A story is building that AI is the next era defining sponsorship category.
The dream scenario for the sports sector is that this is true.
It has the characteristics required.
Undifferentiated brands backed by vast sums of OPM.
So, forward five years.
Two thirds of Premier League shirts carry AI brands.
Cue rumbling from legislators about the dangers of AI to children and mental health.
I'd model a ban by 2035.
By which time any societal harm inflicted will be baked in. The money will be in the sports 'ecosystem' and the next big category will emerge. It's a circle of life thing. Cue Lion King gif.
Just to be clear, the following copy is taken from a BBC Sport news story, not an Adidas press release:
What shoe did Sawe, Kejelcha and Assefa wear? All three athletes wore Adidas' Adizero Adios Pro Evo 3. The shoe was launched on 25 April, just two days before the world's best took to the streets of London.
It is the third iteration of a hugely popular shoe. Adidas worked with Sawe, Kejelcha and Assefa over the last three years to produce this version of the trainer.
In Sawe's case, it helped him break Kiptum's London course record of 2:01:25 by nearly two minutes. Sawe thanked Adidas for making what he said were best shoes he had worn, particularly highlighting how "very light" and stable they are.
Image caption,
What makes the Pro Evo 3 different? At 99 grams, the trainer is the first 'super shoe' to weigh under 100g. That's lighter than a medium-sized apple, a banana or a bar of soap. In recent years, major improvements in marathon times have been made thanks to the introduction of carbon-plated midsoles. But the Pro Evo 3 instead uses carbon technology - rather than a plate - that wraps around the midsole, helping to maintain running economy and to reduce overall weight.
"At that level, every detail really matters - we were measuring things down to the nearest nanogram," Adidas' VP of running, Patrick Nava, said of the design process. "It was a long process, but it's led to something we believe genuinely changes what a race-day shoe can feel like." For the casual runner taking advantage of the technology comes at a financial cost though. While a limited amount were available this week, a wider release is expected later this year when the shoes will retail at £450.
Enter a liberal's pro-BBC caveat: The BBC is the key broadcast rights holder of the London Marathon, and it's fantastic at it. A wonderful celebration of humanity that fits perfectly with the national broadcaster.
But it is the wrong time to do a deep dive on Adidas shoes that won the race and broke the two-minute record, the two-hour marathon record.
BBC news shouldn't be a cheerleader, it should be a news outlet.
When in doubt, blame the Americans
See previous post: What's the difference between ESPN and the NFL?
Why does private equity want to be a football agent?
That was a question posed by Daniel Geey on Other People's Money, our sports finance podcast series.
Jonathan Booker has written an interesting set of newsletters on this topic.
Good point here:
What is notable, and what warrants serious attention, is the scale at which this has now occurred in the world of football/soccer agency. For example, the mergers and/or acquisitions that saw American giant CAA bring together the UK behemoths Base and Stellar under the CAA ‘umbrella’, each of which were already individually amongst the most significant agency operations in European (if not world) football, represents arguably the biggest concentration of football agency influence seen in the sport to date. Others, including the likes of USG, Roc Nation and WMG, have pursued similar expansion through varying combinations of merger, acquisition and collaborations, each at their own scale and through their own commercial logic. The regulatory framework governing the football agency market has not so much failed to address this, but as with so many aspects associated with football agency, has struggled to keep pace with the speed and complexity of commercial developments it was not originally conceived to anticipate.
Such concerns regarding MAGs become considerably more acute when agency consolidation of this kind intersects with a separate but related development in the football ‘industry’: the existence of direct shared business interests, and in some reported cases interrelated shareholdings, between prominent agency operations and football club ownership groups.
A semi-regular thread🧵on the podcast relates to why some sports and properties are popular as betting sports, and what happens if a rights holder purposely seeks to frame their sport to the gambling marketplace.
The follow on from this is how investors and private equity groups are very interested in this question. I find myself over using George Pyne as a case study, citing his enthusiasm for TGL, the screen golf series, as a betting platform.
From here, the conversation can jump quickly to the hypothetical of turning women's sport in to a 'betting sport'.
So I'm really interested in this great bit of journalism from Play the Game:
Bex Smith is the guest on Other People's Money. Crux Football is her investment vehicle that is buying up women's teams, starting with Montpellier and Rosengard in France and Sweden respectively.
Hear it here:
The shadow of rugby
In the following clip I say women's football is "sleepwalking toward replicating the mistakes of rugby".
"This is not a moneymaker for this town. In fact, it's probably more of a headache than it's worth." This is the quote from local councillor on the prospect of hosting an official World Cup fan festival.
MacLehose summarises the three point plan:
Invite more guests to the party - 16 more teams means 64% more games than we saw at Qatar 2022. More ticket sales and more eyeballs means more sponsorship inventory.
Retain all meaningful revenue - broadcast rights, global sponsorships, ticket income, projected to surpass $11 billion for this tournament.
Distribute all costs - security, policing, infrastructure, operations - to host cities. Cities get the honour of hosting. FIFA gets the money.
