the back-office perspective, a procurement team might need to expand vendor options to capture changing customer preferences. For example, an uptick in immigrants from Middle Eastern countries in the neighbourhood might prompt a search for vendors who sell halal meat.

6. Start your strategy with a strong leadership team

Even seasoned sports leaders are experiencing these new industry dynamics and market trends for the first time. This makes it paramount not only to upskill staff, but leadership as well.

• Recruit leaders from other industries: Candidates outside of the sports industry might bring experience in navigating the new era of AI and evolving customer preferences.
• Identify and retain top talent with revised compensation packages and more incentives, especially if they demonstrate technical skills that will help power the organization’s goals with AI.
• Support leaders with change management training: It’s hard to guide hundreds of employees through the sports industry’s massive shift in technology, process, and customer needs. Prepare leaders with soft skills and training to support their staff.
• Leverage partners’ training programs to create a common language around AI for your leaders, which can help them upskill their teams faster.

7. Optimize your partnership portfolio

Today’s fans want to see more purpose-led initiatives and integrity in the sports organizations and teams they support. The result is a stronger urge to prioritize reputation management and stakeholder trust.

85% of sports leaders see trust-centered relationships a key market trend for the next 5 years

One way to do that is with the right partners, including broadcasting and media organizations, vendors and sponsors, startups, and hyperskillers.

Organizations must select partners that drive mutual value for both parties, including:

• Purpose-led partnerships: Partners who lean into health and social causes, with common principles shared by a sports organization, can fulfill fan’s expectations of purpose-led engagements and integrity.
• Partnerships that drive fan engagement and new revenue sources: Sports organizations can collaborate with companies that help them create the interactive, agile experiences their fans crave while creating new sources of revenue.
• International growth: Sports leagues might play for one city or country, but organizations can still collaborate with other companies abroad who share the same values. Whether it’s a similar sports team in Europe or the Middle East, expanding partners abroad can produce more international properties to drive revenue. If sports organizations want to leverage international partnerships, they can’t go in blind to local laws, regulations, and customs.

That’s where an advisory partner becomes invaluable for growth, specifically a global consultant with international experience in the sports arena.

Continue the conversation 

Everything about the sports industry is changing, from fan preferences to technology and investment models. But here's one thing that stays the same:

Organizations that prioritize agile operations and ways of working to serve their fans through differentiated experiences and relationships built on meaningful connections, will have a better chance to come out on top.

Want to be on the winning team? Let’s talk.

Keyur Shah
Sports and Entertainment AI & Data Leader - Senior Manager, Sports Business Advisory

LinkedIn

End Notes:

1. The Business Research Company, “Spectator Sports Global Market Report 2025,” published January 2025.
2. Markets Insider, “How Much is Sports Betting In Canada Worth?,” Business Insider, published August 29, 2021.
3. Markets and Markets, “Sports Technology Market Size, Share and Trends,” published in February 2025.
4. Deloitte US, “2025 Global Sports Industry Outlook,” Deloitte Center for Technology, Media, and Communications, published on February 13, 2025.
5. Deloitte Canada, “Connecting with Meaning: Personalizing the Customer Experience Using Data, Analytics, and AI.”
6. PitchBook, “From Padel to Volleyball, PE Increasingly Targets Niche Sports,” published November 4, 2024.
7. Deloitte UK, "The Future of Sport 2024: Seizing the Moment,” published September 2, 2024.
8. International Olympic Committee, “IOC Takes the Lead for Olympic Movement and launches Olympic AI Agenda,” published April 19, 2024.
9. Deloitte US, “Deloitte’s State of Generative AI in the Enterprise Quarter Four Report,” published January 2025.