Game Over: Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) Becomes A Critical Play In The Sports Industry

01/02/2025|TIAKI

Sport embraces digital, data and AI

In today’s digital, data-driven economy, sporting organisations 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.

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 experiences whether at the live game or streaming at home.

By digitally recreating live sporting events, franchises, rights holders and broadcasters have seemingly limitless creative possibilities.

★ 57% of sports fans report browsing the internet while tuning in to sporting events¹.
★ The demand for in-venue experience at sporting stadium events to match the fans’ streaming video experience at home is increasing dramatically.
★ 80% of Gen Z & Millennials want to watch replays or watch the live game from different camera angles on their mobile device whilst at live stadium sporting events².
★ 44% of fans look up player or team statistics during a match, a figure which increases to 51% among Gen Z audiences³.
★ According to Ericsson, 47% of 5G users are engaging with augmented reality (AR) apps, 360 degree video and multi-view broadcasts, whilst their daily consumption in these formats has increased 50-60% in the last three years⁴.

Monetisation of digital fan engagement experiences becomes real

At Euro 2024, Vodafone Germany’s live match centre attracted six months of users in one week with its immersive AI-curated live game storytelling experience, delivering tangible business benefit in terms of huge audience growth, greater search discoverability, higher brand visibility and new content monetisation opportunities.

WSC Sports AI-powered technology is deployed in a portfolio of over 490 leagues, teams and broadcasters – including ESPN, YouTubeTV, the NBA, Bundesliga, LA LIGA, and Serie A. In the Belgium Pro League, regarded as one of the most innovative in the WSC portfolio, AI-powered video has been

credited with playing a key role in the league’s growth across its digital channels in recent years, including 107% YOY increase in 2023.

The new In-App Stories allows Pro League clubs to provide direct-to-fan experiences within owned and operated digital platforms, enabling fans to engage with personalised vertical video experiences similar to popular social media platforms. This enables the clubs to monetize digital inventory through the provision of additional advertising opportunities within and around story-based content.

Private 5G Networks are becoming the backbone for smart venues and new digital business models

Private 5G is gaining traction as a way to bolster sporting broadcasts at smart venues. In 2024, T-Mobile US employed private 5G during the PGA Championship golf tournament⁵and Deutsche Telekom provided access for the Euro 2024 football competition⁶.

At the UK Golf Open 2024, the digital fan experience was redefined using generative AI, digital twins, avatar support and private 5G to modernise golf’s oldest championship⁷.

To power the Paris 2024 Olympics connectivity, the telco operator Orange ran a private 5G Standalone (SA) network throughout Paris. This provided capacity across 32 spots and 120 official sites across the city. It also powered the Olympics Broadcast Service (IBC), which produced 11,000 hours of live TV.

To guarantee the best footage, more cameras were deployed in Paris 2024 than at any previous Games. The Opening and Closing Ceremonies alone featured almost 500 cameras, including 200 wireless smartphone cameras located on ships and boats forming a procession along the River Seine.

Immersive real-time AI-powered insights, for competitors and fans, with ‘smart connected stadiums’ in the Bay of Barcelona or Fields of France

At the Americas Cup in Barcelona in Sep’24, immersive real-time AI-powered insights for competitors and fans is an expected mainstream offering, powered by Private 5G SA.

A real-time ‘VIRTUAL EYE’ application creates a digital replica of all aspects of the race. Insightful, data-driven visualisations brings the race to life for fans, officials, and broadcasters, which also includes digital real-time commentary. For the competitors, each boat can produce more than 3,000 data points within half a second, which is sent to engineers onshore for analysis in real time⁸.

At the Tour de France in July’24, digital twin and real-time AI-powered insight assets helped to create ‘the world’s largest connected stadium’ – spanning 3,500km in rural France connected by 5G SA, WIFI 6 & Satellite⁹.

In light of this trend, more than 70% of sports executives view diversifying content offerings beyond live events, enhancing live media experiences, and customising content and recommendations as crucial strategies to boost fan engagement¹⁰. Hyper-personalization and AI-augmented digital offerings will become key for competitive edge.

Real-time Game Management at RWC’23

Ireland Rugby has been an early adopter of Private 5G SA with real-time data analytics assets to enable AI-augmented tactical decision making for coaches in live competitive games. This is based on large volumes of data and video analysis¹¹. This new capability should not be confused with real-time player performance data solutions which have been deployed for a number of years in elite rugby.

Real-time game management was highly effective at the RWC’23 France, where Ireland deployed Private 5G ‘in a van’ at their game stadium locations, such as Stadt de France, and on their tournament training grounds. Location was no longer a bottleneck to streaming vast volumes of data at low latency to enhance coaching tactical decision making in games¹².

Digital vulnerabilities and unprecedented cybersecurity risks

However, this disruptive digital shift is often taking the C-suite at sporting organisations into uncharted territory. Extensive digital, AI / data and network cybersecurity expertise amongst C-level and boardroom executives will become key enablers for success. This cannot be delegated, as this capability is becoming so deeply embedded in the new digital business models, and is often a challenging knowledge area for C-suite and boardroom leaders.

★ 90% of CEOs are worried their organisation will be a victim to a catastrophic cyber attack by 2025¹³. Yet, paradoxically:
★ 95% of CEOs wrongly believe that compliance is the key driver of their Cybersecurity Strategy¹⁴.
★ 44% of CEOs do not view Cybersecurity as a strategic enabler to the business¹⁵.

Consequently, the necessary enterprise investment priorities may be misguided, placing the new digital sporting business models at risk. Sporting entities will continue to shift to cloud-based solutions, yet cloud remains the dominant attack vector for the cybercriminal. In the last 12 months, 80% of data breaches occurred on cloud assets¹⁶.

Cyber threats appear in various forms, including attacks on spectator experiences, ticketing systems, and online scams aimed at stealing customer or athlete data and financial information. Plus the digital evolution of sporting venues, characterised by interconnected networks and devices, has exposed stadium infrastructure to new vulnerabilities.

This new reality, in emerging digital vulnerability in the sports industry, is not just about the theft of sensitive data but extends to financial fraud, manipulation of competition outcomes, and even the safety of players and fans in stadiums through disruptions of physical, connected stadium infrastructure.

Rising Concerns in UK Professional Rugby

The RFU’s Chief Executive (CEO) Bill Sweeney’s ambitions for growth are clear: “The big area is in data and digital. That’s one of the reasons why we are investing as a core part of the private equity deal (between Premiership Rugby and CVC Capital Partners) in data and digital growth.”

Yet a recent 2024 report on the digital and data maturity at UK Premiership Rugby Clubs highlighted significant lack of market best practice:

★ Only 30% of clubs collect first-party fan data via a mobile app, whereas 0% collect first party-data via an OTT/streaming or fantasy/gaming product.
★ Only 1 club had implemented single sign-on (SSO) across all its data touchpoints¹⁷.

Meanwhile the Premiership Rugby Clubs have limited investment capacity to digitally transform to address their data and cybersecurity vulnerabilities. In Sep’24, a damning report highlighted that 7 out of 10 Premiership clubs are balance sheet insolvent¹⁸.

To compound the challenge, Europe’s leading banks will look to conduct detailed SASE cybersecurity due diligence on prospective corporate customers. They assess 60% of enterprises in Europe who suffer a serious data breach never recover, directly resulting in insolvency and bankruptcy. Consequently the banks do not want to acquire enterprises, with high risk immature cybersecurity postures, into their portfolio book of business.

Industrialisation of the AI-powered Cybercriminal

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 months¹⁹.

The cybercriminal is 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 monitoring²⁰. 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.

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 place²¹and 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 impact of network cybersecurity dynamics on private equity (PE) deal making in sport

The global sports landscape will continue to be an attractive market for PE firms, with 61% of executives from the global sports industry expecting accelerated growth in private investment over the next 5-7 years²². This is fundamentally changing the very nature of franchise ownership.

Whilst there is bold optimism on the digital growth potential for increasing data-driven outcomes, based on AI-augmentation and cloud-native ecosystems adoption, there is also growing concerns about the increasing cybersecurity risk exposure with the consequential expanding attack surface at every sporting franchise. This concern is compounded by the increasing volume and ever-increasing complexity of AI-augmented cyber criminal attacks, and the impact and cost of data breaches which can potentially erode investor returns. This is no longer a reactive, compliance-focused ‘cost game’.

Leading PE firms are starting to take a more proactive approach to cybersecurity due diligence prior to investing. PE firms are increasingly seeking network cybersecurity expertise to accelerate maturity assessments to identify critical needs, provide a resolution path and better manage portfolio risk as well as network cybersecurity risk assessment for pre-deal analysis²³. SASE insights will play a future key role in these due diligence activities as well as providing clear guidance for the transformation path to enabling the future digital AI business revenue models, for breakthrough returns for investors.

The C-suite can pivot confidently to new sporting digital 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 at the C-suite level.

A comprehensive SASE strategy will impact all areas of the sporting value chain. This can be effectively delivered through an holistic SASE consulting engagement which will consider technology, operational processes, talent, leadership, risk and business impacts to assess current state, future target state and how to transform.

¹2023 Global Sports Survey | Altman Solon
² In-stadium experience | Deloitte Insights
³How Vodafone’s AI-enhanced live match centre attracted six months of users in one week – SportsPro (sportspromedia.com)
⁴A year of grand events and three fan archetypes – Ericsson
⁵Tee-Mobile US drives private 5G into … – Mobile World Live
⁶DT boosts RTL Euro 2024 broadcast wit… – Mobile World Live
⁷NTT DATA Sets New Standard for Sports Fan Engagement with Unparalleled Data Insights at The 152nd Open | NTT DATA
⁸37th America’s Cup (americascup.com)
⁹Tour de France 2024: NTT DATA is Official Technology Partner (nttdata-solutions.com)
¹⁰2023 Global Sports Survey | Altman Solon
¹¹5G helps Irish Rugby team prepare for the World Cup (vodafone.com)
¹²See how Vodafone and Irish Rugby and enhancing performance with private 5G (youtube.com)
¹³David Andrew: The SASE-powered C-suite
¹⁴David Andrew: The SASE-powered C-suite
¹⁵David Andrew: The SASE-powered C-suite
¹⁶PaloAlto Networks Unit42_ASM_Threat_Report_2023
¹⁷How digital transformation is shaping Premiership Rugby clubs (n3xtsports.com)
¹⁸‘A line in the sand moment’: Premiership’s troubles laid bare by report | Premiership | The Guardian
¹⁹Orange Cyberdefense Executive Navigator 2024: Research-based cybersecurity insights to drive smart business decisions
²⁰Orange Cyberdefense Security Navigator Report 2024: Research-based cybersecurity insights to drive smart business decisions
²¹www.isportconnect.com/impact-of-digital-transformation-on-sporting-organizations/
²²Survey sees increased private investment in global sports market | Daily News | IBC
²³Cybersecurity: The New PE Firm Team Sport | Troutman Pepper

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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