While the sports media industry obsesses over engaging die-hards and converting cord-cutters, some see a massive blind spot.
"There was a big national Siena College poll of sports fandom done recently,” says Jordan Levin, former Chief Content Officer at the NFL, “that showed that out of everybody who would consider themselves a sports fan, about a third are avid or diehard fans and the rest follow socially or when convenient". "Nearly all sports media is targeted towards that top-third of fans,” Levin explains.
That breakdown of fan ‘types’ – where casual fans make up the majority – is also a theme that was uncovered in “The 2025/26 WSC Sports Fan Engagement Study: How Gen X, Y, and Z Are Redefining Sports Fandom.” Levin went further to mention some of the prevalent content that we all know and love, but that would absolutely not appeal to the casual fan, “from podcasts that spend 90 minutes breaking down the cap implications of an NBA trade, The Athletic, to everything betting-related. But who is actually appealing to the other two-thirds of sports fans?"
It's the old 80/20 rule, inverted. The industry is fighting over the 20% while ignoring the 80%. "As sports options continue to grow and media rights continue to increase, rights holders are going to have to cast a wider net to grow the ecosystem and generate a return on their investment," Levin argues. "In a world where sports represent the final piece of monoculture, it's a group that actually wants this stuff more than ever."
Debra Llams of ACB frames it through the lens of content's primary purpose: "While content can drive purchases, I still believe that its most important role is to serve as the discovery layer, to generate interest and engagement, to expose the sports to as many people as possible. Content is your best tool to reach more fans, acquire more fans, and submitting it to drive sales is useful, but the best quality of content is to get more fans."
And there are specific, underserved audiences hiding in plain sight. Jordi Mompart of FC Barcelona points to the data: "When we check our data we see that only 20-25% of our fans are women. Sports and technology is too male, and I'm not saying this for corporate responsibility—I'm saying this also because it's the market to grow. There is such a huge opportunity when we analyze data to check that the market to grow is to start creating products and start creating things appealing for women and women being more involved in the business."
Levin also cautions against abandoning what works in pursuit of what's shiny: "A lot of rights-holders have ignored their local rights and their presence in local markets in lieu of shinier objects and richer promises in national or international markets. That's a mistake. One thing that I think is behind the MLB's surging interest is rooted in baseball clubs being marketed as a local market's team, while at other leagues everything is geared towards the national or international conversation. Baseball has actually grown by focusing smaller, by becoming pillars in a community."
The strategic implication is uncomfortable: most sports organizations are over-serving their most engaged fans and under-serving everyone else. The casual fan, the potential fan, the lapsed fan, the female fan who's been told this product isn't for her—these audiences represent the growth opportunity. But serving them requires different content, different entry points, and the willingness to create experiences that aren't optimized for the hardcore 33% who will watch regardless. This can only be done by adopting a technology-driven strategy that enables the scale it requires.
Squeezing more value from existing super-fans is tempting. But making sports even more accessible, welcoming, and engaging for the two-thirds of potential fans the industry has been ignoring might just be the better business decision.
To 2026, and beyond
Standing in front of the Madrid Huddle audience, Bob Carney of the NBA was asked what comes next. His answer wasn't about a specific technology or platform. It was about pace.
"I don't know what's next," Carney admitted. "I try to stay on what I call the cutting edge of what scales, and just always trying to find that line every day. Because it's easy to get distracted, especially in the Gen AI age. It's very easy to get distracted by all the shiny toys that keep showing up every day."
His focus? "I think perfecting a lot of what we discussed during this Huddle is what's next. Because we're not there yet, right? It's early days [in Gen AI]. It's getting really good. It's getting what I would call usable and publishable, which is a major milestone."
This might be the most important insight for 2026: there is no finish line. And no one way to get there. For some, because of how fast things change, it makes much better sense to work in 5-year visions instead of constantly-disrupted yearly plans. For others, it means launching a platform in eight weeks when circumstances demand it. Or reacting quickly to the departure of a huge star by becoming a media production house. Or shifting from broadcast-first to mobile-first to AI-assisted production without losing six months to committee meetings.
LFP Media went from crisis to one million subscribers in months. RCD Mallorca integrated more than a dozen digital assets in one project. The NBA produces localized game recaps in three languages within minutes of final buzzers.
These aren't stories about having the biggest budget or the most resources. They're stories about moving fast.
The technology exists and will continue to provide the solutions needed to meet fans’ demands. The playbooks are being written in real-time. The fans are already consuming sports in new ways, whether the industry adapts or not. 2026, and the years ahead, won't be who has the best plan. It will be who adapts fastest.
In an industry that traditionally moved on decade-long rights cycles and annual planning processes, speed is now the sustainable lifeline.
