2025 global sports industry outlook
The global sports industry is professionalizing, with heightened stakes and increasing investments in talent, analytics, and fan experiences
Pete Giorgio
Kat Harwood
Brooke Auxier
David Jarvis
Chad Deweese
Laura Jordan
As investors flock to the sports industry, athletes gain more agency, and the competition for fan attention intensifies, global sports are becoming even more professionalized. This transformation is not limited to the top leagues but extends to lower-tier leagues and college athletics in the United States, too. The stakes are high, and sports organizations should adapt to meet increased financial expectations. They may need to build stronger back offices, compete for top talent, leverage data and analytics strategically, and develop new organizational competencies.
In 2025, this shift could revolutionize how sports organizations approach talent and operations, aiming to maximize return on investment. Amid this dynamic landscape, a growing number of sports and leagues are expected to vie for the global fan’s time and attention. New sports experiences, beyond the venue, could redefine what it means to “be at the game.”
Will there be room to thrive and grow, or will mounting legal issues and financial pressures keep the focus on the near term? This global outlook explores these questions and more, providing insights into the future of the sports industry.
What’s next for sports and streaming?
The shift to streaming for live sports coverage is no longer in the future—it’s here. Major streaming video-on-demand (SVOD) providers won some of the biggest sports media deals that were up for grabs in recent years.1 So, what’s next for sports and streaming? For SVOD providers who’ve done their reps, we expect maturation and innovation in their integrations, technology, and content. New sports-focused SVOD services are also coming online to shake up the status quo.2 Where does that leave the industry and the fans?
For providers who’ve been in the sports broadcasting game for consecutive seasons, we expect to see a focus on delivering new experiences that further engage fans, monetize content, and improve viewing quality. Immersive, real-time integrations like in-gaming betting, seamless merchandising capabilities, and social experiences are likely to become a reality.3 Improving the advertising experience will likely also be top of mind for live event streamers (who are in a unique position to grab large audiences concurrently) as they look to grow their ad revenues and secure lucrative partnerships.4 Behind the scenes, providers will work with their technology partners to improve broadcast quality and reliability5—which remains a challenge for some.6 Generative artificial intelligence (AI) technology could lend a hand in personalizing fan content feeds, serving up relevant advertising to fan groups, and providing direct (and instant) customer support.7
Tech upgrades aside, more ancillary sports content may be on the way, including alternative sports telecasts (“altcasts”) and original content. Some sports broadcasters and streamers have already seen success with the altcast format, from ESPN’s “ManningCast” on Monday Night Football, to Amazon Prime Video’s Next Gen Stats feed on Thursday Night Football.8 Paramount+ is teeing up its own altcast featuring David Beckham for the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) Champions League coverage.9 Additionally, more original (or “shoulder”) content may be produced in an attempt to secure yearlong subscribers and to reach new fans. Developing docuseries, documentaries, live talk shows, or reality-style TV shows that feature sports teams, athletes, or their families—though often expensive and time-consuming to produce—may be a way to not only engage fans in the offseason but create a whole new generation of fans.10 And consumers, especially younger ones, are interested in this behind-the-scenes view: Forty percent of Gen Zs and millennials surveyed say they’d like more documentary-style content about sports and players in the offseason, according to our latest Digital Media Trends data.11
Competition is also expected to heat up as new sports-focused streaming services—including ESPN Flagship and All Women’s Sport Network (AWSN)—plan their moves into the market. Emerging leagues, teams, or mega-events will likely also be searching for media partners. And when new sports rights are up for grabs, instead of having those rights broken up across broadcast, cable, and streaming providers (as many are now), we expect that some deals could land exclusively with streaming services. It’s also likely that providers will get creative about how to monetize, deliver, and market the live sports rights they have, like offering single-game pricing options.12
The continued expansion of the sports streaming market contributes to further fragmentation of the landscape for fans, and it can make discoverability difficult and increase fans’ costs. Consumer frustration is already apparent: Thirty-five percent of consumers in our Digital Media Trends (fall 2024) survey say they need to subscribe to too many services to watch all the events they want to watch.13 There have been some efforts in the industry to address this growing fragmentation, including the launch of Eurovision Sport (which aims to bundle rights from 100 different member networks into one single registration and login) and an ESPN-backed “Where to Watch” feature that guides fans to live sports broadcasts.14 But fragmentation is a persistent concern that should be addressed in order to lock in consumer attention.
Not to mention that streaming providers are also up against social media platforms, where content feeds are algorithmically tuned to a user’s interests, access is free of charge, and near-instant sports highlights are everywhere. More than 90% of Gen Z and millennial fans surveyed say they use social media to consume sports-related content, including game clips and highlights, live sporting events, and sports news and commentary.15 Convincing younger fans—and future generations of fans—to commit to a paid SVOD service that adds to their costs and makes discovering live sports difficult may pose a challenge for leagues, teams, and sports streamers to face head-on.
As leagues, teams, and mega-events partner with streaming providers for media rights, they should aim to strike a balance between reaching a wide and global base of new subscribers and maintaining accessibility and affordability for existing and next-gen fans.
Strategic questions to consider
- How can SVOD providers use sports content strategically to help build loyalty and boost retention among their subscribers and keep them from churning?
- Can sports leagues and teams find a balance among monetizing their business, maximizing sports rights payouts and the best interests of the fans they serve (and the fans of the future)?
- How can leagues and teams use streaming video and social media platforms—and the content on them—to pique the interest of new fans and fuel that budding fandom?
A more crowded playing field
In recent years, there has been a global surge of new sports leagues, teams, and events. There are expanded offerings from traditional leagues, more women’s professional leagues, new formats in established sports, and niche sports looking to capture the public’s attention. This growth is being driven by several trends. Ratings, attendance, investment, and team valuations have been generally strong over the last few years.16 There are also more digital distribution channels, such as streaming services and social media, enabling direct access to fans. There is increasing private equity investment in some smaller and newer leagues.17 These leagues can be attractive because they often have greater growth potential, with the pool of top teams and leagues being limited and expensive. In 2025, fans are expected to have access to more sports content than ever. A question is, what is the upper limit of sports fans’ attention and spending?
Traditional leagues are looking to expand their offerings to capture more attention from existing fans, reach new fans, and provide more opportunity for revenue, such as with media rights and advertising. In the United States, the NFL is working to expand the number of international games it plays in 2025 to eight and add new host countries.18 The NBA added a new tournament to the 2023 to 2024 season, and the NCAA expanded its college football playoffs to 12 teams for the 2024 to 2025 season.19 FIFA has added the new 2025 FIFA Club World Cup, expanded its Men’s World Cup field to 48 for 2026, and is exploring doing the same for the Women’s World Cup.20
Women’s leagues, especially in the United States, are working to capitalize on their momentum and looking to increase their number of franchises, providing access to more fans. The WNBA is adding three new teams by 2026 (Golden State, Toronto, Portland) and wants to have 16 total by 2028.21 The NWSL, which currently has 14 teams, is adding new teams in Boston and Denver in 2026.22 Even the new Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL), which has six teams, is looking to add two more for their 2025 to 2026 season.23 For women’s football (soccer) in Europe there is a reformatted UEFA Women’s Champions League and the addition of a second club competition for the 2025 to 2026 season.24
The list for recently established leagues could go on and on—across football, volleyball, golf, cricket, lacrosse, kabaddi, baseball, and others.25 In 2025, some of these new leagues could find their audience and some will likely fade away. There is an opportunity for innovations from these leagues to influence one another and more established leagues in gameplay, the treatment of athletes, media, and fan experiences. However, there are challenges around potential audience fragmentation, “carrying capacity” for fans, long-term revenue potential, and physical limits for athletes.26 Has society reached peak sports and, if not, what will it take to break through the noise?
Strategic questions to consider
- How can leagues ensure that they’re creating new products and experiences to improve and deepen the fan experience, not just to “add more sports”?
- How can leagues and their media partners best address potential audience fragmentation that all these new options could cause?
- How can established leagues develop a robust scouting function to learn from and incorporate innovations from newer and smaller leagues around the world?
The future of talent for sports organizations
Workers with sports industry experience are being sought after by a growing number of leagues and federations, governing bodies, individual teams, mega-events, and other sports-adjacent organizations. To help with the attraction this skilled talent pool, sports organizations have a unique opportunity to rethink and enhance their overall approach to human capital. Moving forward, we expect to see sports organizations thinking more holistically about their workforce, and how they attract, reward, incentivize, and retain talent to successfully meet business objectives. In short, sports organizations should look to develop star players both on the field and in the front office.
As the global sports industry evolves and expands—in ways that are explored throughout this outlook—there are more opportunities for professionals to work in sports. Historically, there’s been an imbalance in the sports talent supply and demand: a lot of people who want to work in sports and not enough available positions in the industry.27 But recent (and ongoing) shifts in the global sports industry have multiplied opportunities for talent, which means leagues, teams, and mega-events alike may need to up their recruitment game if they hope to lure top talent away from startups, media organizations, technology companies, and competing sports organizations—and keep their own talent from pursuing these types of opportunities.
Competition for talent often begins with a thoughtful refresh of compensation strategies to align and compete with current market forces. In the coming year, these organizations may focus on staying in lockstep with other sports teams, leagues, and federations to help ensure their compensation structure, incentives, and rewards draw in the best employees in the industry—and that these efforts align with achieving business goals. Consistently reviewing and refreshing compensation could go a long way to grab the attention of technically skilled, well-educated, and highly sought-after talent. Though, for many jobseekers across industries, it’s no longer just about the paycheck.28
Keeping this top talent is also a critical piece. While some turnover is good, business leaders should think critically about their workforce to identify exceptional employees to retain. Not only is retention an important consideration for current and prospective employees when deciding where to work—especially for younger generations of workers who show interest in opportunities to grow and advance in their careers29—but studies show that employee retention is a smart business decision, too. The cost of hiring new talent far surpasses the cost of retaining current employees. In fact, the monetary cost associated with replacing an employee is often multiple times their annual salary.30
Building a winning culture is an important aspect of retention and can involve everything from encouraging community and collaboration, to leaning into purpose-driven initiatives.31 Additionally, as sports organizations expand their digital offerings by developing fan databases, integrating AI capabilities, and partnering with streaming video and social media platforms, they should focus on having the right mix of talent to support these tech-focused capabilities.32 This means hiring people with the right skills while also investing in, and upskilling, current employees, so in-house specialties align with organizational priorities.33 Sports organizations should work to ensure that employees have opportunities to push their careers forward in other ways, too: either in their day-to-day work, in another internal role that aligns with their expertise, or through short rotations or “fellowship” experiences within the organization that allow them to gain new experiences and perspectives. We expect to see leading global sports organizations—and mega-events hoping to staff up for primetime—lean on these strategies.
Sports organizations need strong leaders, skilled players, and team players to win—both on the field and off. Moving forward, business leaders and human resources departments may need to work closer together to have core business conversations about acquiring and retaining top recruits.
Strategic questions to consider
- How can sports organizations refresh their people strategies—including their approach to compensation—to attract and retain top talent?
- Beyond salary, what incentives and growth opportunities can sports organizations provide to build culture, find alignment with business priorities, and win the talent race?
- In what ways can sports organizations invest in, and upskill, existing talent so they remain excited and energized about their careers while advancing the key priorities of the organization?
Fan data drives monetization for sports organizations
In recent years, many sports organizations have expanded their capabilities in collecting, managing, enriching, utilizing, and monetizing fan data.34 Fan databases allow leagues, teams, and other sports entities to tailor their business strategies to enhance fan engagement, improve live-event experiences, secure profitable media valuations, and forge lucrative sponsorship deals.35 As the global sports industry becomes more data-savvy and data-rich, organizations that maintain comprehensive fan databases—and are able to use that fan data to demonstrate value and ROI36—could gain a competitive advantage in securing attractive sponsorships. Moving forward, we expect to see access to meaningful and actionable fan data become an important selling point in negotiating and structuring these partnerships.
Extensive and well-maintained fan databases can be a powerful asset for sports organizations when securing and enhancing partnerships with brand partners. With access to detailed first- and third-party fan insights—such as demographics, purchasing behaviors, and individuals’ engagement with other brands and entities—sports organizations can offer their partners access to highly specific information about their fans.37 Sports organizations can use these fan databases, which not only hold deep knowledge about their own fanbase but about brands’ potential customers, as an asset when approaching brands for potential partnerships.
Data clean rooms are an important part of this data-sharing process and could, for example, allow a sports league to securely share aggregated and anonymized fan data with a sponsor to identify overlap between the league’s fans and its customers. The clean rooms can allow for secure data-sharing and real-time analysis and collaboration without compromising individual fans’ privacy—offering a scenario where leagues and teams can increase their sponsorship value and partners can gain detailed data and actionable insights.38
Some major sports leagues are already set up for these types of partnerships. The National Football League (NFL) has developed a data ecosystem that aggregates data from various sources and creates detailed fan profiles, with more than 250 attributes per fan.39 Similarly, FC Bayern Munich has developed the “Golden Fan Record,” which brings together data from more than 50 systems and platforms to create detailed fan files.40 These fan databases can be useful not only to leagues and teams in terms of their own marketing and revenue growth, but also they can provide value to premium advertisers looking to partner with sports organizations. On the flip side, not having robust fan data could deter top sponsors and partners.41
This signals a new era in sports industry sponsorship deals, in which fan data is not only an integral part of the agreement, it may also be the primary thing brands want. For brands, the ability to tap into rich fan databases provides an unparalleled opportunity to understand their target audience. For sports organizations, fan databases and the ability to measure the value of partnerships could become a meaningful way to differentiate themselves from the other teams. In turn, this will likely increase the dollar amount they put on sponsorship deals and could open a whole new revenue stream.
We expect these data-driven sponsorship deals to be a major focus for sports organizations in the coming year, but there are other reasons for leagues and teams to take fan data seriously. Fan data can enhance current revenue streams, like ticketing and merchandising. Sports organizations can also use this data to enhance fan experiences by delivering personalized content and offers, both in-stadium and through digital platforms, during the season and every other day, too. Personalized interactions, whether through in-stadium experiences or digital touch points, can enhance fan loyalty and satisfaction.42 Additionally, fan data can play a pivotal role in securing media rights. Networks and streaming platforms value understanding audience preferences and engagement levels, which detailed fan insights can provide. This can strengthen an organization’s bargaining power in negotiations for broadcasting deals, ultimately driving higher revenues.
Still, despite the upsides of fan data, there are challenges: Developing a robust data strategy requires financial investment, a modern technology stack, access to up-to-date and complete data sources, and technically skilled personnel. Sports organizations that prioritize fan data programs now may have the opportunity to partner with top brands, build their bottom line, and lead the sports industry into a data-driven future.
Strategic questions to consider
- How can sports leagues and teams bring differentiated value to their partners by collecting bespoke fan attributes or hyper-segmenting fan groups?
- How can sports organizations build out more robust strategies for first-party data collection to know their fans even better?
- How can organizations balance the need for data privacy with the growing demand for data-sharing capabilities in sponsorship agreements?
- In what ways can sports organizations get creative with data-driven, or data-first, partnerships to create new revenue streams and draw in high-visibility brands and brands that share their values?
The evolution of immersive sports
With consumer interest in attending live sporting events and ticket prices climbing, there is an opportunity in the making.43 In our 2023 sports fan insights report, we explored how emerging technologies and ways to consume entertainment were creating new possibilities in the era of “immersive sports.”44 In this era, fans can craft their own unique, personalized, digital sports reality—both at home and in venue. That future is still under construction; however, immersive sports are expected to see significant progress in 2025, as novel ways to experience sports in person may become more accessible.
With advances in display technology, fresh investment, and new partnerships, innovative out-of-venue experiences are coming to life.45 Providers are looking to engage sports fans in new ways and expand the concept of sports as entertainment. Instead of simply watching an event, fans can be fully wrapped in an experience that rivals being in the actual venue. There will likely be a lot of hype around these new concepts in 2025. If some take off, we may see a whole new category of sports experiences emerge.
Companies are experimenting with different ways to interact with fans. Cosm is using proprietary display technologies (through video domes and walls) to bring top-tier sporting events in a larger-than-life way to fans through “shared reality.”46 It currently has locations in Los Angeles and Dallas and will be opening facilities in Atlanta and Detroit in the next few years—co-locating its buildings near stadiums and sports districts.47 Cosm has been expanding the number of deals it has with broadcasters and leagues to show football, soccer, basketball, hockey, and combat sports.48
Others have experimented with immersive sporting events as well. In September 2024, the Sphere hosted UFC 306 (“Noche UFC”), taking its product to a new level of production. The UFC spent US$20 million to develop and produce the event, which included remarkable visual backdrops and animations.49 In IMAX theaters, IMAX broadcast the Opening Ceremony of the Paris Summer Olympics as well as a Big Ten college football game in November 2024 in partnership with NBCUniversal.50
Finally, TGL, which played its first matches in January 2025, is blending the physical and digital to provide an all-new hybrid golf experience. In a specially designed venue, teams of golfers compete against each other across a set of custom-designed holes.51 They start by hitting into a large-screen simulator from real terrain and then transition to a transformable turntable as the green. Broadcasting innovations, designed to bring the experiences of the golfers closer to home viewers, were seen as critical from the start.52
Ultimately, fans may want to feel like they are part of the action. In the near future, this could be made possible by more player point-of-view experiences, field and court-level views in VR, and venues with large-scale displays that surround an audience. Will these new types of experiences drive more interest and engagement? Are they truly a new alternative or just a supplement? Fans may be on the cusp of a completely new type of live-sports experience in 2025.
Strategic questions to consider
- Are these new experiences just novelty, or will they last? What is their repeatability? Will there be additional entrants to the market?
- Will these experiences create new fans and expand the market or just create new revenue streams from existing fans?
- How will these technologies and experiences influence stadiums and other venue construction? Will fans’ expectations increase?
- Will these new experiences suppress the development of VR applications for sports, or will they influence them?
Signposts for the future
The financial and cultural success of the sports industry is encouraging organizations to increasingly take a more professional approach—one that is transforming both how the industry operates and how it brings its experiences to market. In 2025, sports organizations will likely build stronger back offices, powered by a deeper bench of talent and wider flows of data. Engaging new sports experiences are expected to emerge, and the professionalization of college athletics may continue to have extraordinary impacts. Can this create a better future for everyone—athletes, fans, owners, and investors?
The future isn’t static. Sports teams, leagues, governing bodies, and other organizations as well as media and entertainment companies should look for possible signposts—events and actions that can change how the future unfolds. Signposts can confirm what could transpire or create entirely new paths with their own opportunities and challenges.
For 2025, consider the following signposts:
- New sports media rights deals going solely to a SVOD service
- In-game betting capabilities becoming fully integrated into SVOD broadcasts
- Sports organizations offering more competitive salaries and benefits packages, and more high-profile talent coming to the industry from tech, finance, and media companies
- Growth in retention rates for sports industry jobs
- The number of brands partnering with sports organizations largely for access to their proprietary fan data
- Sports organizations increasingly working with technology partners to establish data clean rooms
- New discoverability features and aggregation capabilities added to streaming services
- Ratings and attendance for newer and smaller leagues (especially in their second and third years) and new events
- More experiments with innovative out-of-venue experiences showing premiere sporting events
- Attendance, ratings, and overall interest in immersive sports experiences
