The Accelerating Evolution of Sports and Media

By Michael Copeland August 12, 2020

I have started to watch live sports again as many of the major professional leagues have launched their inspired restarts. It’s been fascinating to observe. From a pure sports angle, the intensity and quality of play has been impressive, and a reminder of just how captivating and entertaining sports is at its best. From my perspective as an executive who has navigated the evolution of professional sports from both the team and league perspectives, I also feel a profound sense that we are now living in the most dynamic and transformative period that sports has ever seen. 

Perhaps the most powerful aspect of elite-level sports is the emotional connection it creates between fan and team, and fan and athlete. For traditional sports, this powerful emotional connection comes in large part from history and heritage. The rich patina that develops over time forges deep connections within communities and across generations. It is this aspect - history and heritage - that provides sports with perhaps its greatest and most unique strength. However, it can also serve as a dangerous inhibitor to development and progress. Balancing tradition and change is incredibly difficult, and sports leaders worldwide have wrestled with this relentless challenge for decades. 

With some exceptions, the major professional sports in North America have generally benefited from devoted, mass audiences to support the four main drivers of revenue – ticket revenue, broadcast rights fees, sponsorships, and licensing revenues. The broadcast networks, in turn, have relied upon advertising revenues and subscription fees. Through the hard work and ingenuity of many, the ecosystem of professional sports leagues, teams and media has grown exponentially in terms of overall economic value. There certainly have been examples of franchise, league and media failures over time, but these are relatively isolated and attributable more to unique circumstances than to the health of the industry in which they operated. For the most part, over the last several decades the business of sports has been good – if not great.  

Despite this growth trajectory, the foundation of major professional sports has come under a new kind of pressure. The rapid rate of change in media distribution capabilities has brought new challenges to the forefront in several respects. The individual consumer now has unfettered access through the internet to foreign leagues and niche sports (along with an endless supply of other media content competing with sports). Where the sports menu once consisted of what was only available on broadcast television (to the benefit of those carried on broadcast television), now it has been extended to everything, everywhere, anytime. The barriers to entry for competition are crumbling. Also, demographics are continuing to change. More precisely, the younger demographics are markedly different in the method by which they approach and consume information of all kinds. For entertainment generally, and sports specifically, this poses a challenge to traditional formats and experiences. Three-plus hour games are being supplanted by a rapid succession of highlight packs across multiple sports, often including content from outside of traditional game play. For young fans, experiences are thoughtfully curated from a diverse set of options and must be unique and special (and primed for Instagram).

Technology has opened exciting doors for fans to engage and experience sports. Social networks, mobile technology and applications have allowed for fast, efficient and fresh methods to receive and interact with sports brands and content. In many cases, technology has simply untethered and modernized traditional (but suppressed) forms of engagement. Sports wagering and fan discussion forums are two simple examples. The challenge for the sports industry today is to embrace the tremendous wealth of opportunity that exists and boldly evolve to remain powerful and relevant. This is not an easy ask. It requires leaders to challenge convention and the powerful resistance that comes from the lens of past success, and to overcome the emotional current of heritage and history.

During the recent restarts, the new and exciting formats and supporting elements adopted by the major sports leagues and networks out of necessity have provided an important catalyst for change. The Covid pandemic has forced disruption and has therefore accelerated experimentation – by definition breaks from tradition. It will be interesting to see what changes remain as part of the new normal when we emerge from this crisis. 

Going forward, I believe the sports industry is poised for a renaissance. At its very core, it will still be founded on elite athletes supported by passionate fans, with both converging to fuel powerful brands. However, it won’t necessarily look or feel like the industry as we have known it. This renaissance will be powered by a new openness to how the sports experience is defined, and a reinvention of how this experience is delivered. New models have already emerged that create more immersive, tailored experiences. A good example of this is Esports, which has challenged our traditional view of competition and has introduced entirely new models of media distribution, fan engagement, and revenue generation. The live streaming video platform Twitch, which allows gamers (including pros) to stream their games for others to watch while they play, has been watched for over 630 billion minutes so far in 2020 (twitchtracker.com). Other more traditional sports are also blurring the lines between spectating and participating. For example, the cycling training app Zwift schedules virtual cycling races throughout each day that users from around the world can participate in from their homes. In some of these races, the users can compete against (and interact with) cycling pros. How about watching a stage of the Tour de France on your tv or device, while also riding that same stage in your basement on a virtual course? These new models are not focused on replicating a traditional in-game experience for those at home or on mobile, but rather to create an entirely new experience and fan/sport relationship. This is a fundamental and dramatic mind shift for the industry.

Traditional sports, and their consumption, will not become extinct in the midst of these emerging new models. They will continue to evolve. I expect that event crowds will still exist and be important, but as sports consumers become deluged with choice and younger demographics place greater value on unique and special experiences, crowds may become smaller and more exclusive for everyone except the global giants. However, fan engagement will nevertheless become stronger for everyone through more tailored and immersive mobile and at-home experiences. Driven by leaps in technology and advanced data and analytics, sports teams, leagues and their media partners will more deeply (and personally) engage the vast majority of fans who don’t actually attend events in person. Consider that virtual reality could allow anyone in the world to buy a ticket to the Super Bowl. Gaming, contesting, highlights, discussion forums, augmented reality and e-commerce concepts cleverly weaved into the broadcasts will continue to change the viewing experience, moving it further along the continuum from passive to active. And this engagement will open entirely new and important revenue streams. 

The sports themselves will also change, and I would expect with greater depth and frequency than we are used to in order to best support the new engagement models that are developing. The restarts and the new formats and rules within them have piqued our interest, and that’s a good thing. Perhaps even at the expense of (some) heritage and tradition. Different isn’t always good, but sometimes it is. And progress almost always comes from creativity, courage and change – often nudged by technology and a little disruption. The strength of our past success should not inhibit the magnitude of our future ambition. History and heritage should be cherished, but continuously created. For the sports industry, change isn’t a new concept. Over time, many progressive leaders have contributed to the industry’s evolution with tremendous success. However, the current environment of curiosity, experimentation and opportunity will help spur this forward, and at an accelerated pace.