Leagues, broadcasters, and streaming platforms all face the same challenges around fan engagement and growing the value of their rights. But they rarely get the chance to talk about it together.
That’s exactly the gap WSC set out to address with its first Tokyo Summit, a daylong conference built to bring those conversations into the same room.
Bringing together leaders from J.LEAGUE, B.LEAGUE, DAZN, U-NEXT, and Fuji TV, the Tokyo Summit is designed to address this challenge directly.
WSC’s Chief Business Development Officer, Aviv Arnon, kicked off the conference with a keynote. Fans are spread across platforms, and their expectations are shifting quickly, he said. For most organizations, production is no longer the limiting factor.
What’s harder is turning that volume into something cohesive.
He framed the solution as a connected system, described through WSC’s content flywheel. “Content feeds the experience. The experience generates data. That data shapes how content is distributed and monetized.”
When those pieces are disconnected, value is lost.
How do you make the fan experience work across platforms? Aviv asked.
Each session explored a different part of the problem, from content and distribution to monetization and rights.
How Leagues Are Building Fandom Between Games
In a panel featuring Shohei Takebuchi, Promotion Brand Strategy Chief Officer at J.LEAGUE, Japan’s top professional football league, and Ryo Sakuma, Board Director at B.LEAGUE, the country’s premier basketball league, the focus was on how to stay relevant to fans every day, not just on matchdays.
That means building a more constant presence across platforms, using highlights, live coverage, and a broader mix of content to stay connected to fans throughout the day.
Sakuma pointed to distribution across social platforms and messaging apps like LINE, a popular messaging platform in Japan, as a key part of that strategy, describing it as “continuously exposing audiences to a shower of diverse content on multiple channels” to create daily touchpoints.
Takebuchi highlighted the role of AI in scaling that output across platforms, particularly given the volume of live action across each round. “To instantly deliver moments from around 30 matches each round, the use of AI is absolutely essential. Real-time distribution across platforms is what drives higher fan engagement.”
But scale alone doesn’t solve the problem.
He also pointed to the growing importance of the off-season as a key window to deepen engagement. “We prepare a substantial amount of behind-the-scenes and close-up content… and focus on how to provide enjoyment to fans during these two months.”
Together, these approaches point to a model where engagement is built continuously, not just around live moments.
Inside DAZN Japan: Turning Moments Into Experiences
In a session led by Kyunosuke Oshima, VP of Brand Strategy at DAZN Japan, the emphasis was on expanding the experience beyond the live broadcast itself.
“Watching sports is already an experience,” Oshima said. “What we need to think about is how to expand that experience.”
That starts with what happens in the moment. DAZN has been building tools that allow fans to react, engage, and share in real time, turning key plays into something that extends beyond the stream.
“Going forward, it will become standard to seamlessly share the exact moment when viewers’ and fans’ emotions peak directly to social platforms,” he said. “By capturing and widely distributing these defining moments across all sports, we can spark interest and bring more people into the experience.”
That shift is already showing results. “Engagement increased by about 1.4 times,” he noted, highlighting the impact of real-time interaction and sharing.
It also opens up new approaches to monetization. “We are creating opportunities to monetize at the moment when fans are most engaged,” Oshima said, aligning commercial value with peak attention rather than traditional ad slots.
The goal, he said, is to make DAZN part of the experience itself, not just the place where games are watched.
U-NEXT and Fuji TV: Building the Sports Media Ecosystem
For broadcasters and streaming platforms, the challenge is balancing reach, revenue, and long-term fan growth.
In a panel featuring Toshi Honda, Chief Operating Officer at U-NEXT, one of Japan’s leading subscription streaming platforms, and Kazuo Nomura, Supervising Director of Platform Content at Fuji TV, a major national broadcaster, the discussion focused on how those roles are evolving in a more fragmented, platform-driven environment.
For U-NEXT, the move into sports is tied to its role as a broader content platform, using live rights to bring users in and connect them to a wider entertainment offering. ”We want to bring new kinds of experiences to the Japanese market and continue to grow it,” he said.
“WSC Sports has now become an essential partner for us.”
Rather than treating sports as a standalone product, the focus is on integrating it into a larger ecosystem, where live events sit alongside other content to drive deeper engagement over time.
Kazuo Nomura of Fuji TV pointed to its Formula 1 rights as an example of how that model works in practice, using free-to-air broadcasting to build broad awareness before converting more engaged fans through paid channels and streaming.
Nomura emphasized the role of broadcast as the starting point for that journey. “Rather than simply getting people to watch our streams, we want to increase the number of people who experience it in person,” he said. “Our challenge is to see how many people we can get to come and check us out because of our show.”
That reach is critical for growing new audiences. “We need to create opportunities for people who don’t know the sport to encounter it,” he said.
Together, these perspectives point to a more connected approach, where free-to-air, streaming, and owned platforms each play a role at different stages of the fan journey.
Connecting the Fan Experience
Across the day, each session focused on a different part of the problem. Taken together, the direction is clear. The fan experience no longer lives in one place.
Leagues are scaling content to stay relevant between games. Platforms like DAZN are building more interactive experiences around live moments. Broadcasters and streaming services are balancing reach and monetization across channels.
The challenge is making those pieces work together.
That was the idea at the center of the Tokyo Summit. Not just how to produce more content or reach more fans, but how to connect the system behind it.
Because when that system is connected, every moment carries more value.
