Reimagining value creation in the global sports ecosystem with dynamic content creation and secure data-at-scale

02/02/2025|TIAKI

Fragmentation and digital data headwinds persist

The global sports industry is constantly evolving, with disruptive technology and data capabilities shaping the way fans share their immersive experiences with their favourite teams and sports stars. One of the emerging trends now impacting the industry is the digital disintermediation of the sports fan engagement,

which has huge implications for franchises, sports media broadcasters, social media platforms, sponsors and athletes.

Fans are increasingly bypassing traditional media channels and engaging directly with sports franchises through social media, streaming platforms, and other digital channels. In order to keep up with this shift, sports franchises need to become content origination focused, prolific social media actors and experts at

leveraging their 1st party data. This means creating engaging and relevant content that resonates with fans and drives personalised interaction and loyalty.

The European sports rights market has low expectations for growth, impacted by recent economic, technology and Gen Z adoption factors. Pay-TV sports subscriptions have fallen into the non essential ‘luxury spend’ category, which is further compounded by the increasing seamless access for sports fans to stream live sport and highlights clips via free ‘unofficial or pirate’ channels.

In UK, only 2% of sports rights holders expect media rights to deliver significant revenue growth in the near term¹. On the upside, 40% of UK sports rights holders said both sponsorship and DTC / digital products have major growth value potential.

However, the following 2024 market reflections from C-suite executives at UK sports organisations suggest major headwinds could dilute this optimism:

★ 88% of C-suite executives admit they do not have a data strategy integrated into their business decision making².
★ 70% of sporting organisations do not have a digital strategy³.
★ 50% concede to commercialising less than 10% of their known audience⁴.

The state of malaise across the European sports rights market is highlighted by the recent Premier League deal which achieved 3.5% revenue growth for its latest domestic cycle in return for providing an additional 35% more inventory. Expectations were so low, that this was regarded as a ‘positive success story’ when compared to similar sports rights deals for France’s Ligue 1 and Italy’s Serie A.

The European sports industry is approaching an inflexion point where the over-reliance on media rights as the key driver for long-term revenue growth is waning. The market has reached a saturation point with its existing offerings and must now consider new data-driven digital levers and ecosystem partnerships for growth. However, there are significant hurdles in the short term to achieve value creation due to the lack of data and digital maturity in the industry.

All actors in the dynamically changing sports value chain will need to become data centric organisations to compete ‘off the field’ in an increasingly crowded global marketplace for sports fan engagement and loyalty. ‘Secure data-at-scale’ will be paramount to even enter the race.

North America shake up suggests franchise owned streaming is on the rise

The North American sports rights market plays to different dynamics compared to Europe. At present, it fundamentally remains a seller’s market due to intensive competitive friction between too many broadcasters and new entrant streaming providers all trying to secure sports rights.

The majority of high profile sporting code media rights deals are locked up in the short term which creates uncertainty on how emerging franchise negotiation power and ground-breaking new technologies will impact valuations for future sports media deals.

In parallel, sports media broadcasters are facing mounting challenges, such as rising sports fan expectations, escalating content creation costs, and the need to adapt their business models to an ever-changing digital landscape and new entrant threats.

Streaming services now account for 16.5% of the total spend on sports rights in the US market in 2024⁵. Amazon Prime, Netflix and YouTube TV are fueling much of this growth driven by their ambition to leverage sport as a means to drive subscription growth, deeper personalised engagements and increased advertising revenues on their own platforms. Amazon Prime is now an established sports broadcaster in the North American market with bold moves into NFL, NFL, NHL, NBA, Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA), National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) and Nascar. A response from Amazon Prime’s main competitors, Netflix and Apple, can be expected within the next 12 months.

★ Will Netflix and Apple go ‘all in’ and acquire a major sports broadcasting brand?

NBA rips up the status quo for value creation

The National Basketball Association (NBA) League was one of the few sporting codes that recently had a large media rights deal up for market disruption. In Jul’24, the NBA signed a new 11-year, $76 billion domestic media rights agreement, representing an annual increase in value of 165%, commencing from 2025-26 season.⁶ It’s clear there remained strong demand and competition for the rights deal.

The new agreement included the NBA continuing its existing partnership with The Walt Disney Company. However, there was also market disruption with the NBA ending its long running 40 year relationship with Warner Bros Discovery (WBD). Instead, it signed new agreements with NBCUniversal (NBCU) and Amazon under which ABC/ESPN, NBC/Peacock and Prime Video will telecast NBA games through to the end of the 2035-36 campaign.

The NBA deal provides optimism for North American rights owners

Relatively robust, continued revenue growth remains achievable for rights owners in North America, shown by the recent NBA sports rights deal that delivered 11% CAGR growth rate compared to the US TV industry at 1% CAGR for the same period.

The NBA deal highlights how intense competition is driving new broadcasting collaboration constructs as sports media ‘heavyweights’ seek to grow and retain sports fan loyalty. ESPN, Fox and Warner Bros

Discovery’s (WBD) have formed a sports streaming joint venture (JV) called Venu, which launched in late 2024. The three brands plan to combine their digital and linear sports media services into a single direct-to-consumer (DTC) offering. Consequently sports fans will need only a single subscription, without cable, to gain access to a portfolio of sport coverage from ESPN, Fox and TNT⁷. However, the JV is now being challenged in the courts due to regulatory, antitrust concerns⁸. This adds to the continued challenges facing sports broadcasters as they seek profitable futures in this highly competitive sports media landscape.

Streaming providers are attracted by the younger profile of NBA sports fans which is 2 years younger than the typical US sports fan (average age 40.2). NBA fans are willing to pay more at $19 per month to watch all their favourite sports compared to $16 amongst NFL, NHL and MLB fans. Additionally, amongst 18-34 year olds, NBA remains the most popular US sporting code, making the NBA league an attractive rights market for streaming services providers to target.

The strategic challenge remains on how the NBA will grow their fan base in international markets for sustainable, profitable value creation from rights and digital-data driven engagements? At present, international markets represent just 6% of total rights revenues for NFL, NBL, NHL and MBL leagues combined. This has huge potential but, so far, unlocking the solution to international success remains elusive.

Fragmentation drives the NFL to pursue its own DTC path with NFL+

The National Football League (NFL) has an opt out clause for its existing media rights deal, valued at $111 billion over 11 years, with all of its media partners except Disney after the 2028-2029 season⁹. It’s unlikely to be triggered in the short term with the NFL predicted to ‘play safe’ whilst media industry turmoil, consolidation and declining pay TV bundles plays out and impacts company balance sheets.

However, the NFL is not sitting still. In parallel, the league has embraced DTC streaming and launched its own NFL+ streaming platform. Sports fans can now watch all games available in their local market, plus access radio, podcasts, and team-created content with NFL+.

The compelling case for NFL to pursue its own branded DTC streaming platform is due to the historical fragmentation of content distribution in the US market involving Sunday and Monday airing with NBC, ESPN, CBS and Fox, plus Super Bowl rotation between CBS, Fox and NBC each year. Separate cable and streaming agreements are in place with Paramount+, Tubi, Peacock, ESPN+.

NFL audiences continue to adapt to multi-platform viewing. Streaming platforms now dominate with 41% of total viewing consumption led by YouTube, with Amazon Prime showing the highest monthly growth in Sep’24¹⁰, thanks to Thursday Night Football and with DirecTV for Sunday regional games. Cable represents 26.1% and Broadcast 22.6% of total viewing consumption.

With such a complex, fragmented platform landscape for sports fans to navigate to watch their favourite NFL team, the risk of content dilution and disengagement increases. Hence the reason for the NFL to pursue their own streaming DTC platform with NFL+.

MLB goes local with DTC streaming services

In Major League Baseball (MLB), the league announced in Oct’24 its intention to create local broadcast content for the Cleveland Guardians, Milwaukee Brewers, and Minnesota Twins franchises in the 2025 season¹¹.

MLB launched its own standalone DTC offering in July’24. Home games for these 3 franchises will be broadcast in the clubs’ local areas on the MLB’s DTC streaming service. MLB are forecasting a significant positive the impact from local DTC broadcast deals. Bullish forecast suggest Cleveland Guardians broadcast reach increasing from 1.45 million households to 4.86 million (up 235%), while the Minnesota Twins’ reach will grow from 1.08 million households to 4.4 million (up 307%).

DTC disruption will inevitably continue as the fragmentation of North American sports rights across all sporting codes continues. Building a deeper, valuable relationship with sports fans in home markets and abroad will become key for the franchises. Compelling content creation and DTC streaming services are likely to be part of the future solution. However these two items alone will not be enough for long term value creation with sport fans. North American franchises have not yet ‘cracked the code’ for growing their fan base at scale in international markets.

European football clubs dominate the global sports social media landscape

Sports franchises continue to grow their brand profiles as they become prolific social media content generators. Globally recognised European football club brands dominate social media followers compared to sporting codes in North America or cricket and rugby codes.

Reflecting a truly global fan base, the leading football club is Real Madrid with 374 million followers across Instagram, X, YouTube, TikTok and Facebook. The trend continues with FC Barcelona 335 million, Manchester United 216 million and Manchester City 148 million followers in 2024¹².

Cricket continues to attract a large and growing international fanbase with Chennai Super Kings in the IPL leading the club franchises with 45 million followers across Instagram, X, YouTube, TikTok and Facebook¹³.

In contrast, North America sports franchises have significantly lower global social media followers, reflecting their inability, to date, to create digital fan growth ‘at scale’ outside of their home territory. Kansas City Chiefs is the social media leader with 12.4 million followers across Instagram, X, YouTube,

TikTok and Facebook in 2024^{14 15}. In MBL New York Yankees lead the charge with 17.3 million followers across Instagram, X, YouTube, TikTok and Facebook in Oct’24. However, the upside potential for future digital, immersive fan engagements and growth in international markets remains a possibility.

Leading global sports stars outshine their teams on social media

In Formula 1, Lewis Hamilton is the most popular Formula 1 social media star with 51 million followers across Instagram, X, YouTube, TikTok and Facebook¹⁶. This is significantly higher in followers compared to his own constructor team Mercedes which leads all the teams with 36 million followers across all social platforms, followed by Red Bull with 34 million followers.

As at Sep’24 Ronaldo had 1 billion followers across all social media platforms with Messi at 623 million followers¹⁷and Kylian Mbappé at 150 million followers¹⁸.

The potential to leverage these leading social media sports star profiles to create unique, entertainment content for the Gen Z and Alpha segments is enormous. Gen Z sports fans are more likely to be loyal to their favourite sports stars rather than the club or franchise they are following.

Consider the scenario in football if Jude Bellingham and Kylian Mbappé at Real Madrid both move to Manchester City in the Premier League. This would create huge shifts in social media follower allegiances and disruptive liquidity in the football ecosystem. This creates both opportunity and risk with such huge scale in connected audiences to these sports stars.

Football clubs reimagine global Gen Z & Alpha fan experiences via own platform ecosystems, DTC subscriptions and compelling content creation

The Footballco Future of Fandom Report¹⁹, published in Oct’23, surveyed football fans across 11 markets, including UK, France, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, the US, Brazil, Japan, UAE and Saudi Arabia. The report highlighted:

★ Gen Z football fan focus is not on the 90 minutes of game time on the pitch, but instead the wider entertainment football narrative, especially football documentaries.
★ Gen Z’s preferred digital platforms for content consumption are YouTube 63%, Instagram 63%, TikTok 49% and X 35%.

This is recognised by some of the leading football clubs. Manchester City has not yet surpassed Real Madrid in terms of social media followers in 2024, but their bold pursuit for Gen Z and Alpha global audiences through their own multiple platform ecosystem and focus on compelling content creation, is likely to deliver significant growth towards their social media leadership ambition and value creation.

To reach their global audience, Manchester City have 8 million subscribers on their YouTube channel and developed their own media production capability to provide exclusive behind the scenes content and full match replays via their City+ DTC streaming subscription service.

Uniquely, Manchester City have focussed heavily on their WhatsApp channel which now has more than 254 million members compared to 148 million followers consolidated across Instagram, X, YouTube, TikTok and Facebook. The multiple platform ecosystem at Manchester City shares a high amount of content covering photos, players interviews and behind the scenes. The WhatsApp channel is used to heavily promote the DTC City+ streaming subscription service.

Netflix and Amazon Prime fuel sport as the ‘entertainment narrative’

Behind the scenes content, training footage and player interviews will not be sufficient in the crowded, highly competitive digital marketplace. Building ‘engagement stickiness’ and brand value with Gen Z and Alpha football fans requires the documentary storytelling film narratives that deliver enthralling content to entertain this audience segment. The popularity of ‘Welcome to Wrexham’ and Manchester City – Arsenal – Tottenham ‘All or Nothing’ series on Amazon Prime is likely to continue.

Indeed we have already seen success in other sporting codes with the All Blacks ‘All or Nothing’ series in rugby, Netflix ‘Break Point’ in tennis. ‘Drive to Survive’ in formula 1 and ‘Sunderland Till I Die’ in football. The NBA has just launched its ‘Starting 5’ series with Netflix for behind the scenes access to NBA’s top 5 players.The demand in the near term is high for more of this content across more and more sporting codes.

★ With more and more ‘me too’ series getting launched, are ‘narrative style’ entertainment documentaries the answer to growth ?

In such a crowded digital marketplace with ever-increasing sports fan expectations for immersive personalised entertainment, future compelling differentiation will be key. Documentary storytelling in isolation will not be enough for long term, sustainable value creation.

The impact of Apple market entry

Major League Soccer (MLS) is a relatively ‘new entrant’ to the sports market in North America with its recent introduction in the 1990s. Consequently it has struggled to gain the same levels of sports fan adoption, viewership, sponsorship and ticket prices as the long established sporting codes of NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL.

In 2023, MLS chose a different path from typical fragmentation for its media rights partnerships. MLS knew its fan base was young, diverse and digitally native with 83% of US soccer fans consuming live games on a weekly basis. To meet it’s strategic growth ambitions, MLS signed an exclusive 10 year broadcasting rights deal with Apple for $2.5 billion.

This allows Apple to begin to explore their long expected strategic shift into live sports streaming with eyes on potential expansion of their data-driven, personalised Apple TV ecosystem into global soccer deals and North America sporting codes, which would significantly shake up the sports media market.

The MLS Season Pass on Apple TV is positioned as a separate subscription alongside the Apple TV+ streaming service. Analysis indicates that MLS’s Apple audience is 10 years younger and watches for 10 minutes longer suggested that this subscription video on demand (SVOD) model is attractive and compelling versus the traditional cable model²⁰.

MLS and Apple are now looking for international expansion into Europe, India and Indonesia. With 2.2 billion active Apple devices deployed to consumers globally, the opportunity to leverage data-driven personalization from the Apple ecosystem is a potential ‘game-changer’ for the MLS as the league hunts for accelerated digital fan growth and monetisation opportunities in international markets. Apple’s data-driven foray into live sports with a broader sporting code portfolio is likely on the near horizon. Further shake up in the market can be expected.

Competing forces seeking monetisation and customer lifetime value (CLV) from digital sports fans

The primary digital sports fan relationship across Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) is a highly contested space. Traditionally, sports franchises, sports broadcasters, and sports sponsors have all played a significant role in engaging with fans digitally. The landscape is now shifting with the emergence of Netflix, Amazon Prime and Apple entering the market. They are all vying for fans’ attention and loyalty, and are looking for innovative ways to engage with them in a digital-first world.

The existing, fragmented ‘status quo’ is not a sustainable profitable growth model for the majority of stakeholders in the sports value chain who all seek to compete for primacy for owning the fan relationship.

There are now too many cable and streaming platforms, too many data silos, clumsy disjointed fan customer journeys and questionable paths to digital ROI. Platform consolidation through acquisitions or joint ventures may also be hindered by regulatory antitrust concerns in the short term.

The ‘unhealthy state of play’ for sports broadcasters is highlighted by:

★ SkySports UK announcement in Oct’24 that revenues remained flat £10.2bn for the 2023 financial year, with DTC revenues only increasing by 1.5%, whilst annual losses had doubled to £224m due to increased sports production costs²¹.
★ Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) confirmed in Aug’24 a staggering $10 billion quarterly loss, adding to the disruptive shock of losing the NBA rights deal²². Analysts estimate the NBA loss represents a $250 million hit to adjusted EBITDA, due to a $270 million loss in annual ad revenue and a potential 45% decline in TNT’s affiliate fees. Consequently there is now growing speculation that divestment will now occur in their DTC sports media business.

The present dilemma risks driving sports fan disillusionment at the lack of personalised engagements and increasing financial burden to purchase multiple platform subscriptions. The fan experience becomes one dimensional transactional based. It dilutes the ambition of sports franchises, streaming providers, cable providers and sponsors to engage in a deeper, personalised, meaningful relationship with sports fans based on relevancy and context.

The fundamental value lever is a deep, interactive, loyal relationship with sports fans to drive new monetisation and customer lifetime value (CLV) the sports digital ecosystem.

A pivotal shift is needed in the fragmenting global sports industry, otherwise irrelevancy will materialise. The future lies in dynamic content creation and secure data-at-scale which will reimagine unique value creation in the sports platform ecosystem.

In 2025, we can expect more intervention from the global streaming platform brands into the global sports industry as customer data becomes central to personalised, content-centric digital streaming new value propositions.

The following three strategic shifts are likely to occur in the next 12-18 months:

1, Sport clubs and franchises to pursue a more explicit 1st party data strategy.
2. Sports leagues to seek closer partnerships with Apple, Netflix and Amazon Prime.

The leagues logic is to tap into their global go-to-market global footprint and extensive hyper-personalization insights for international fan growth. Netflix’s 270 million subscribers and Apple’s 2.2 billion of active Apple devices provide a disruptive scale of potential global customers that sports league can leverage for their international fan base ambitions

3. Consolidation in sports media broadcasting through acquisitions.

Content broadcasters such as ESPN+ and Warner Bros.Discovery lack the global customer scale with 25 million²³and 103 million²⁴subscribers respectively in 2024. ESPN+ and Warner Bros.Discovery become acquisition targets for Apple and Netflix as these sports broadcasters look to invest and go ‘all-in’ with a ‘platform play’ for live sports streaming across multiple sporting codes. The challenge will be how Apple and Netflix efficiently absorb the large footprint of ESPN+ and Warner Bros.Discover employees?

Sports properties need to become data centric organisations

Building an effective 1st party data strategy for digital fan growth is becoming foundational for success for leading sports franchises and clubs. One only needs to look at other sectors, such as Financial Services and Telco industries, to understand how they have spectacularly failed to develop deep meaningful, personalised relationships with their customers, despite sitting on vast quantities of transactional and location-specific conversation data. This reflects an inability to leverage data-at-scale from their legacy silos.

FC Barcelona remains one of the leading global football club brands on social media with 335 million followers. However, their recent €280 million sponsorship deal with Spotify failed to meet the music streaming brand’s expectations. The sponsorship collaboration provided Spotify with less than 1% of Barcelona’s followers in actual first party data for monetisation opportunities.

This highlights the reality gap which exists at many sporting organisations which is their inability to leverage 1st party data from their fan base of social media followers for monetisation and deeper, insightful engagement purposes. A customer lifetime value (CLV) centric mindset is not in place. This data immaturity is failing to meet expectations of fans, sponsors and private equity investors and also potentially undermines negotiation power in future sports media rights deals. Our earlier observations reinforce this reality:

★ Only 2% of sports rights holders expect media rights to deliver significant revenue growth in the near term in UK²⁵.
★ 88% of C-suite sports executives admit they do not have a data strategy integrated into their business decision making²⁶.
★ 50% concede to commercialising less than 10% of their known audience²⁷.

The data challenge is broader than simply how to improve harvesting existing 1st party data. A retailing data-driven personalisation mindset is needed to leverage anonymised 2nd party data from global players such as Google Audiences and synthetic data to create large volumes of sports fan personas for algorithmic learning. Only then will highly accurate, hyper-personalization marketing campaigns become credible for targeting new potential sports fans and assisting in retaining and engaging existing fans.

Data-driven insights which enable the sports franchise to recognise, in advance, that a specific element of their fan base is at risk of disengagement, and then proactively address this with personalised campaigns to neutralise the churn risk, should become standard. This data-centric shift needs to be embraced quickly by the sports industry to drive stickiness, international growth and monetisation outcomes.

AI-augmented cybercriminals smell opportunity in private equity invested sports franchises with billion dollar rights deals

As the AI-augmented cybercriminals ramp up the volume and complexity of their data breach attacks, the cyber threat and consequential risks to new 2024 sporting business models have never been higher. The industrialisation of the cybercriminal ecosystem has created a 79% increase in ransomware attacks in the last 12 months²⁸. More worryingly, the complexity and speed of the attacks are increasing significantly due to the deployment of AI tools by the cybercriminal.

In-house organisations are struggling to cope with the sheer volume and complexity of these attacks whilst suffering from a lack of talent to manage operations which are often confounded by an historical, over-complicated technology vendor footprint and ‘tooling bloat’ which drives operational complexity and vulnerability gaps in the attack surface.

Attacks are happening faster than organisations can respond which justifies growing C-suite anxiety on the risk to the business. The average number of days for the cybercriminal to gain access to an enterprise and then extract data was 44 days in 2021 and reduced to 5 days in 2023. In 2024 this can now be done in a matter of hours²⁹.

The cybercriminals are opportunistic. They hunt for soft targets that are digitally and data immature, where there is significant investment from private equity and sports rights stakeholders to justify the criminals’ demands for high ransomware payouts following a data breach theft. The NBA’s $76 billion and NFL’s $111 billion sports rights deals, with increasing amounts of private equity investment and an explicit business goal to target data-driven fan growth in international markets, demonstrates exactly why the sports industry is becoming an increasingly attractive target for ransomware data breach attacks.

The cybercriminals are now ‘AI-weaponised’ to attack enterprises that have failed to put robust network cybersecurity postures in place. The cost of a data breach is significant. Our research suggests $6.1 million was the average cost of an enterprise data breach in 2022 based on 200 selected enterprises with high-end monitoring³⁰. In addition the risk of unrepairable brand damage for the sporting entity, the loss of trust from sporting fans and athletes from the theft of their personal data, and the exit of sponsors and investors, could quickly create an untenable, unrecoverable business.

Secure data-at-scale becomes critical for success

Leading sports franchises and clubs are looking to redefine data-driven, digital fan experiences via their own platform ecosystems, DTC subscriptions and compelling content creation. This is fundamentally based on managing vast quantities of 1st party data and likely 2nd party and synthetic data volumes to create unique hyper-personalisation experiences to their existing and potential target sports fans.

Sports organisations will need to grow their data strategy maturity to have the correct governance and guard rails in place to deliver this ‘data-at-scale’. The challenge, however, does not stop here. Crucially, this data must be secure. Leading organisations are recognising this vital requirement and are now starting to deploy market best practice Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) solutions to minimise their cybersecurity data risk.

The Emergence of SASE

Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) is a relatively new network cybersecurity framework that combines network security functions with wide-area networking capabilities. It provides secure access to applications and data for users, regardless of their location. SASE integrates cloud-based security services with software-defined networking to deliver comprehensive cybersecurity protection. This approach helps organisations simplify their network security architecture, improve overall security posture and enable the business to deploy new digital, data-driven AI-augmented value propositions with confidence.

However, when only 30% of sporting organisations have a robust digital strategy in place³¹and only 5% of enterprises have defined their SASE strategy, it seems clear that C-suite executives are not yet receiving appropriate strategic advice or taking ownership for their potential cybersecurity exposures. Correct governance guard rails and risk-based, network cybersecurity postures are not in place to protect the vast amounts of data flowing into the emerging sporting AI algorithms.

Consequently the risk of a catastrophic ransomware data breach attack has never been higher to the broad array of sporting entities in the digital sporting value chain.

The C-suite can pivot confidently to new data-driven business models with an effective SASE strategy

A SASE strategy is fundamental in reducing cybersecurity risk by ensuring C-suite ownership and awareness on the risk to the business. It is crucial to increase top-level buy-in to address the evolving cybersecurity threat landscape, especially with the transition to digital enterprise and next-generation technologies. Many sporting organisations are ill-prepared to respond to the evolving AI-augmented threats, including 3rd party supply chain risks, necessitating the need for the C-suite to elevate network cybersecurity as a senior leadership priority.

By making SASE and network cybersecurity a board-level agenda item, with proper oversight and governance, companies can align their leadership, their investment priorities and commit to enhancing digital resilience against the AI-augmented cybercriminal risks, including supply chain risks, through improved cybersecurity capabilities and gap identification.

This strategic alignment and prioritisation of risk-based controls, based on business understanding, are essential components of a SASE strategy to effectively manage network cybersecurity risks whilst enabling monetisation of creative content and data assets.

Conclusion:

SASE enables secure data-at-scale to power creative AI-augmented fan experiences

In today’s digital, data-driven economy, sporting organisations will continue to accelerate cloud-native ecosystems and GenAI adoption as they seek new digital revenue streams, invest in innovative hyper-personalised engagements with sports fans, upgrade stadium physical infrastructure to digital ‘smart venues’, and pursue athlete competitive advantage.

This will fundamentally transform the way coaches, athletes, journalists, and fans experience sport in the next 2 years. Secure ‘data-at-scale’ will be the ‘lifeblood’ of this new sporting reality.

The criticality of a robust network cybersecurity posture to protect against the cybercriminal and enable ‘data at scale’ for new monetisation opportunities, is not yet fully recognised, which is creating significant business risk. This risk can be reduced with an effective SASE strategy.

As Gen Z and Alpha sports fans mature, they are projected to continue their heavy online media consumption. Young, digitally-confident sports fans no longer want to watch linear feeds of live sporting events. Instead they seek immersive, personalised shared experiences whether at the live game or streaming at home. Digital streaming offerings and creative content from franchise branded DTC offerings or global brands such as Apple, Netflix and Amazon Prime will continue to grow as a means of developing more data-driven CLV monetised outcomes.

By shifting to become data-centric, content-generating organisations, sports franchises, rights holders and broadcasters have seemingly limitless creative possibilities to reimagine personalised, relevant shared experiences for their existing and prospect digital sports fans. Data-at-scale is the lifeblood of these pioneering new ambitions. SASE adoption will ensure this data is secure.

About the Author:

David Andrew
Founder & Managing Partner
www.tiaki.ai
[email protected]

David is the Founder & Managing Partner at TIAKI, a niche consulting practice helping executive leadership in sport make confident, informed decisions on their risks, investments and business outcomes powered by secure ‘data-at-scale’. He collaborates with bold and determined leaders in the sports ecosystem to define their data, AI and cybersecurity strategies to deliver sustainable value.

David’s vision for TIAKI is to empower sports franchise CEOs, leadership teams, sports media broadcasters and investors in the global sports industry with strategic advisory frameworks to deliver secure, pioneering digital fan experiences and new ecosystem business models to achieve breakthrough returns.

David has over 20 years of strategy and technology enabled business transformation experience, providing consulting expertise in cloud native technologies, data strategy, digital business enablement and cybersecurity strategy. He is passionate about helping talented leadership teams succeed in securely growing their differentiated business models in the data-driven, digital sports economy.

Based in Stockholm, David previously worked for IBM Consulting, EY, Accenture Strategy and Orange Business. He studied Chemistry at Durham University and holds an MBA from Trinity College, Dublin Business School.

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