2024 sports industry outlook

The overall economics of the sports industry is expected to continue to be strong in 2024. However, the commercial model, which has been undergoing significant shifts in recent years, will likely continue to transform across both traditional and emerging revenue streams. Traditional areas like sponsorships, ticketing, licensing, and merchandise will likely evolve based on better collection, analysis, and use of fan data. Emerging trends, including a greater variety of investors and media rights holders, globalization, the growth of women’s sports, and new real estate ventures, could unlock new possibilities.

Evidence of the industry’s strength is supported by the fact that team valuations continue to climb—in both men’s and women’s sports. The value of many teams and leagues is anchored by lucrative media rights deals. In 2024, we’ll see how this competitive market matures, with official negotiations starting for the NBA and new deals for some of Europe’s major football (soccer) leagues.

What emerging trends are going to make waves in the sports business? This year, we expect to see more interest and activity from opportunities related to globalization, women’s sports, and sports venues with multi-use districts.

Strategic questions to consider:

• As globalization intensifies, how can teams, leagues, and media companies keep the focus on supporting local fans?
• How can sports organizations boost discoverability and reduce barriers to entry to strengthen the next generation of fans?
• Is the growth in media rights sustainable? How will streaming organizations’ recent woes affect their sports aspirations? And if a breaking point is reached, what would the ramifications be?
• How can teams, leagues, and associations continue to diversify their revenue streams and create a more balanced portfolio that’s not so reliant on media rights?

Gathering insights isn’t enough. Collecting and aggregating fan behavioural and interaction data—alongside relevant second- and third-party data—to build out a database with a single, comprehensive record for each fan is step one. Using that data and monetizing it is step two.

For starters, sports organizations can use this data to better target and reach fans, with personalized marketing messages, promotions, and fan experiences—all in the hopes of driving engagement, loyalty, and purchasing. In addition to driving engagement and spending, these proprietary fan databases can also support emerging revenue streams for leagues and teams by securing stronger sponsorships, naming rights, and media rights deals.

Strategic questions to consider:

• What partners should sports organizations collaborate with in order to advance their fan data program to meet the needs of the evolving sports landscape?
• What is the monetization strategy for fan data, and what capabilities need to be built up to drive that strategy forward?
• How can leagues and teams responsibly work with second- and third-party vendors (and implement data-sharing agreements) to build databases that create a full profile of their fans?
• In what ways can leagues, organizations, and sports ownership groups use fan databases to connect, interact, and engage with fans—and how can they incorporate both loyal and casual fans in their outreach strategy?

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been used in a variety of sports-specific use cases for several years now. In venues, it’s been used to improve security and provide fans contactless checkout. For athletes, coaches, trainers, and referees, it’s been used to help improve performance, enhance scouting, prevent injury, and make officiating more objective. For fans, AI is personalizing their experience and creating a better product to watch. And for front-office operations, it’s providing deeper insights into fan behaviour, driving tickets sales through better marketing, and simplifying contracting.

Like data analytics and machine learning before it, Generative AI (GenAI) will likely quickly permeate many aspects of sports. Over the course of the next 12 to 18 months, we expect to see a groundswell of innovative applications involving content generation and management, live sports coverage, player evaluation, sports betting, fan engagement, and back-office operations. For fans, GenAI tools and applications can be used to create customized videos and highlights of their favorite teams and players, provide them with promotions based on their behaviours and interests, and power chatbots and digital avatars to help them engage with sports content in new ways.

Although there’s a lot of internal and market pressure to quickly adopt GenAI technologies, rushing the adoption journey may create issues. Teams, leagues, and organizations should look at ways to address both their shorter- and longer-term needs—not only across strategy and technology infrastructure, but also around risk management, governance, and talent.

Strategic questions to consider:

• With the technology and adoption moving so quickly, how can sports organizations stay on top of developments, rapidly experiment, and scale?
• How can teams, leagues, and organizations build upon their existing AI and data capabilities with GenAI? How will they need to improve their computing infrastructure and data platforms to effectively do so?
• How can organizations best leverage their proprietary data in combination with increasingly commoditized large language models to enhance and create new revenue streams?
• What risk mitigation strategies will organizations need to build to handle uncertainties and unanticipated consequences around GenAI—like trusting results, intellectual property issues, and multiple regulations?

Mega-events, such as the ICC Cricket World Cup, Olympic Games, Rugby World Cup, and FIFA World Cup, seem to be at a crossroads. On one hand, the world should have events that bring people together in global solidarity and fair play. On the other, the complexity and cost of these events may be reaching a breaking point.

For mega-events to remain viable, organizers and host countries should find ways to balance the cost and complexity involved in putting on such events with elements of lasting legacy, community, memorable experiences, and greater fan engagement for people in attendance, as well as those watching from home. Though these goals appear to be at odds, technology integration and digitalization may be key to achieving both objectives concurrently.

The 2024 Paris Olympic Games look to deliver on quality, while managing costs and balancing complexity. If successful, the Paris Games may be a proof point for the International Olympic Committee’s “Olympic Agenda 2020” and illustrate a new model for the future—and potential host countries and organizing committees around the world will be watching.

Strategic questions to consider:

• How can mega-event organizers continue to provide memorable, energetic, and unifying experiences while operating at lower costs? What trade-offs can be made between cost and experience?
• What technology can be utilized by mega-event organizers to make the games more accessible, inclusive, sustainable, safe, and exciting for athletes, attendees, and viewers at home? How can AI be harnessed to maximize these effects?
• How can data be collected and reused to shorten the mega-event learning curve for host cities and their teams? How can pre-designed and built solutions be leveraged to deliver an "event in a box"?
• With more data, more fans, and more immersive experiences comes the mandate to protect this data and defend the covenant of trust. How can event hosts and cities infuse and elevate cybersecurity without driving up costs or inhibiting the frictionless experience?
• How can deliberate strategies be developed around the “legacy” of mega-events to support civic infrastructure, community development, and the building of more inclusive communities?

From the announcement of countless conference changes to several record-breaking name, image, and likeness (NIL) deals, the past few years in college athletics have been full of change in the United States. Will 2024 be the year we start to see a “new normal” set in for the schools, the athletes, and the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA)? Or is more disruption on the way?

For starters, some big conference changes will take effect in 2024. Many of these conference moves are aimed at securing better media deals, maximizing program revenues, or locking in competitive advantages—largely for schools’ football, and sometimes basketball, teams. These new conference structures may make good business sense for some programs, but there are growing concerns about student-athlete well-being under the new structure and the perceived “professionalization” of college athletics.

Another critical issue in US college sports is the NIL policy, which allows student-athletes participating at the collegiate level to benefit from their name, image, and likeness. The policy has been in effect since 2021, but both the NCAA and US Congress have addressed the possibility of adding more guardrails to the current policies.

The old ways of doing business and operating athletic departments were already often strained, and while the new set of rules and regulations can create some stability, they could also stretch these organizations even further. Institutions will likely have to re-evaluate everything from their operating models to commercial models to ensure they can thrive in this new normal and take advantage of emerging opportunities.

Strategic questions to consider:

• How can governing bodies create and successfully implement rules and regulations that strike a healthy balance in US college athletics between profit and student-athlete well-being?
• What protections can be put in place—by the NCAA, the US Congress, or institutions of higher education—for the benefit of student-athletes in the long term and to maintain the integrity and longevity of college athletics well into the future?
• How will the changes in college athletics impact the professional sports industry—from the pipeline of athletes to their expectations around compensation and sponsorships?
• How can regulatory bodies balance the tradition of college athletics with the financial interests of power-conference programs and the well-being of student-athletes?