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Sports organisations must focus on understanding fans, strategic investment and embracing innovation if they are to overcome disruption, deliver real transformation and find growth.
A growing yet cautious confidence in the sports markets suggests there are significant pockets of potential for those organisations willing to take bold actions, embrace new routes to growth and adopt leading technologies.
In the face of persistent challenges and growth concerns, this year's global sport survey reflects a broadly positive outlook by sports executives. The findings — from over 400 sports leaders from across 46 countries — reveal there are plenty of opportunities to find growth, but that organisations may need to be bold to realise that success. This year, the survey results show that the big winners are likely to be those who are premium properties or those who are willing to innovate and invest in products to meet the needs of their evolving fan base.
Download the survey to explore the main opportunities and challenges currently facing sports executives as the industry continues to evolve. Find out more about the key market trends and explore deep dives into the sports consumer, investment, women’s sport, major sporting events, government and GenAI.
Women’s sport
Women's sport has progressed a lot over the last 12 months, with results showing there is significant growth potential still to be unlocked.
As interest continues to grow, sports executives remain optimistic about the continued revenue growth potential of women’s sport, which is unsurprising in light of the increasing attendances, viewership figures, investment activity and fan engagement. Much of the growth - and potential growth - is driven by increased media coverage, which will remain crucial for success going forward.
A particularly exciting moment for women's sport lies in its opportunity to create unique experiences suited to new audiences. The key challenge for women's sport is balancing how to improve the product with developing the sport overall and maintaining (and improving) levels of exposure, while better understanding the makeup of fans to improve experiences and engagement.
GenAI
GenAI offers significant potential for sports organisations to transform what they do and find new growth. Yet its adoption and impact remains inconsistent across the sports industry.
Sports tech and sports media companies look the most likely to both embrace and benefit from the deployment of GenAI, using it for content creation, distribution and wider fan engagement activities. Elsewhere, organisations are increasingly looking to embrace predictive performance data, with some looking to use data and AI in sports to improve the fan experience.
Interestingly, despite the identification of a number of successful use cases - and its widespread adoption in other industries and sectors - sports executives do not appear to have a strategy for GenAI implementation. Most believe there are barriers they need to overcome, from funding and capabilities requirements to shifts to current ways of working.
Many are looking at a 'wait and see' approach to adoption as new use cases emerge and deliver positive results, which suggests early adopters have an opportunity to steal competitive advantage over the rest.
Investment
Industry leaders are generally positive about the investment outlook and priorities within the sports industry this year.
However, growth will not be guaranteed for everyone, with certain investor profiles more active and better-positioned to capitalise on a changing landscape.
A transforming media landscape, the growth of women's sport and changing fan preferences will require new investment strategies to succeed, in a market underpinned by the consistent threats of inflation and economic uncertainty.
We’ll see sports properties and organisations increasingly look for active investors who provide capabilities and relationships as well as capital. New investor strategies and profiles will emerge, with a shift of focus towards emerging leagues, women’s sports and areas that will benefit from growth capital. Those investors will likely prioritise premium assets, with the key asset classes being teams and leagues, as well as adjacencies such as sports tech and betting companies.
Major events
Major events are a significant focus for governments, International Federations and major sports leagues.
Investment in infrastructure and urban regeneration are the main attractions for hosting major sporting events. Yet concerns around budget overruns and rising security costs can deter potential hosts from submitting a bid.
With the high costs associated with hosting events and sometimes questionable returns for governments, financial challenges are a key concern. That could lead to new commercial or hosting models in the future, which could see co-hosting become a more common standard model for major sports events.
Government
Government involvement in sports can vary significantly by region. However, one thing that remains consistent is the complexities governments face in balancing diverse stakeholder needs and addressing the critical areas that can drive the sports industry forward.
There’s a general agreement that government involvement in sports serves an important purpose for public health promotion, economic impact, and national identity, but that there are significant challenges in communication of initiatives and stakeholder engagement.
Elsewhere, there’s a strong demand for governments to drive grassroots initiatives aimed at enhancing community well-being, and a notable call for better regulatory frameworks and more effective public health strategies.
“There’s a sense of cautious optimism in the sports sector, as organisations actively pursue growth in a sometimes challenging market. We expect winners to be those that focus on understanding their fans, investing for growth and embracing technology.”
Shin Szedlak
Sports Advisory, PwC Switzerland
Driving growth through a genuine understanding of fans
Changing fan preferences and behaviours are one of the key market forces that will shape the industry over the coming years.
As the way fans engage and interact with their favourite clubs continues to change, they offer organisations an opportunity to better understand fan behaviours, wants and expectations. By then using this information to steer decisions and actions, they’re able to enhance engagement, create new - and build existing - loyalty and drive revenue growth.
Yet organisations can only effectively monetise their consumer base if they capture and process the right data. This can be a genuine challenge with such a proliferation of information at their fingers. And to make the challenge even more complex that data must be from across the user experience (which is based on an increasing number of interactions). It shouldn’t be limited to online sales or stadium purchases, but must include deeper insights generated from social media, participation data, online gaming, event behaviours, and beyond.
Recognising the potential of this opportunity, we explore the steps sports organisations should take to find and aggregate this data. In doing so, they will be able to uncover powerful insights to find the opportunities for commercialisation: direct monetisation, personalised content and products, broadcast revenue, sponsorships and merchandising, and more.
Hear from voices across the industry
“The relationship between players, teams, leagues, federations, events, fans and media are completely unique to the sector. Having in-house knowledge of this landscape is an important ingredient in being a successful investor in sport. Many sports will have to reinvent themselves and deployment of capital will be key to that.”
Danny Townsend, CEO of SURJ Sports Investment
“Sports events have continued to evolve commercial and delivery models, and the focus has shifted from purely onsite engagement to athlete-focused and athlete-generated content across diverse digital platforms.”
Kit McConnel, Sports Director of the International Olympic Committee
“As GenAI’s capabilities expand, especially in handling multimodal data, its potential to transform industries and foster innovation will become increasingly apparent, making it an essential component of future business operations.”
Nick McQuire, Executive Director at Microsoft
“For women’s football to thrive…we need to balance a commercial focus with the broader development of the sport. Another critical challenge is ensuring the women’s game gets the support of the media, to give us the reach we need to inspire people to play and attend games.”
Martina Pavlová, ECA Women’s Vice Chair
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