Today, I'll be looking ahead to next weekend's Gran Premio di San Marino e della Riviera di Rimini at the Misano World Circuit Marco Simoncelli. But outside of the race itself, it's MotoGP's collaboration with FIBA that's caught my attention. Let me bring you into the hoop loop.

Talking of collaboration, I've teamed up with Emerging Sports Professionals (ESP) to host an evening at Greenwood in Victoria, hopefully bringing lots of you together. If you’re in London on Wednesday 30th September and keen to connect with fellow SP readers, make sure to RSVP via this link! 🍻

Here’s what’s coming up:

• MotoGP and FIBA to co-host a 3x3 basketball showcase in Rimini 🏍️

• Max Verstappen to start last on a 101-driver grid in “Max vs 100” 🏁

• DAZN partners with the San Antonio Spurs for domestic stream 🏀

Let’s get into it!

THREE-POINT TURN

FIBA and MotoGP are joining forces for an unusual pre-race spectacle. On 9 September 2026, the two properties will co-host a 3x3 basketball showcase in Rimini as the official kickoff to Grand Prix weekend at Misano, blending motorsport stars with professional basketball talent in a free, fan-facing event.

• The showcase takes place on 9 September 2026 in Rimini, Italy, serving as the curtain-raiser for the Red Bull Grand Prix of San Marino and the Rimini Riviera weekend.

• Franco Morbidelli captains one side, going head to head with a squad led by two-time MotoGP World Champion Francesco Bagnaia alongside title challenger Marco Bezzecchi.

• Professional 3x3 player Giorgio Di Bonaventura and content creator Luca Campolunghi round out the mixed rosters, blending elite basketball skill with MotoGP star power and social reach.

• The event is free to attend and includes a slam-dunk exhibition alongside the mixed 3x3 game, designed to draw local footfall as much as global broadcast attention.

Why It Matters

When announcing the news on LinkedIn, FIBA 3x3’s Esteban Gonzalez explained that the appeal of these crossovers lies in bringing different sports, audiences and communities together around one event.

Both MotoGP and 3x3 basketball skew young, urban and social-media heavy, but their fanbases don’t fully overlap. The activation lets each side borrow reach from the other, with 3x3 getting exposure to MotoGP’s local and travelling fans, while MotoGP gains a non-track “hero moment” that pulls in casual fans who might not buy a race ticket, but will turn up to a free street event.

While audience acquisition is clearly a key driver, the commercial rationale is just as compelling.

The race weekend already commands significant attention, and this adds fresh branded content windows, with the dunk show, player introductions and behind-the-scenes rider interactions creating additional commercial inventory for partners looking for lifestyle integrations off the track. The format is also inherently shareable, giving sponsors an easy hook for short-form social content.

There's a cost argument here, too. A 3x3 court, a handful of players and some rider time is inexpensive relative to launching a new series or staging a concert, yet feels premium given the world championship setting and star names attached. It’s replicable IP, too. I’d be surprised not to see other MotoGP host cities with strong street-basketball culture staging the same format.

Creating new assets has become a recurring theme on this newsletter, from Tennis Australia’s Padel Invitational, PSG’s La Maison, and F1’s Vegas Business Summit and I particularly like this model of bolting it onto something that already has attention. If, like FIBA 3x3, you’re running a challenger sport, why wouldn’t you anchor to an existing high-traffic moment, pair with a complementary sport, keep it simple and free, and sell it as a repeatable module? A padel tournament or Run Club the Thursday before a Grand Prix weekend feels like a no-brainer.

HIGHLIGHTS

Baller League relocates to a bespoke new arena in Dagenham for Season 4 ⚽

• Baller League is moving to a brand-new bespoke arena in Dagenham for Season 4, launching 12th October 2026, built for bigger matchdays and more content and access throughout the week.

• The league is also launching its own app with built-in fantasy football, with real prize money on the line this season.

Yahoo Sports and Apple TV team up on MLB and MLS altcasts ⚾

• Yahoo Sports and Apple TV are partnering to deliver live MLB and MLS “altcast” alternate broadcasts across Yahoo Sports platforms, featuring Yahoo Sports experts Jake Mintz and Jordan Shusterman (Baseball Bar-B-Cast) and Alexis Guerreros and Christian Polanco (The Cooligans) on commentary.

• Scheduled games include Tigers vs Guardians (4 Sept), Phillies vs Mets (18 Sept), Inter Miami CF vs Cruz Azul in the Campeones Cup (16 Sept), and Inter Miami CF vs FC Cincinnati (28 Oct).

Max Verstappen to start last on a 101-driver grid in “Max vs 100” 🏁

• Max Verstappen will start dead last on a 101-driver grid at a special go-kart event, “Max vs 100,” at Silverstone Circuit on 16 September 2026, with no on-site spectators allowed, facing extreme sports athletes, content creators, grassroots racers and invited amateurs rather than professional drivers.

• Verstappen must fight through traffic to overtake every kart on track, with a special feature allowing him to talk live on the radio with his rivals during the race.

Dream11 to pivot from fantasy sports into an AI-first sports platform 🎮

• Following a year of regulatory disruption for fantasy sports in India, Dream11 is moving beyond its original model to build a global sports engagement platform focused on content, live streaming, stats, scores, commentary, communities and social contests, without prize-based fantasy games.

• The platform is going AI-first with personalised experiences, aiming to become a single, multi-sport global destination for sports fans.

DAZN partners with the San Antonio Spurs to stream games in their home broadcast market 🏀

• DAZN and the San Antonio Spurs have announced a partnership beginning with the 2026-27 season, with DAZN delivering live Spurs games alongside pre- and post-game shows, highlights, behind-the-scenes storytelling and original programming across smart TVs, mobile devices, web browsers, game consoles and partner streaming platforms.

• The Spurs will oversee and manage full production of all games in-house, with DAZN Group CEO Shay Segev framing the deal as part of a wider strategy of partnering with top-tier US teams to help them build direct relationships with fans through a modern viewing experience.

SPORTS PUNDIT PODCAST

On today’s episode of the Sports Pundit Podcast, we’re joined by Kari Fleischauer, Chief Operating Officer at Gotham FC.

Kari traces her career path from Goldman Sachs, SpaceX and Crooked Media to entering women’s sport, first with Angel City FC, before landing at Gotham FC.

While this may seem like a random list, the common thread running through all of it in her view is spotting assets that are conventionally mispriced and building durable enterprises around them from the ground up.

Kari reflects on how operating outside traditional sports pathways shaped her approach to commercialization, budgeting, and long-term value creation at Angel City, including some of the lessons (and league fines) that came from treating a fledgling NWSL club like a startup.

Kari then unpacks what’s different at Gotham FC, where committed ownership and a strong soccer-ops leader combined to deliver both performance and commercial success from early on. She talks about the importance of building a distinct brand identity separate from any men’s team, why NWSL’s competitiveness stacks up favorably against European leagues on a game-to-game basis, and how brand partners like DoorDash and CarMax have found outsized value attaching to women’s sports.

The conversation closes on Gotham’s upcoming shift to Etihad Park, plus the huge investment commitment into a new training facility as well as what this means for their community-first strategy, which will underpin the club’s next chapter in the Tri-State area.

🔍 Search ‘Sports Pundit Podcast’ wherever you listen, available on Spotify, Apple, and YouTube 🎧

About The Host

Andy Marston is the founder of Sports Pundit, a community and media platform for sports and technology executives. Through a weekly newsletter, podcast network, lively group chat, and regular social events, he shares industry analysis and connects leaders across the sector.

Alongside Sports Pundit, Andy leads Corporate Venture at athlete-backed venture firm, The Players Fund, where he works with high-profile sports IP such as Como 1907 and Juventus to design venture strategies and drive innovation initiatives.

SUPPORTED BY DIZPLAI 📲

One in three sports organisations lose up to $5 million a year. Here’s the fix.

Sponsors want proof of engagement, broadcast deals are fragmenting, and social reach peaked back in 2022. As a result, one in three sports organisations now lose between $1-5 million annually simply because their fans remain anonymous to them.

This is why Dizplai has created this guide, offering 100 practical tactics for converting broadcast viewers, capturing data at live events, and building membership programmes that really convert.

It also breaks down the value exchange principle, explaining why ticketing works while social media typically doesn’t.

Get the Guide

Today's main story looks at DAZN's acquisition of EverPass, giving the streamer more presence in the US, particularly out-of-home in restaurants and sports bars. Talking of which, the Sports Pundit Socials will be returning in September, giving us a chance to get together over a drink.

I’ve teamed up with Emerging Sports Professionals (ESP) to host an evening at Greenwood in Victoria, hopefully bringing lots of you together.

If you’re in London on Wednesday 30th September and keen to connect with fellow SP readers, make sure to RSVP via this link! 🍻

Here’s what’s coming up:

• DAZN Acquires EverPass and Launches DAZN for Business 📺

• Women’s League Unrivaled Raises $100m at $650m Valuation 🏀

• How Gotham FC are Applying  Lessons from SpaceX to Build a Rocketship in Women’s Sports 🚀

Let’s get into it!

A DEAL WORTH WATCHING…

DAZN has agreed to acquire EverPass Media, taking exclusive control of NFL Sunday Ticket’s commercial distribution across US bars, restaurants and hotels in a deal that reshapes the streaming giant’s American strategy.

• EverPass holds the exclusive rights to distribute NFL Sunday Ticket, along with premium live sport from Peacock, Netflix, Paramount and Apple, to US venues, and will be rebranded as DAZN for Business under continuing CEO Alex Kaplan.

• The deal brings EverPass’s founders and investors, including the NFL’s own investment arm 32 Equity, RedBird Capital and TKO Group Holdings, in as minority shareholders in DAZN.

• DAZN gains an established venue-side tech stack and relationships across tens of thousands of US locations, a market it had struggled to penetrate at scale through its consumer app alone.

• The company is positioning the acquisition as the global launch of DAZN for Business, with EverPass’s platform serving as the foundation for venue distribution beyond the US.

• The move places DAZN in more direct competition with YouTube TV on the consumer side and DIRECTV FOR BUSINESS on the commercial side, both of which now face a rival that controls both layers simultaneously.

Why It Matters

The significance lies less in the asset itself than in what it lets DAZN offer rights holders going forward. By combining its consumer app with EverPass’s venue infrastructure, DAZN now controls both major viewing contexts for premium sport in the US.

This full-funnel position lets DAZN pitch leagues a unified path to fans at home and in venues, and bundle rights and advertising in ways that improve yield and data. For venues, it means a genuine one-stop shop for multiple sports packages, though that also comes with growing dependence on one dominant platform.

Besides adding scale, the deal also strengthens DAZN’s hand in future negotiations. With 32 Equity now holding a stake, the NFL is in a position to benefit directly if DAZN for Business performs well, giving DAZN a more aligned partner than a typical rights licensor would have. That, combined with DAZN’s ability to promise broader distribution than a consumer-only or commercial-only rival, should improve its position in renewals and future bids, whether for NFL rights themselves or for sports where it has already made its name, such as soccer and boxing, the latter of which has an especially close relationship with in-venue viewership.

The wider signal here is where DAZN is choosing to play. Competition in digital streaming is intensifying, with big tech (Google/YouTube, Meta, Amazon, and Apple) increasingly prevalent in the space, alongside the likes of Netflix and Disney+. DAZN's move looks like a partial counter to that. It’s shift toward physical, in-venue viewership, offering a moat that's harder for a pure digital player to replicate.

Rather than chasing subscriber growth at home, DAZN is betting that controlling the commercial viewing layer (where advertising spend, food and beverage revenue, and social viewing converge) is the more valuable frontier for the long term.

SUPPORTED BY DIZPLAI 📲

One in three sports organisations lose up to $5 million a year. Here’s the fix.

Sponsors want proof of engagement, broadcast deals are fragmenting, and social reach peaked back in 2022. As a result, one in three sports organisations now lose between $1-5 million annually simply because their fans remain anonymous to them.

This is why Dizplai has created this guide, offering 100 practical tactics for converting broadcast viewers, capturing data at live events, and building membership programmes that really convert.

It also breaks down the value exchange principle, explaining why ticketing works while social media typically doesn’t.

Get the Guide

HIGHLIGHTS

Offseason women's basketball league, Unrivaled raises $100m at a $650m valuation 🏀

• Unrivaled has closed a Series C fundraise led by Ten Pillars Sports Fund (which manages University of California investment funds) that surpassed its initial $100 million target, valuing the offseason women’s basketball league at $650 million, up from $340 million in September 2025.

• Investors in the round included NBA names Carmelo Anthony and Trae Young, UConn head coach Geno Auriemma, retired soccer star Alex Morgan, actor Ashton Kutcher and billionaire Jenny Just.

Men in Blazers’ first-ever live broadcast triples its own viewer projection ⚽

• Men in Blazers’ YouTube live broadcast of Tottenham Hotspur’s 3-0 preseason win over Hoffenheim on 15 August delivered 10,000 concurrent viewers across the US and Canada, roughly three times the 2,800–3,200 the network had forecast, according to founder and CEO Roger Bennett.

• It marked the first live game to air on the Men in Blazers YouTube channel, which has nearly 450,000 subscribers, with the Premier League club having approached MiB about the opportunity.

Meta agrees $18bn settlement with US states over child safety claims ⚖️

• A California judge has approved an $18bn (£13.3bn) settlement between Meta and 48 US states, plus DC and three territories, resolving claims that Facebook and Instagram harmed children; it’s Meta’s largest payment to date over child safety litigation, to be paid in annual instalments over 10 years.

• Meta will also implement changes demanded by the states, including default daily time limits and night-time blocks, while denying any wrongdoing as part of the settlement.

NFL and Disney launch team-branded apparel collection across all 32 teams 👕

• The Disney x Champion NFL Collection pairs each of the league’s 32 teams with a Disney, Pixar, Marvel or Star Wars character across a range of t-shirts and sweatshirts, ahead of the 2026 season.

• The collection was first previewed at Fanatics Fest on 16 July, with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell helping unveil the first eight team-character pairings; Disney’s director of graphic design, Bret Healey, said the collection was designed around fandom as “an extension of personal style.”

NFL owners approve record $9.612bn sale of Seattle Seahawks to Vinod Khosla-led group 🏈

• NFL owners have approved the $9.612bn sale of reigning Super Bowl champions the Seattle Seahawks to a group led by billionaire Vinod Khosla, the second-highest sum ever paid for a North American sports franchise, surpassing the Washington Commanders’ $6.05bn sale in 2023.

• The Paul G. Allen estate, which inherited the team after Allen’s death in 2018, agreed terms with the Khosla family on 11 July following a search for a new owner; the deal required support from at least 24 of 32 NFL owners.

SPORTS PUNDIT PODCAST

On today’s episode of the Sports Pundit Podcast, we’re joined by Kari Fleischauer, Chief Operating Officer at Gotham FC.

Kari traces her career path from Goldman Sachs, SpaceX and Crooked Media to entering women’s sport, first with Angel City FC, before landing at Gotham FC.

While this may seem like a random list, the common thread running through all of it in her view is spotting assets that are conventionally mispriced and building durable enterprises around them from the ground up.

Kari reflects on how operating outside traditional sports pathways shaped her approach to commercialization, budgeting, and long-term value creation at Angel City, including some of the lessons (and league fines) that came from treating a fledgling NWSL club like a startup.

Kari then unpacks what’s different at Gotham FC, where committed ownership and a strong soccer-ops leader combined to deliver both performance and commercial success from early on. She talks about the importance of building a distinct brand identity separate from any men’s team, why NWSL’s competitiveness stacks up favorably against European leagues on a game-to-game basis, and how brand partners like DoorDash and CarMax have found outsized value attaching to women’s sports.

The conversation closes on Gotham’s upcoming shift to Etihad Park, plus the huge investment commitment into a new training facility as well as what this means for their community-first strategy, which will underpin the club’s next chapter in the Tri-State area.

🔍 Search ‘Sports Pundit Podcast’ wherever you listen, available on Spotify, Apple, and YouTube 🎧

About The Host

Andy Marston is the founder of Sports Pundit, a community and media platform for sports and technology executives. Through a weekly newsletter, podcast network, lively group chat, and regular social events, he shares industry analysis and connects leaders across the sector.

Alongside Sports Pundit, Andy leads Corporate Venture at athlete-backed venture firm, The Players Fund, where he works with high-profile sports IP such as Como 1907 and Juventus to design venture strategies and drive innovation initiatives.

Kari traces her career path from Goldman Sachs, SpaceX and Crooked Media to entering women's sport, first with Angel City FC, before landing at Gotham FC.

While this may seem like a random list, the common thread running through all of it in her view is spotting assets that are conventionally mispriced and building durable enterprises around them from the ground up.

Kari reflects on how operating outside traditional sports pathways shaped her approach to commercialization, budgeting, and long-term value creation at Angel City, including some of the lessons (and league fines) that came from treating a fledgling NWSL club like a startup.

Kari then unpacks what's different at Gotham FC, where committed ownership and a strong soccer-ops leader combined to deliver both performance and commercial success from early on. She talks about the importance of building a distinct brand identity separate from any men's team, why NWSL's competitiveness stacks up favorably against European leagues on a game-to-game basis, and how brand partners like DoorDash and CarMax have found outsized value attaching to women's sports.

The conversation closes on Gotham's upcoming shift to Etihad Park, plus the huge investment commitment into a new training facility as well as what this means for their community-first strategy, which will underpin the club's next chapter in the Tri-State area.

Timestamps

• 02:00 - Career Origin Story and Learnings from Goldman and SpaceX

• 07:00 - Angel City Startup Lessons

• 11:00 - Gotham's Winning Formula (Performance + Commercial)

• 19:00 - Building a Unique Brand

• 22:00 - Sponsors and Media Value

• 27:00 - Stadiums and Creating a Premium Experience

• 32:00 - Investing in a Training Facility and the Community

About The Host

⁠Andy Marston⁠⁠ is the founder of Sports Pundit, a community and media platform for sports and technology executives. Through a weekly newsletter, podcast network, lively group chat, and regular social events, he shares industry analysis and connects leaders across the sector. Alongside Sports Pundit, Andy leads Corporate Venture at athlete-backed venture firm, The Players Fund, where he works with high-profile sports IP such as Como 1907 to design venture strategies and drive innovation initiatives.

About Sports Pundit

Sports Pundit is a community-driven platform for executives working in sport, built around content, events, and conversation. Through its ⁠⁠weekly newsletter⁠⁠, social channels, WhatsApp groups, and podcast network, it connects industry leaders across the globe.

At the heart of the platform is the ⁠⁠Sports Pundit Podcast Network⁠⁠, a multi-show lineup created for sports executives, by sports executives. The network features six domain-specific podcasts spanning innovation, marketing, finance, performance, and media, alongside a conversational companion show, The Pitch. Together, they deliver insider perspectives that live up to Sports Pundit’s mission to be “The Voice of the Sports Industry.”

It’s almost time for the new Premier League season to kick off, and we all know what that means… a clean slate and fresh optimism that this could be your year. For your team in reality, and for your FPL team in fantasy.

If you’d like to join the Sports Pundit league, you can do so by following this link. Good luck!

Here’s what’s coming up:

• Sydney Opera House plays host for inaugural Padel Invitational 🎾

• Disney+ signs Gary Neville’s Overlap network, rivalling Netflix for football fan content 📺

• The Players Fund partners with PURE SENT to bring its venture model to Gulf sports orgs 🇸🇦

Let’s get into it!

ORCHESTRATED EXPANSION

This past weekend saw thousands of celebrities, community padel players, international padel stars and fans come together at the Sydney Opera House to celebrate one of the world’s fastest-growing sports.

• The new premium global padel exhibition, the Padel Invitational presented by UBS, transformed the Opera House into a world-class sporting arena, with a custom-built court rising on the Northern Broadwalk for a celebration of elite sport, entertainment, community and culture.

• The weekend featured a star-studded showcase including tennis legends Ash Barty and Pat Rafter, Off Campus star Josh Heuston, Gold Logie nominee Todd Woodbridge, supermodel Bambi Northwood-Blyth, pop star Ruel, 2026 Winter Olympic gold medallist Cooper Woods, comedy duo The Inspired Unemployed, and MCU actress Geraldine Viswanathan, among others.

• The weekend paired Saturday's Celebrity 1 Point Padel with Sunday's community padel, where players from across Australia were put through warm-up drills by Rafter and Casey Dellacqua.

• The event follows Tennis Australia’s launch of a new commercial events division, built on expertise from running the Australian Open. Its first deal saw TA partner with the PGA TOUR to help deliver the 2028 Presidents Cup at Kingston Heath Golf Club, Melbourne, managing operations, ticketing, hospitality and fan experience.

Why It Matters

This isn’t really a padel story as much as it is an events and IP story.

We covered the Presidents Cup deal a few weeks back as the first project under Tennis Australia’s (TA) new events enterprise, selling its Grand Slam-grade operational capability to the PGA TOUR as a service for someone else’s IP.

The Padel Invitational is the second project under that same enterprise, and structurally speaking it’s the inverse. TA already governs padel through its Padel Australia subsidiary, so there’s no external rights holder to service here. Instead, it’s applying that same operational knowledge to build new IP from scratch and own the event outright, from sponsorship strategy through to format (which is especially evident with the 1 Point Padel concept, building on the success of the AO’s 1 Point Slam format).

Together, the projects reveal a two-sided model. One channel services existing IP entering or expanding in the Australian market, where TA has the capability but not the governance, as with the Presidents Cup. The other builds new IP in adjacent sports where TA already holds both, as with padel. I’d imagine that pickleball, given TA’s existing involvement, looks like an obvious next candidate for the same treatment.

The events enterprise, regardless which event you look at, is ultimately driven by a motivation to expand beyond a fixed calendar slot and overcome the hard ceiling on how much a single flagship event can grow by simply squeezing existing fans harder.

Obviously, that’s not a problem unique to tennis. TA is demonstrating is a template for de-risking dependency on a single flagship product by becoming an operator inside other people’s IP where you have capability but not governance, and a builder of new IP inside adjacent sports where you have both.

Any federation sitting on decades of operational expertise in one sport has a version of this play available to them. Be it the NFL and flag football, World Rugby to Sevens, FIFA, a national federation, or a league to futsal or small-sided football etc. etc.

I’m curious to see who, and how this might be picked up and applied elsewhere…

SUPPORTED BY DIZPLAI 📲

One in three sports organisations lose up to $5 million a year. Here’s the fix.

Sponsors want proof of engagement, broadcast deals are fragmenting, and social reach peaked back in 2022. As a result, one in three sports organisations now lose between $1-5 million annually simply because their fans remain anonymous to them.

This is why Dizplai has created this guide, offering 100 practical tactics for converting broadcast viewers, capturing data at live events, and building membership programmes that really convert.

It also breaks down the value exchange principle, explaining why ticketing works while social media typically doesn’t.

Get the Guide

HIGHLIGHTS

Disney+ signs Gary Neville’s Overlap network, putting it in direct competition with Netflix for football fan content 📺

• The Overlap has signed a distribution deal with Disney+, including 40 episodes of Stick to Football featuring Gary Neville, Jamie Carragher, Ian Wright, Roy Keane and Jill Scott, putting Disney+ in direct competition with Netflix’s The Rest Is Football.

• The deal also includes a new spin-off, Stick to United, co-hosted by Wayne Rooney and Mark Goldbridge (creator of The United Stand, the largest Manchester United fan channel on YouTube), marking the first time a single-club fan channel has been licensed onto a major streaming platform.

TikTok signs multi-year global partnership with the NBA and WNBA, moving beyond highlights into owned monetisation 📱

• TikTok has signed a multi-year global partnership with the NBA and WNBA combining highlights distribution, creator event access, TikTok GamePlan discovery and Pulse Premiere ad inventory; during the 2026 NBA Finals, GamePlan drove 497M impressions and 426,000 direct referrals to watch games.

• The NBA and WNBA have roughly 30M combined TikTok followers, with NBA interest up 30% and WNBA up 15% since the start of 2026, and 64% of women’s basketball fans citing TikTok as their primary source for league updates.

World 1 League launches “Micro-Sports,” competitions engineered to finish inside 30 seconds ⏱️

• World 1 League has launched Micro-Sports, vertical, purpose-built formats designed to finish inside 30 seconds, across three disciplines: Fastest (10-yard speed chamber sprint), Strongest (combined bench press and squat total) and Toughest (takedown-only fight).

• The league was founded by BattleBots veteran Nate Thomas and CEO Brett Morris, is backed by ten Olympic medalists, and plans to monetise through advertising, sponsorship and licensing.

NFL scales up a “WAG-focused” content strategy to court younger, female audiences 💍

• The NFL is leaning into high-profile relationships and social media influencers such as Madison Beer and Olivia Ponton, coordinating their appearances at team practices and training camps as part of a broader content push to capture Gen Z interest.

• According to Front Office Sports, the "viral canoodling-at-camp videos are part of a larger content campaign." The NFL told FOS that they are looking for "authentic opportunities to highlight our players and the people who are part of their journey."

The Players Fund partners with PURE SENT to expand its venture infrastructure into the Gulf 🌍

• The Players Fund has announced a new partnership with PURE SENT, the joint venture between Pure Sports (Saudi Arabia’s leading sports group) and SENT (the football ecosystem behind Como 1907), to provide venture and innovation infrastructure to teams, leagues and federations across the Gulf.

• The deal builds on The Players Fund’s existing momentum working with clubs across the Champions League, Premier League and Serie A in Europe, as it looks to extend its programmes beyond sports technology into other frontier tech verticals.

SPORTS PUNDIT PODCAST

On this episode of the Sports Pundit Podcast, I’m joined by Shergul Arshad, Head of North America for Aston Martin Formula One Team.

Shergul walks through how a career built in global football and fantasy sports led him into F1, joining the team on the back of the growth spike triggered by Drive to Survive and stepping into a role that, at the time, didn’t really exist yet.

The conversation traces how that role as Head of ‘North America’ has evolved. What started as an evangelizing job, explaining F1 to a US market that didn’t yet fully understand it, has turned into long-term sponsorship building, with Shergul personally closing nine deals in under four years, including with the likes of Cohere, CoreWeave, and Celsius.

Shergul explains the team’s move away from strict category exclusivity toward and the launch of the AMR Network, a structure that allows sponsors to collaborate with each other rather than compete for space, and how the IAM membership program is being used to capture and understand fan data.

The episode closes with a look at Aston Martin’s $350M Silverstone campus, home to more than 1,100 staff, and its role as both a talent magnet and a hospitality asset for the team.

🔍 Search ‘Sports Pundit Podcast’ wherever you listen, available on Spotify, Apple, and YouTube 🎧

About The Host

Andy Marston is the founder of Sports Pundit, a community and media platform for sports and technology executives. Through a weekly newsletter, podcast network, lively group chat, and regular social events, he shares industry analysis and connects leaders across the sector. Alongside Sports Pundit, Andy leads Corporate Venture at athlete-backed venture firm, The Players Fund, where he works with high-profile sports IP such as Como 1907 and Juventus to design venture strategies and drive innovation initiatives.

It's been a quiet few weeks for Formula 1, which returns next weekend, but there's still plenty to learn from the sport's commercial approach. Having recently interviewed Shergul Arshad, Head of North America for the Aston Martin Formula One Team, I decided it was worth taking a closer look at last month’s launch of the AMR Network, an initiative many sports organisations can learn from.

While I do try to keep self-promotion to a minimum, it's also been a good week for The Players Fund and our programme with Como 1907. Press was released this week announcing the partnership we helped deliver between the Serie A club and fast-growth Italian startup, Collecto. I’ll go into why I think this matters more broadly below.

Here’s what’s coming up:

• Aston Martin Formula One Team Launch of the AMR Network 🏎️

• Collecto Becomes First Equity-for-Sponsorship Deal of Como 1907 🧩

• Google Pixel Announce Partnerships with Barca, Bayern, and PSG 📱

Let’s get into it!

IT’S IN THE GAME

Back in July, Aston Martin Aramco Formula One Team hosted a Technology Forum at the AMR Technology Campus in Silverstone, ahead of the British Grand Prix. The event marked the launch of the ‘AMR Network’, a platform built to bring the team’s partners together around collaboration, commercial opportunity and thought leadership.

• The Technology Forum brought together senior representatives from ten of Aston Martin Aramco’s leading technology partners, including CoreWeave, Zscaler, Cohere, ServiceNow, Cognizant, Cognition, NetApp, Xerox, Arm and Eight Sleep.

• Panel discussions and media roundtables focused on the evolving role of artificial intelligence, machine learning and high-performance computing in F1, and how that innovation carries over into other industries.

• Aramco also used the day to host students as part of its STEM Racing programme, running a dedicated panel on future careers in the sport.

• The Forum is part of a season-long programme of AMR Network events, content and discussions designed to bring partners and wider industry changemakers together.

• Speaking to the Sports Pundit Podcast, Aston Martin F1’s Shergul Arshad summed up what’s driving the Network: “There’s an incredible amount of business to business that’s happening across our own sponsor ecosystem, and we’ve started to play into that recently.”

Why It Matters

The event itself is one thing, but the real story is how much sponsorship logic has changed underneath it. F1 sponsorship used to run almost entirely on exclusivity, brands paying to keep rivals, and sometimes anything loosely adjacent, out of their category.

The AMR Network runs in the opposite direction. Instead of keeping tech partners apart, Aston Martin is actively putting them in front of each other and treating that introduction as part of what sponsorship buys.

“I think it’s gone almost 180 degrees the other way, where exclusivity was much more precious when I started, and now I think folks are realising that there’s ample sandboxes for them to all work with together.” - Shergul Arshad, Head of North America, Aston Martin F1 Team on the Sports Pundit Podcast.

None of this started as a top-down plan. It grew out of what was already happening informally in the Paddock Club, where sponsors spend three days in a suite with 200 to 300 other people and end up getting to know each other’s businesses anyway. The AMR Network is essentially a name and a structure put around something that was organic to begin with, then reinforced with a Technology Forum, a season-long programme and an actual moniker.

That only works because of how the partner roster is put together. CoreWeave and Cohere sit on different sides of the AI stack, one closer to infrastructure and the other closer to applied AI, with Cognizant, Cognition and Arm filling in the space around them. Those overlaps are exactly what makes cross-introduction useful rather than redundant. These are companies with real reasons to talk to each other, not just adjacent logos sharing a paddock.

The approach does have its limits. Dropping exclusivity is a much harder sell with consumer brands, where category carve-outs still matter a great deal. So the AMR Network model isn’t applied evenly across the whole partner base (Celsius energy drink being a great example of this). It works where sponsors can genuinely collaborate, and Aston Martin seems to be using that distinction to decide where to open things up and where to keep them locked down.

What stands out most is the effect this has on how the team pitches itself to future sponsors. The Network has apparently become enough of a draw that companies with interests overlapping existing partners are now asking to join anyway. The exclusivity Aston Martin gave up may be bringing in more interest than it ever cost them.

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Get the Guide

HIGHLIGHTS

Google Gemini and Google Pixel become official partners of FC Barcelona, Bayern Munich and PSG in quick succession 🤖

• Google has struck near-identical partnerships with three of Europe’s biggest clubs in recent weeks: FC Barcelona, FC Bayern and Paris Saint-Germain have each named Google Gemini as their official AI/Consumer AI partner and Google Pixel as their official smartphone partner, covering both men’s and women’s first teams.

• PSG’s deal runs as a Premium Partnership through 2029, while Bayern’s is described as long-term; Bayern board member Rouven Kasper said the partnership aims to bring fans closer to the club through exclusive digital content and AI-powered insights.

The Snow League heads to New Zealand for its Season Two opener 🏂

• The Snow League’s Season Two will open with the inaugural Snow League World Challenge at Cardrona Alpine Resort this September, bringing together the world’s top halfpipe snowboarders and freeskiers.

• The event marks a first-of-its-kind international halfpipe competition at Cardrona, with an elite field headlined by a strong contingent of New Zealand athletes competing on home snow.

Athletic Brewing becomes first non-alcoholic beer partner of MetLife Stadium, Giants and Jets 🍺

• Athletic Brewing Company, America’s largest dedicated non-alcoholic brewer, has signed a new multi-year agreement to become a Proud Non-Alcoholic Beer Partner of MetLife Stadium, the New York Giants and the New York Jets.

• It’s the company’s first formal sponsorship of two professional football teams and a stadium, and the first time MetLife Stadium and its two home teams have aligned with a dedicated non-alcoholic brewer.

Cricket Australia weighs BBL expansion to 10 teams alongside a partial franchise sell-off 🏏

• Cricket Australia’s board is ready to explore expanding the Big Bash League to 10 teams if a hybrid ownership model, allowing some existing franchises to be sold, gets approved, after its original wholesale privatisation plan was blocked by NSW and Queensland in April.

• Following board approval, the sale process would need backing from four of the six states, with Victoria, Western Australia and Tasmania said to be strongly in favour.

Men in Blazers to stream Spurs vs Hoffenheim live and free on YouTube 📺

• Men in Blazers will stream Tottenham Hotspur’s match against TSG Hoffenheim live and free for US and Canadian audiences this Saturday at 10am ET on its YouTube channel.

• The broadcast is part of the Men in Blazers Media Network, with further announcements and giveaways promised later in the week.

TAKING A PIECE

Como Targets Luxury Market as Investment Arm Takes Collecto Stake 🧩

Como 1907 has leveraged its Ventures infrastructure to secure its first equity partnership, taking a stake in Italian luxury collectables app, Collecto.

• Collecto is Italy’s first digital platform for fractional ownership of luxury collectible assets.

• The deal traces back to Como 1907 Ventures’ inaugural Pitch Day in November, where the team first met Co-Founder/CPO Salvatore (Toti) Zola.

• Collecto had a live activation at Como Cup with a FanZone presence, VIP passes across four match days, and retail integration.

• Next phase is a Hublot x Como 1907 watch activation, launching worldwide exclusively on the Collecto app.

• In two years Collecto has grown to a €45m valuation as it has seen its transaction volume go from €380k to c.€60m, and registered users under 40 surge past 300k.

Why It Matters

Equity-based partnerships are becoming a more common thread for how sports rights holders engage with growth companies, moving beyond sponsorship inventory toward genuine participation in the value they help create (see: Aston Martin F1 and Eight Sleep or Inter Miami CF and IM8).

This deal is a live proof point of that shift, with Como 1907 choosing to align the club’s commercial upside with the startup’s growth.

When Como 1907 launched its Ventures programme in September last year, the main priority was leveraging non-commercialised assets and engaging the venture ecosystem. Como 1907 Ventures’ first deal, Connectome, saw the club take an equity stake in exchange for running a pilot inside the club, validating a high-performance application of brain health technology within an elite sporting environment.

With Collecto, the model flips towards more of a conventional commercial and brand partnership, with equity layered on top rather than the pilot being the point.

Both models have high potential, and the ability to flex to founders’ needs is enabling clubs like Como 1907, through their work with us at The Players Fund, to get access to the best possible deals available to them.

SPORTS PUNDIT PODCAST

On this episode of the Sports Pundit Podcast, I’m joined by Shergul Arshad, Head of North America for Aston Martin Formula One Team.

Shergul walks through how a career built in global football and fantasy sports led him into F1, joining the team on the back of the growth spike triggered by Drive to Survive and stepping into a role that, at the time, didn’t really exist yet.

The conversation traces how that role as Head of ‘North America’ has evolved. What started as an evangelizing job, explaining F1 to a US market that didn’t yet fully understand it, has turned into long-term sponsorship building, with Shergul personally closing nine deals in under four years, including with the likes of Cohere, CoreWeave, and Celsius.

Shergul explains the team’s move away from strict category exclusivity toward and the launch of the AMR Network, a structure that allows sponsors to collaborate with each other rather than compete for space, and how the IAM membership program is being used to capture and understand fan data.

The episode closes with a look at Aston Martin’s $350M Silverstone campus, home to more than 1,100 staff, and its role as both a talent magnet and a hospitality asset for the team.

Timestamps

01:00 - Shergul’s Career Path from Football and Fantasy to F1
04:00 - Building Relatability in the North American Market
09:00 - Sponsorship Growth Metrics and AMR’s Commercial Success
11:00 - Launching the AMR Network and Looking Beyond Category Exclusivity
20:00 - Expanding the Driver Squad and Show Car Activations
28:00 - A Silverstone Campus Tour
33:00 - Exploring Future Commercial Levers

About the Host

Andy Marston is the founder of Sports Pundit, a community and media platform for sports and technology executives. Through a weekly newsletter, podcast network, lively group chat, and regular social events, he shares industry analysis and connects leaders across the sector. Alongside Sports Pundit, Andy leads Corporate Venture at athlete-backed venture firm, The Players Fund, where he works with high-profile sports IP such as Como 1907 and Juventus to design venture strategies and drive innovation initiatives.

On this episode of the Sports Pundit Podcast, I'm joined by Shergul Arshad, Head of North America for Aston Martin Formula One Team.

Shergul walks through how a career built in global football and fantasy sports led him into F1, joining the team on the back of the growth spike triggered by Drive to Survive and stepping into a role that, at the time, didn't really exist yet.

The conversation traces how that role as Head of 'North America' has evolved. What started as an evangelizing job, explaining F1 to a US market that didn't yet fully understand it, has turned into long-term sponsorship building, with Shergul personally closing nine deals in under four years, including with the likes of Cohere, CoreWeave, and Celsius.

Shergul explains the team's move away from strict category exclusivity toward and the launch of the AMR Network, a structure that allows sponsors to collaborate with each other rather than compete for space, and how the IAM membership program is being used to capture and understand fan data.

The episode closes with a look at Aston Martin's $350M Silverstone campus, home to more than 1,100 staff, and its role as both a talent magnet and a hospitality asset for the team.

Timestamps

01:00 - Shergul’s Career Path from Football and Fantasy to F1
04:00 - Building Relatability in the North American Market
09:00 - Sponsorship Growth Metrics and AMR’s Commercial Success
11:00 - Launching the AMR Network and Looking Beyond Category Exclusivity
20:00 - Expanding the Driver Squad and Show Car Activations
28:00 - A Silverstone Campus Tour
33:00 - Exploring Future Commercial Levers

About the Host

Andy Marston is the founder of Sports Pundit, a community and media platform for sports and technology executives. Through a weekly newsletter, podcast network, lively group chat, and regular social events, he shares industry analysis and connects leaders across the sector. Alongside Sports Pundit, Andy leads Corporate Venture at athlete-backed venture firm, The Players Fund, where he works with high-profile sports IP such as Como 1907 and Juventus to design venture strategies and drive innovation initiatives.

This week I’m taking a look at the past fortnight of news. I was able to get a podcast out during my trip to Como (and recorded one that will be out soon), but I did miss publishing this newsletter. Hopefully you can forgive me, it is August after all.

FIFA’s very public dance with private equity is getting plenty of coverage from the mainstream press, but, as tends to be the case with these newsletters, I wanted to dive into something that caught my curiosity and hadn’t received quite as much attention elsewhere.

Here’s what’s coming up:

• Juventus Stream Pre-Season Fixtures on EA Sports FC Mobile 📲

• Revolut becomes Front-of-Shirt Partner at Como 1907

• WSL’s League Cup Becomes Players Cup to Reflect New Format

Let’s get into it!

IT’S IN THE GAME

Last week Juventus cruised to a 2-0 victory over OGC Nice in a pre-season friendly at their training ground. While this is largely unremarkable, what made the fixture interesting is where they chose to stream it.

• For the first time, supporters were able to watch the Bianconeri live on EA SPORTS FC Mobile.

• The club also plans to stream their upcoming traditional in-house clash against Juventus Next Gen at the Allianz Stadium on the platform. Taking place on the 17th August, this will be the second of two fixtures in this joint experiment.

• EA SPORTS is one of Juventus’ closest commercial partners through the EA SPORTS FC franchise. The partnership is evolving beyond branding and into direct fan engagement, giving supporters worldwide a close-up look at two key stages of the club’s pre-season build-up.

• It builds on Juventus’ track record of testing new broadcast formats during pre-season. Last year the club worked with content creators to stream multiple camera angles and commentary of the same match.

Why It Matters

This isn’t FC Mobile’s first live broadcast, but it is the first time we’ve seen it within European club football.

EA previously streamed live MLS matches through an in-app “FCM TV” portal starting May 2025, in partnership with Apple TV. However, the fact that they have now replicated this with Juventus suggests it is a format EA intends to repeat.

There has likely been meaningful progress since that previous MLS initiative, too. EA had announced its acquisition of TRACAB back in February 2025, just months before the MLS broadcasts launched, meaning that integration was still early days when FCM TV first went live. At the time, EA stated its goal to turn the EA Sports App into the world’s leading interactive sports platform, with on-demand alternative broadcasts as one of the explicit features TRACAB’s infrastructure would further unlock. Over a year on, the Juventus stream is evidence of that plan showing up as a live product, with TRACAB’s infrastructure now far more embedded than it would have been for MLS.

It also tracks with where the industry is heading from a trends perspective. Analysts increasingly describe live sport and gaming as converging audiences rather than separate ones. The generation that grew up on sports games is now also the generation driving how live sport gets watched, and that crossover is one of the most commercially valuable in entertainment.

The wider market has shifted from chasing installs to squeezing more value from users already inside the app. Essentially we’re moving into a battle for attention and retention over acquisition.

Ultimately, EA doesn’t need the Juventus stream to bring in new FC Mobile users. What it needs to know is whether existing ones will stay in the app 45/90 minutes longer than usual, which is a monetisation question dressed up as a broadcast. More than anything else, this partnership was a study of fan behaviour. The results, and a wider roll out, are something to look out for.

SUPPORTED BY DIZPLAI 📲

Why do some sports fans just drift away, while others live, breathe, and buy?

It’s not about flooding feeds with noise. It’s about human nature. We’ve mapped out the raw psychology of connection in our new guide, The Fan Psyche: 6 Psychological Pillars Every Sports Community Needs. We show you how to cut through the digital noise and turn passive scrollers, watchers, and lurkers into active co-creators who champion your team, fund your sport and fuel your growth.

Give them a home. Spark real agency. When you make the value clear, you flip casual bystanders into proud evangelists.

Get the Guide

HIGHLIGHTS

Revolut becomes Como 1907’s Official Front-of-Shirt Partner 👕

• Revolut, the global fintech company with more than 75 million customers worldwide, has expanded its partnership with Como 1907, becoming the club’s Official Front-of-Shirt Partner from the 2026/27 season onward.

• The expanded deal will focus on deep product integration, embedding Revolut’s financial technology into the club’s operations and fan journey across ticketing, retail and matchday experiences.

WSL’s secondary competition rebrands as The Subway Players Cup with a new Swiss-style format 🏆

• Subway has agreed a new multi-year deal to become title partner of WSL Football’s secondary competition from 2026/27, renaming it from The Subway Women’s League Cup to The Subway Players Cup to reflect a format built around player welfare principles.

• The group stage will adopt a Swiss-style league format with fixtures drawn by region, guaranteeing a minimum of six matches to increase playing opportunities for players not involved in European competition, while the three UEFA Champions League qualified teams will not participate due to increased playing load.

YouTube becomes the new home for US live sport, via NBCUniversal and Disney deals on the same week 📺

• NBCUniversal and YouTube announced a global partnership on 27 July that will bundle Peacock Premium into YouTube Premium in the US from early 2027, covering NFL, NBA, MLB, Premier League, WNBA, SNL and Love Island USA.

• The same week, YouTube TV users gained the ability to link accounts for ESPN Unlimited access inside the ESPN App, a knock-on effect of last year’s Disney/YouTube TV carriage deal.

Premier League launches its biggest-ever US fan activation, fronted by Ed Sheeran ⚽

• The Premier League’s “Coast to Coast” is its first-ever nationwide US activation, spanning all 20 clubs and 15 cities, with an opening weekend of 21–24 August, fronted by Ed Sheeran (a minority shareholder and Ipswich Town supporter).

• It runs alongside “Find Your Match,” an 11-question quiz that assigns fans a club based on personality and adds them to a contactable Premier League database for follow-up on club news, signings and fixtures.

PGA Tour pilots an announcer-free broadcast built around natural course audio 🎙️

• PGA TOUR Studios is piloting “Marquee Group: Quiet Please,” an announcer-free stream debuting at the Rocket Classic on PGA TOUR LIVE via ESPN+, using natural course audio, player-caddie conversations and crowd reactions across all four rounds.

• Storytelling instead comes from enhanced graphics, real-time stats, Virtual Eye overlays and an interactive layer (QR codes, live polls, Tagboard social integration), with the format emerging from the Tour’s Fan Forward Initiative and two-thirds Fan Council backing.

THE ATTENTION SHIFT

NBC just handed YouTube the keys to American live sport. Google’s $11 billion quarter proves YouTube can win a World Cup without owning a single right. And the PGA Tour just took the commentators out of its broadcast entirely. Ed and Andy unpack what’s actually happening to the definition of a sports broadcaster this week.

They cover the NBCUniversal and YouTube global partnership, the ESPN and YouTube TV integration, Alphabet’s Q2 earnings pinning $11 billion to the World Cup, the Premier League’s Coast to Coast US activation fronted by Ed Sheeran, Juventus becoming the first European club to broadcast a match inside a video game via EA Sports FC Mobile, and the PGA Tour’s announcer-free stream trialled at the Rocket Classic.

On today's episode of the Sports Pundit Podcast, we're joined by Isabelle Van Coevorden, Managing Director of Global Markets at the Seattle Seahawks.

Isabelle walks us through her career path, from playing semi-professional soccer and interning at UEFA in Switzerland, to brand-growth roles with Major League Soccer, FC Barcelona, and the Bundesliga, before joining the Seahawks to help translate American football to international markets from both a fan and a B2B perspective.

She discusses how the Seahawks leveraged their Super Bowl win for an immediate global momentum boost, while stressing the importance of building year-round market presence beyond the NFL's Super Bowl-centric spike in attention.

The conversation covers long-term ROI on international investment, community-building through events and flag football, the difference between global and regional commercial partnerships (including Accenture and Condor Airlines), cross-sport collaborations with clubs like Bayern Munich and AFL/NRL teams, the Seahawks' ambassador program with players, and the wider "halo effect" of promoting Seattle as a global city.

Timestamps

01:00 - Isabelle's Career Journey
04:00 - Joining the Seahawks
05:00 - Leveraging Super Bowl Momentum
09:30 - Seahawks' Global Markets
15:00 - Activating Without a Game
17:30 - Measuring International ROI
23:30 - Global and Regional Sponsors
33:00 - Seattle World Cup Halo

About The Host

Andy Marston is the founder of Sports Pundit, a community and media platform for sports and technology executives. Through a weekly newsletter, podcast network, lively group chat, and regular social events, he shares industry analysis and connects leaders across the sector. Alongside Sports Pundit, Andy leads Corporate Venture at athlete-backed venture firm, The Players Fund, where he works with high-profile sports IP such as Como 1907 to design venture strategies and drive innovation initiatives.

Last week finished with a wonderful afternoon with John Grabowski & co. at Dagenham and Redbridge FC for the inaugural Sports Pundit Football Media Summit.

However, that already feels a long time ago as my attention has had to shift immediately to the upcoming Como Cup, where The Players Fund (via Como Ventures) is helping to put on some of the non-football related activities, including a Hackathon, supported by Google DeepMind.

I try not to cover my own work too much (I don’t want to be that guy), but this one is a pretty cool amalgamation of a lot of different areas coming together, and probably the truest indicator yet of our mantra to “just keep adding value,” paying off.

Here’s what’s coming up:

• Como 1907 and Como Ventures to Host Data on the Lake 🧠

• Chelsea become first PL and WSL club to launch on Strava 🏃

• MLB signs Suryakumar Yadav to crack the Indian market 🏏

Let’s get into it!

HACKATHON

On 24–25 July, Como 1907 and Como Ventures will host Data on the Lake, a two-day AI hackathon developed with Google DeepMind that will give external technical talent access to a real Como 1907 dataset and real football problem sets, positioning the club as an R&D platform rather than a consumer of AI tools.

• The event takes place immediately before the second edition of Football on the Lake, and was open by application to data scientists, machine learning engineers, developers, and sports technology professionals.

• In just three days, Data on the Lake drew 606 applicants, from 26 different countries, across elite football, frontier AI and global tech. Applications came from employees representing the likes of Apple, Wayve, and Bending Spoons, as well as sporting organisations like the BWT Alpine F1 Team and Bundesliga.

• Under the theme “The Future of Football Intelligence”, teams will compete across two prize categories (technical innovation and practical utility), using a curated Como 1907 dataset alongside frontier AI tooling.

• Data on the Lake builds on the momentum of Como Ventures, the startup and investment platform launched by Como 1907 and The Players Fund in September 2025.

Why It Matters

Most professional football clubs are consumers of AI. They buy tools from vendors and occasionally build small in-house data teams. The technical talent doing the actual innovation sits elsewhere, and the club is the customer at the end of the value chain.

However, by opening its dataset and problem sets to external talent, and pairing them with DeepMind’s involvement, Como 1907 is inverting that relationship and becoming the venue where tools get built.

That matters for a few reasons.

First, real football data and real problems separate genuinely useful AI in sport from vendor-driven pitches. Access to those inputs is one of the more valuable assets a club has, and most keep it behind closed doors. Opening it up (even in a controlled setting) changes what technical builders can produce.

Second, the format signals what a modern football club can be beyond the pitch. Como 1907 has built itself into something closer to a media, tech, and investment platform, with Como Ventures now a core part of that ecosystem. The football operation is the anchor, but is part of a wider platform.

Lastly, it’s worth saying that few clubs have a frontier AI lab willing to associate with them (even for a one-off event). For technical talent, that signals this isn’t a marketing exercise and is likely why applications came in so fast, from senior ML engineers, product leads, and research scientists.

While I appreciate that not every club has the infrastructure to host an event like this, the underlying model and philosophy does transfer.

On reading this, the question that sports organisations should be asking when they see this is whether they see themselves as buyers of technology or as environments where technology can get built and/ or amplified.

(Disclosure: I head up Corporate Venture at The Players Fund, which co-founded and operates Como Ventures).

HIGHLIGHTS - SUPPORTED BY THE ATTENTION SHIFT

Chelsea become first Premier League and WSL club to launch an official Strava presence 🏃

• Chelsea have partnered with Strava to launch an official club presence on the platform, offering supporters running challenges, training content and community events tied to both the men’s and women’s teams, with activation planned across both pre-season tours this summer.

• The partnership follows PSG’s layered running programme (combining the We Run Paris 10K, international run clubs, a digital PSG Run Club on Strava, Mo Farah as ambassador and a Nike partnership) as clubs increasingly use fitness platforms to build recurring fan touchpoints outside of matchdays.

YouTube stages FIFA Creator Cup in Central Park as part of push for 2030/2034 World Cup broadcast rights 🎮

• YouTube hosted the first-ever FIFA Creator Cup at Wollman Rink in Central Park on 12 July, an exhibition match captained by iShowSpeed and streamed on FIFA’s official YouTube channel with Dove Men+Care and Lay’s as partners, featuring creators with 270 million combined subscribers.

• The event sits inside YouTube’s broader pitch for 2030/2034 US broadcast rights alongside Netflix, Disney, Amazon and Apple - with iShowSpeed’s simulcast of Portugal’s opening World Cup match drawing 9.2 million viewers, reportedly outperforming Fox’s broadcast audience for the same game.

MLB signs Indian cricket star Suryakumar Yadav as ambassador in latest attempt to crack the Indian market 🏏

• MLB has signed Suryakumar Yadav as a league ambassador, alongside a broadcast rights renewal with JioStar to air select regular season games, the All-Star Game, and the World Series in India, with activation beginning at the MLB All-Star Game in Philadelphia.

• The approach marks a strategic shift from over a decade of previous attempts, rather than converting Indian cricketers into baseball players, MLB is borrowing cricket’s biggest current star to introduce baseball to Indian audiences on its own terms.

Netflix signs short-form video licensing deals with Variety, Condé Nast, Hearst and others from August 📱

• Netflix has signed video-licensing deals with a group of publishers including Variety, BuzzFeed Studios, Condé Nast, Hearst, and Tastemade to carry short-form lifestyle and culture content from 3 August, with clips ranging from two to twenty-plus minutes.

• The move reverses Netflix’s long-standing strategy of walking away from licensed content to fund originals, and follows The Rest Is Football - which Netflix paid Goalhanger around £14 million to bring to the platform for the World Cup - demonstrating the commercial case for publisher and creator content on the platform.

Wimbledon extends BBC deal to 2033 and launches AI-powered fan experience with IBM 🎾

• Wimbledon has extended its free-to-air broadcast deal with the BBC to 2033, with the BBC citing “new technology, fresh storytelling, new voices and innovative ways to connect with fans” as driving forces behind the partnership.

• Four days after the announcement, Wimbledon and IBM revealed AI-powered “Key Moments,” a live “Match Chat” watsonx chatbot, and a revamped “Likelihood to Win” feature - building on a 2025 season that delivered 16% digital engagement growth and 39% growth in registered myWimbledon accounts.

SUPPORTED BY DIZPLAI 📲

Why do some sports fans just drift away, while others live, breathe, and buy?

It’s not about flooding feeds with noise. It’s about human nature. We’ve mapped out the raw psychology of connection in our new guide, The Fan Psyche: 6 Psychological Pillars Every Sports Community Needs. We show you how to cut through the digital noise and turn passive scrollers, watchers, and lurkers into active co-creators who champion your team, fund your sport and fuel your growth.

Give them a home. Spark real agency. When you make the value clear, you flip casual bystanders into proud evangelists.

Get the Guide

Dom points to examples like San Antonio Spurs fans in France staging 2-4 a.m. playoff watch parties complete with drums, and asks why the volunteers and organisers behind these communities rarely get any formal recognition at all.

That pitch opens into a wider conversation about visibility. Andy and Dom talk through what it would actually take to spotlight these grassroots communities and the tension that comes with it.

From there the discussion turns to loyalty and rewards, looking at how clubs and platforms already recognise their most devoted fans and the episode shifts to a practical question of “if not everyone can or wants to go to a stadium, what’s the next best thing?”

The trio debate the UK’s fan bar culture, then dig into “pub-plus” concepts like COSM and F1 Arcade as scalable alternatives to matchday attendance. They close by exploring whether cinemas could become a real venue for sport (both live broadcasts and archival footage) including formats built specifically for kids and for women’s sport.

Timestamps

• 1:00 - Fanzo’s Dom Collingwood Joins The Pitch

• 07:00 - Championing Volunteers And Giving Suitable Recognition

• 12:30 - Commercialising Fan Recognition and Finding Sponsorship Balance

• 14:30 – Creating Visible Communities for Fans

• 20:00 - Exploring Wider Opportunities around Loyalty And Data Rewards

• 26:19 - Why Don’t UK Fan Bars Exist for Top Teams?

• 32:00 - Appreciating the COSM And F1 Arcade Formats

• 38:00 - Should Sports Be more present in Cinemas?

About The Show

The Pitch is the conversational show from the Sports Pundit Podcast Network, hosted by Andy Marston, Drew Rauso and Dom Collingwood.

It’s a play on words, with each host bringing an idea, theme, or provocation that they pitch to the other. Together they react, debate, and explore what’s really happening across the sports industry, from shifting media models to the next wave of innovation.

Each episode mixes perspective with practicality, with occasional appearances from other Sports Pundit hosts from across the Network.

About The Hosts

Drew Rauso is a versatile media operator with a proven track record of building and scaling sports media ventures at the intersection of content, commerce, and creator strategy. He currently leads Brand, Strategy, and Operations at Playmaker HQ, a leading sports podcast network owned by Better Collective, home to shows featuring Shaquille O’Neal, Angel Reese, and Marshawn Lynch. Previously at The Players’ Tribune, Drew has been instrumental in shaping athlete-driven media, overseeing partnerships, production, and growth initiatives that connect fans and talent in meaningful ways.

Andy Marston is the founder of Sports Pundit, a community and media platform for sports and technology executives. Through a weekly newsletter, podcast network, lively group chat, and regular social events, he shares industry analysis and connects leaders across the sector. Alongside Sports Pundit, Andy leads Corporate Venture at athlete-backed venture firm, The Players Fund, where he works with high-profile sports IP such as Como 1907 and Juventus to design venture strategies and drive innovation initiatives.

Dom Collingwood is the founder of Fanzo, the world's most used sports bar finder, helping fans find the best bars and venues showing live sport near you. Alongside his business partner Leo MacLehose, he launched the company to revolutionise match viewing experiences and currently oversees operations across multiple global markets, including Australia, France, Great Britain, Ireland, Germany, Austria and the USA.

This week began with Wimbledon kicking off, so it’s fitting that this week’s stories lean tennis-heavy. Despite being on the other side of the world, Tennis Australia continue to make headlines and their discussion at Cannes last week dove into their philosophy, and there’s plenty in it for others to learn.

I was also lucky enough this week to feature on the Attention Shift Podcast with Ed Abis. I would love to know what you thought of the episode! Many of the stories covered there are included in this week’s highlights, and I’ll be building this in more and more over the coming weeks.

Here’s what’s coming up:

• Tennis Australia Partners with the PGA TOUR for Presidents Cup ⛳

• Andy and Jamie Murray launch “The Set” YouTube channel 🎾

• PGA Tour approves promotion and relegation structure from 2028 ⬇️

Let’s get into it!

CAPABILITY AS PRODUCT

Tennis Australia took the stage at Cannes Lions last week to explain how its “Hits Different” strategy has powered the Australian Open’s growth beyond a core tennis audience. Within that same strategic push is a partnership announced earlier this month that Tennis Australia will help deliver the PGA TOUR’s 2028 Presidents Cup.

• At Cannes, AO’s head of event brand marketing Britt Wickes and director of partnerships Roddy Campbell, a former guest of the Sports Pundit Podcast, laid out six principles behind the brand’s transformation, built around the idea that the AO competes with “everything your audience could choose instead,” not just other sports.

• The strategy has already produced new entry points beyond the core tournament such as the AO Live music festival, the TopCourt precinct, and the 1 Point Slam knockout exhibition, designed to pull in audiences who were never going to show up for tennis alone.

• Campbell was explicit that AO has set itself a target to feel “at least 50% different every year,” framing disruption as something the organisation is built to keep producing, not something that happens once and gets left alone.

• Last month, Tennis Australia announced it will support the operational, experiential and commercial delivery of the 2028 Presidents Cup, its first major project under a newly formed events enterprise built to sell Tennis Australia’s event delivery capability to other rights holders.

• The Presidents Cup deal isn’t a marketing partnership in the New Balance or ANZ sense. This is Tennis Australia acting as operator rather than host and packaging the institutional knowledge behind running a Grand Slam and selling it as a service to the PGA TOUR.

Why It Matters

The Cannes appearance and the Presidents Cup deal could be read as two different stories but they are essentially two sides of the same coin.

One side is about pulling new audiences toward the Australian Open brand. The other is about pushing Tennis Australia’s operational capability out toward a completely different market.

In both cases, however, they are a response to the underlying pressure that is brought on by having a fixed calendar slot and a ceiling in terms of how much a single annual event can grow by simply asking existing fans to spend more and more.

We covered Wimbledon’s response to this a few weeks ago when they announced The Wimbledon Court Invitational in New York. This falls on the side of pulling new audiences towards the brand.

The Presidents Cup deal is interesting because it’s applied to the back office, the side of the coin that we’ve seen a lot less.

They are taking event operations, staffing, logistics, accreditation systems built over decades to run one of the four Slams, and selling it as a B2B service to a golf tour that would otherwise have to build the equivalent from scratch.

The timing compounds the value on this, too. Running the Presidents Cup in Melbourne one month before the Australian Open means temporary staffing pools, supplier relationships and local infrastructure can be retained and redeployed rather than rebuilt. This is a margin advantage that has nothing to do with ticket sales or sponsorship and everything to do with sequencing.

Tennis Australia has decided that neither its audience nor its revenue should be capped by the tennis calendar. The AO’s marketing arm is manufacturing new reasons for people to show up who aren’t tennis obsessives and the events enterprise is manufacturing new reasons for other rights holders to pay for what Tennis Australia already knows how to do.

Whether the Presidents Cup becomes a template for further work with other sports, rather than a one-off shaped by geography and timing, is the thing worth watching but the theory (and the fact they have had the conviction to spin up a specific department for external events) is something to analyse and explore further.

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Sports Pundit’s Inaugural Football Media Welcomes Execs from Spotify, Substack, and Snapchat 🏟️

On July 10th, we’re bringing together executives from Spotify, Snapchat, Substack, England Rugby, The FA, and Livewire at Victoria Road, home of Dagenham & Redbridge FC, for Sports Pundit’s first Football Media Summit.

Five panels across the afternoon explore where football, media, gaming, and the creator economy are actually heading:

• How Are Football and Gaming Rewriting Fan Engagement?

• Do Creators or Clubs Own the Football Audience?

• How Are Clubs Turning Digital Audiences Into Direct Revenues?

• How Are Leading Sports Organisations Embracing Innovation?

• What Does Streaming Mean for Football’s Commercial Future?

Confirmed speakers include Kahlen Macauley from Snapchat, Alexandra Adey from Spotify, Arthur Guisasola from Substack, Flo Lloyd Hughes from The Cutback, Rob Gevertz from England Rugby, Tori Horobin from Livewire, John Grabowski CEO of Dagenham & Redbridge, Harry Hugo of Farnham Town FC, and musician Avelino, a former guest of the Sports Pundit Podcast. Further speakers to be announced.

Gates open at 4pm. Five panels from 4:30pm. A World Cup Quarter-Final watch-along kicks off at 8pm if you want to stay on.

Tickets are £12, with profits going to gaming charity SpecialEffect.

Get Your Ticket

SUPPORTED BY DIZPLAI 📲

Your biggest fans are invisible to you. Here’s the proof…

The channels that give you the most reach give you the least data. The Anonymous Fan Index, Dizplai’s benchmark study, proves it.

Ticketing is the richest source of fan data, cited by 67% of respondents. Membership and loyalty programmes came in at 48%, social media at 41%. Broadcast audiences, where most organisations have their greatest reach, are the hardest to convert. 67% said broadcast viewers were their most anonymous fan group.

Supertri’s Chris Williams knows the commercial consequence of that. Relying purely on broadcast numbers, he says, leaves you exposed on your sponsorship proposition.

The Anonymous Fan Index sets out what closing that gap looks like. Download it free and use the Fan Revenue Calculator to put a number on your own opportunity.

Try the Fan Revenue Calendar

HIGHLIGHTS - SUPPORTED BY THE ATTENTION SHIFT

Andy and Jamie Murray launch “The Set” YouTube channel 🎾

• The Murrays have launched “The Set,” produced by Prodigy Studios (The Overlap, The Switch) and IMG Tennis, with their first episode featuring KSI, timed deliberately to coincide with Wimbledon 2026 and distributed across The Set, KSI’s channel, and Wimbledon simultaneously.

• The launch follows the Overlap template of elite athletes building owned audiences post-career, with Murray himself citing Bryson DeChambeau as the inspiration, the deeper play is direct fan relationships, brand partnerships, and owned IP that broadcast deals have never delivered.

BBC partners with the Sidemen for live World Cup watch-along on YouTube and iPlayer 📺

• The BBC and the Sidemen co-hosted a live watch-along of Ecuador v Germany on June 25, streaming simultaneously on BBC Football’s YouTube, MoreSidemen, and BBC iPlayer with the official broadcast embedded inside the creator stream via picture-in-picture.

• It is the first creator watch-along partnership for a major BBC sporting event, and structurally mirrors the Netflix/Goalhanger model, a legacy rights holder borrowing an audience built elsewhere to reach young fans who increasingly experience live sport through communities they already belong to.

Snapchat research confirms Gen Z fans check their phones 10 times per match, and that’s the point 📱

• New Snapchat research among 1,000 UK Gen Z fans finds they check their phones around 10 times per World Cup match, with 74% reaching for their phone during the scheduled 22nd-minute water break and 72% immediately messaging friends when their team scores.

• The data reframes the “second screen distraction” debate entirely - for Gen Z, the group chat is the primary fan experience, and 69% say they would engage with brand content during breaks if it was relevant, making the water break a genuinely new synchronised commercial moment in live sport.

ESPN launches Fan House, its first direct fan identity and engagement platform 🏟️

• ESPN has announced Fan House, a new engagement platform powered by Flowcode QR technology launching in August 2026 with college football, offering polls, trivia, sweepstakes, and brand integrations, giving ESPN its first mechanism for building direct first-party fan relationships.

• The move is ESPN catching up to where the ad market has shifted: reach was the product, first-party data is now the product, and Fan House is the infrastructure to collect it.

PGA Tour approves promotion and relegation structure from 2028, and bets on the Australian Open as a global premium slot ⛳

• The PGA Tour has approved a two-tier Championship and Challenger Series from 2028, with a $20m purse per event at the top level, 20 promoted annually, and no sponsor exemptions, with new CEO Brian Rolapp explicit that the restructure is designed to compete for media dollars through better storylines and commercial inventory.

• Simultaneously, the PGA Tour has formally partnered with the DP World Tour and Golf Australia to elevate the Australian Open into a top-10 global tournament between 2027 and 2029, with a new permanent venue from 2028, part of a broader strategy to build premium inventory in international calendar windows that don’t cannibalise North American broadcast rights.

SPORTS PUNDIT PODCAST

Jada Balster [#89] - How Perk Is Using Sport to Accelerate Brand Growth in a New Era of B2B Marketing 🏎️

On today’s episode of the Sports Pundit Podcast, I’m joined by Jada Balster, CMO at Perk.

Jada is a B2B marketing leader with more than 20 years of experience across companies including Epicor, S&P Global, and Adobe. Today she leads marketing at Perk, the all-in-one travel and spend management platform formerly known as TravelPerk.

In this conversation, we explore how B2B marketing has evolved from a demand generation discipline into a brand-building function, and why Perk recently embarked on its biggest ever marketing investment through a company-wide rebrand. We discuss the role sport can play in accelerating brand growth, including why Perk selected the Audi Revolut Formula One team as its first major sports partnership, and how the company plans to stand out as Formula One continues to get noisier for incoming brands.

Timestamps

• 02:00 - Jada’s Career Journey

• 04:00 - TravelPerk Becomes Perk

• 06:00 - Rebrand Rollout and Metrics

• 10:00 - Why Sport and F1 Fit

• 15:00 - Choosing the Audi Partnership

• 24:00 - Integration Beyond the Logo

• 27:00 - Activating Across Channels

• 34:00 - What’s Next for Perk

🔍 Search ‘Sports Pundit Podcast’ wherever you listen, available on Spotify, Apple, and YouTube 🎧

About The Host

Andy Marston is the founder of Sports Pundit, a community and media platform for sports and technology executives. Through a weekly newsletter, podcast network, lively group chat, and regular social events, he shares industry analysis and connects leaders across the sector. Alongside Sports Pundit, Andy leads Corporate Venture at athlete-backed venture firm, The Players Fund, where he works with high-profile sports IP such as Como 1907 to design venture strategies and drive innovation initiatives.

It’s been a hot week across the UK and today’s lead story is focused on hot coral, the colour synonymous with Monzo.

Monzo holds approximately 39% of the digital banking market in the UK, but has had limited presence in sport. That changed this week with the announcement of their partnership with The Hundred. Here’s what their limited track record tells us about what to expect.

Here’s what’s coming up:

• Monzo Becomes Official Banking Partner of The Hundred 🏏

• Tennis Australia Partners with the PGA TOUR for Presidents Cup ⛳

• USTA Launches Inaugural Connect Innovation Challenge 🎾

Let’s get into it!

FINTECHS IN FOOTBALL

• Monzo has signed as Official Banking Partner of The Hundred, with the deal expanding from 2027 to include presenting partnership of the Player Auction, marking the digital bank’s most significant sponsorship commitment to date.

• Physical assets include branding across all eight Hundred venues, sponsorship of the Decision Review System on live broadcast, and fan engagement activations at the Eliminator and Final, operating at competition level and clear of franchise inventory where established financial brands like Barclays already hold positions.

• All eight Hundred franchises are now under new ownership structures following a centrally-run sale to overseas investors, bringing new team identities and the first ever player auction for both men and women.

• It arrives off the back of Monzo and Coventry City winning Gold for Sponsorship/Partnership of the Year at the 2026 Football Business Awards, external validation for a model that treated a shirt deal as a product channel rather than a logo placement.

• Monzo continues as front-of-shirt partner at Coventry for 2026/27 as the club returns to the Premier League, meaning both partnerships run concurrently this season at different scales.

Why It Matters

Monzo has built one of the UK’s most recognisable consumer brands through digital channels and viral stunts. Sponsorship had never been a significant part of the model, which is what makes this announcement interesting.

Two years ago they made their first and only move until now, a fairly under-the-radar deal with Coventry City in the EFL Championship. This is about to pay off hugely with new-found Premier League exposure as Lampard’s men topped the league this year but beyond picking the right horse, how they went about it is very illustrative.

Beyond the obvious points about brand awareness on broadcast channels and physical presence for a digital bank, Monzo has been smart in the way it has incorporated its product directly into the partnership.

The bank ran a number of campaigns last season, each tied to something Monzo’s product could already do.

Their cashback offer ran for nearly two months from August 2025 and gave Coventry fans 10% back on eligible transactions with the club, covering kits, matchday food and drink, and tickets. Over that period, fans received more than £28,000 in cashback, a great example of a sponsorship putting money directly back into the hands of the people it is supposed to serve.

Other initiatives included launching a Sky Blue app icon that fans could download, a striking hot coral away shirt (matching their famous card), and most notably a 1p shirt campaign giving anyone opening a Monzo account the opportunity to purchase said kit, framed around how small daily savings compound.

The results were pretty strong. 32,000 users engaged with the cashback offer, 68,000 downloaded the app icon, and away shirt sales rose 45%.

Crucially, none of this was pushed broadly across Monzo’s entire customer base. It was opt-in, available to the community that cared, which means Monzo customers with no interest in Coventry City were never asked to. This is important, particularly in a sport with as much tribalism as English football, and is often something that puts brands off.

The Hundred, operating without such club allegiances, is a cleaner environment still. It is cross-gender, family-oriented, spread across eight venues in England and Wales, and built around the younger, digitally engaged audience Monzo most wants to reach.

Their bet is that what worked for a tight local community in Coventry can scale to a multi-venue competition across seven cities in England and Wales. Their confidence in doing so will have been (rightfully) bolstered by two seasons of quietly getting the model right first. I’m excited to see how it plays out.

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Sports Pundit’s Inaugural Football Media Welcomes Execs from Spotify, Substack, and Snapchat 🏟️

On July 10th, we’re bringing together executives from Spotify, Snapchat, Substack, England Rugby, The FA, and Livewire at Victoria Road, home of Dagenham & Redbridge FC, for Sports Pundit’s first Football Media Summit.

Six panels across the afternoon explore where football, media, gaming, and the creator economy are actually heading:

• How Can Gaming Be Leveraged for Good?

• Do Creators or Clubs Own the Football Audience?

• How Are Clubs Turning Digital Audiences Into Direct Revenues?

• How Are Football and Gaming Rewriting Fan Engagement?

• How Are Leading Sports Organisations Embracing Innovation?

• What Does Streaming Mean for Football’s Commercial Future?

Confirmed speakers include Kahlen Macauley from Snapchat, Alexandra Adey from Spotify, Arthur Guisasola from Substack, Rob Gevertz from England Rugby, Tori Horobin from Livewire, John Grabowski CEO of Dagenham & Redbridge, Harry Hugo of Farnham Town FC, and musician Avelino, a former guest of the Sports Pundit Podcast. Further speakers to be announced.

Gates open at 4pm. Six panels from 4:30pm. A World Cup Quarter-Final watch-along kicks off at 8pm if you want to stay on.

Tickets are £12, with profits going to gaming charity SpecialEffect.

Get Your Ticket

SUPPORTED BY DIZPLAI 📲

Your biggest fans are invisible to you. Here’s the proof…

The channels that give you the most reach give you the least data. The Anonymous Fan Index, Dizplai’s benchmark study, proves it.

Ticketing is the richest source of fan data, cited by 67% of respondents. Membership and loyalty programmes came in at 48%, social media at 41%. Broadcast audiences, where most organisations have their greatest reach, are the hardest to convert. 67% said broadcast viewers were their most anonymous fan group.

Supertri’s Chris Williams knows the commercial consequence of that. Relying purely on broadcast numbers, he says, leaves you exposed on your sponsorship proposition.

The Anonymous Fan Index sets out what closing that gap looks like. Download it free and use the Fan Revenue Calculator to put a number on your own opportunity.

Try the Fan Revenue Calendar

HIGHLIGHTS

Tennis Australia to deliver 2028 Presidents Cup at Kingston Heath Golf Club ⛳

• Tennis Australia has partnered with the PGA TOUR to handle the operational, experiential, and commercial delivery of the 2028 Presidents Cup in Melbourne, covering ticketing, sponsorship, hospitality, fan experience, and broader event operations, drawing on its expertise running the Australian Open.

• The deal is the first major project under Tennis Australia’s newly established events enterprise, designed to commercialise its world-class event delivery capability beyond tennis, with proceeds reinvested back into growing the sport domestically.

USTA launches inaugural Connect Innovation Challenge, giving startups access to US Open data 🎾

• The USTA has launched its first Connect Innovation Challenge, giving builders, startups, and engineers access to real USTA and US Open datasets to develop solutions that can help grow the game, with a $10,000 grand prize and the chance to pitch at the US Open itself.

• The initiative, championed by USTA Board member and Cartan Capital founder CiCi Bellis, is a direct attempt to connect tennis with the wider technology and startup ecosystem, applications are open until 3 July.

Chelsea FC partner with AI legal platform Legora in multi-year deal ⚖️

• Chelsea FC have announced a multi-year partnership with Legora, an AI platform for legal professionals, with the brand featuring on the sleeve of training kits across the men’s, women’s, and Academy teams.

• The deal is another example of an AI-native business using top-flight football sponsorship as a credibility and visibility play, Legora joins a growing list of enterprise AI companies entering sport through kit and stadium inventory.

M+C Saatchi Sport & Entertainment appointed as global PR agency for BOSS and HUGO 👔

• Hugo Boss has appointed M+C Saatchi Sport & Entertainment as global PR agency of record for both its BOSS and HUGO brands, covering key markets including the UK, US, and DACH region across sport, fashion, art, and culture.

• The appointment builds on Hugo Boss’s existing portfolio of high-profile sports and cultural partnerships, including the Australian Open, Laver Cup, Aston Martin Aramco F1 Team, and Art Basel, and signals an ambition to deepen its positioning at the intersection of fashion and sport.

System of a Down launch official fan stores across five European cities for sold-out stadium tour 🎸

• System of a Down are opening official fan stores in Stockholm, Paris, Berlin, Düsseldorf, and London between 27 June and 16 July, timed around their sold-out European stadium tour and the 25th anniversary of their album Toxicity.

• The stores will stock exclusive merchandise including a football kit collaboration with sportswear brand hummel, city-specific vinyl pressings of Toxicity, and commemorative posters, a considered fan experience built around scarcity and local identity rather than generic tour merch.

SPORTS PUNDIT PODCAST

Jada Balster [#89] - How Perk Is Using Sport to Accelerate Brand Growth in a New Era of B2B Marketing 🏎️

On today’s episode of the Sports Pundit Podcast, I’m joined by Jada Balster, CMO at Perk.

Jada is a B2B marketing leader with more than 20 years of experience across companies including Epicor, S&P Global, and Adobe. Today she leads marketing at Perk, the all-in-one travel and spend management platform formerly known as TravelPerk.

In this conversation, we explore how B2B marketing has evolved from a demand generation discipline into a brand-building function, and why Perk recently embarked on its biggest ever marketing investment through a company-wide rebrand. We discuss the role sport can play in accelerating brand growth, including why Perk selected the Audi Revolut Formula One team as its first major sports partnership, and how the company plans to stand out as Formula One continues to get noisier for incoming brands.

Timestamps

• 02:00 - Jada’s Career Journey

• 04:00 - TravelPerk Becomes Perk

• 06:00 - Rebrand Rollout and Metrics

• 10:00 - Why Sport and F1 Fit

• 15:00 - Choosing the Audi Partnership

• 24:00 - Integration Beyond the Logo

• 27:00 - Activating Across Channels

• 34:00 - What’s Next for Perk

🔍 Search ‘Sports Pundit Podcast’ wherever you listen, available on Spotify, Apple, and YouTube 🎧

About The Host

Andy Marston is the founder of Sports Pundit, a community and media platform for sports and technology executives. Through a weekly newsletter, podcast network, lively group chat, and regular social events, he shares industry analysis and connects leaders across the sector. Alongside Sports Pundit, Andy leads Corporate Venture at athlete-backed venture firm, The Players Fund, where he works with high-profile sports IP such as Como 1907 to design venture strategies and drive innovation initiatives.

Thanks to Brock and the Super League Netball team for their generosity to the Sports Pundit community ahead of their big event this summer, which saw Manchester Thunder storm to victory on home turf.

Speaking of big summer events… I’ve teamed up with the CEO of Dagenham & Redbridge, John Grabowski (a long-time member of Sports Pundit), to put on both a World Cup watch-along and an afternoon of programming relating to football media.

I’d love for as many of you as possible to join us on Friday 10 July 🥳

All profits will go to charity, and the line-up for both the Quarter-Final at 8pm and the panels preceding it will become clear over the next few weeks. Expect some big names from both the football and media world.

Get Your Ticket

Here’s what’s coming up:

• Launching the Sports Pundit Football Media Summit 🏟️

• The FA and Snapchat launch AR lenses for World Cup 👻

• Why Perk Chose Audi F1 to Accelerate its Objectives 🏎️

Let’s get into it!

ONE TO WATCH

On 10 July, Sports Pundit will host its inaugural Football Media Summit at Victoria Road, home of Dagenham & Redbridge FC, combining an afternoon of industry panels and interviews with a live World Cup Quarter-Final watch-along on the big screen.

• Doors open at 4:00pm, with the first panel beginning at 4:30pm. The programme covers how football and gaming are rewriting fan engagement, whether creators or clubs own the modern football audience, and how sports organisations are turning digital audiences into direct revenue.

• Featured interviews include John Grabowski, CEO of Dagenham & Redbridge FC and Kahlen Macaulay, Head of Sports & Media Partnerships at Snapchat, exploring how leading sports organisations are engaging with media and what streaming means for football’s commercial future.

• From 8:00pm, attention turns to the big screen for a live World Cup Quarter-Final watch-along, with networking time built in between the panels and kick-off.

• Tickets are £12 for the full event (panels, interviews, networking, and the match) or £6 for the match-only option from 7:00pm. Profits will be donated to SpecialEffect, a charity that uses technology to make gaming accessible for people with physical disabilities.

Why Dagenham & Redbridge?

Earlier this year, KSI bought a minority stake in Dagenham & Redbridge with a stated ambition of getting the club to the Premier League. The team is now managed by former England striker Andy Carroll.

That investment set the stage for the moment that put Victoria Road on a global media map.

In March 2026, the Daggers partnered with KSI and DAZN to stream their National League South fixture against Hampton & Richmond live and free on KSI’s YouTube channel. It was the first time a National League match has been broadcast this way, putting a sixth-tier English fixture in front of KSI’s 17.6 million YouTube subscribers (against a backdrop of more than 75 million followers across his wider social platforms).

The Daggers’ DAZN partnership sits within the wider National League agreement that has positioned non-league football as a working testbed for digital-first distribution, free-to-watch global streaming, and creator-led storytelling.

This context is what makes Victoria Road one of the more relevant grounds in English football to host a conversation about football media right now.

The themes the Summit will explore, such as the rise of creators as broadcasters, the commercial case for streaming, and the changing relationship between clubs and platforms are exactly the areas this club is exploring right now.

The programming, which will see more speakers announced over the coming days, will end with an interview with John Grabowski, CEO at Dagenham & Redbridge FC, who has more exciting news to share.

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Sports Pundit’s Inaugural Football Media Summit Comes To Victoria Road 🏟️

We are delighted to be launching the Sports Pundit Football Media Summit this summer at Dagenham & Redbridge FC’s Victoria Road on July 10th, combining an evening of industry insight, networking and live World Cup action.

The event will bring together voices from across sports, media, gaming and the creator economy for a series of panel discussions and interviews, before attention turns to a live World Cup Quarter-Final watch-along from 8:00pm.

“A lot of industry events are either invite-only or priced in a way that makes them difficult to attend for anyone without access to a corporate debit card, but I wanted this one to be open to all. We’ve deliberately kept ticket prices affordable to get a genuine cross-section of the industry in the room, and I’d love to use this as a chance to give back to you, the readers, as well as treat it like a bit of a summer party.”

“Whether you’re coming to learn from industry leaders, make valuable connections, or settle in to watch a World Cup Quarter-Final on the big screen, I can’t wait to see you at Victoria Road on the 10th July.”

Attendance will be capped, so please book your tickets asap. Regardless of who is in the Quarter-Final, it’s going to be an epic line-up both before the game and during.

Get Your Ticket

HIGHLIGHTS

PWHL raises over $100m from Larry Tanenbaum and Ilitch Companies in first outside investment 🏒

• The Professional Women’s Hockey League has taken outside capital for the first time, with Kilmer Sports Ventures (led by Larry Tanenbaum) and Ilitch Companies joining as strategic partners in a combined investment of over $100m.

• The deal marks a significant step in the commercial maturation of women’s hockey, bringing two established sports ownership groups onto the cap table of one of the fastest-growing women’s sports leagues in North America.

World Boxing launches dedicated streaming service World Boxing TV with Joymo 🥊

• World Boxing, the breakaway governing body founded in 2023, has partnered with streaming platform Joymo to launch World Boxing TV, offering live event coverage, exclusive content, and on-demand programming.

• The move gives the organisation direct-to-consumer distribution infrastructure as it continues to build its commercial model independently of the sport’s established governing bodies.

Racing Bulls partner with Salesforce for AI-powered fan engagement 🏎️

• Formula One’s Racing Bulls have signed Salesforce as a partner, with the deal centred on deploying Salesforce’s Agentforce 360 AI platform to unify fan engagement, data, and team operations on a single system.

• The partnership is part of a broader trend of F1 teams using their commercial appeal to attract enterprise technology partners seeking high-visibility platforms to demonstrate AI capabilities.

Apple makes Austrian Grand Prix free to stream for US Apple ID holders 🏎️

• Apple will make the full Formula One Austrian Grand Prix weekend (practice, qualifying, and the race) free to access for anyone in the US with an Apple ID who downloads Apple TV, covering the Red Bull Ring event from 26-28 June.

• The move is a deliberate audience acquisition play, using one of F1’s most popular race weekends to drive Apple TV downloads and introduce new viewers to its broader F1 content offering.

The FA and Snapchat launch AR lenses for England fans at the World Cup 👻

• Snapchat has partnered with The FA to launch a series of AR lenses for England supporters, available both on Snapchat and within the official FA app, including kit try-ons, player call simulations, and supporter lenses.

• The activation, developed with Two Circles, is a timely example of how national associations are using platform partnerships to extend fan engagement beyond the broadcast into the social layer of a major tournament.

MSP Sports Capital acquires SailGP New Zealand team, completing full private ownership across all 13 teams ⛵

• MSP Sports Capital has acquired the SailGP New Zealand team, with Olympic champions Peter Burling and Blair Tuke involved in the transaction, completing a significant milestone as all 13 SailGP teams are now privately owned and operated.

• The achievement reflects SailGP’s deliberate strategy of building a fully privatised league structure from the outset, a model that is increasingly being watched by other emerging sports properties.

SUPPORTED BY DIZPLAI 📲

Your biggest fans are invisible to you. Here’s the proof…

The channels that give you the most reach give you the least data. The Anonymous Fan Index, Dizplai’s benchmark study, proves it.

Ticketing is the richest source of fan data, cited by 67% of respondents. Membership and loyalty programmes came in at 48%, social media at 41%. Broadcast audiences, where most organisations have their greatest reach, are the hardest to convert. 67% said broadcast viewers were their most anonymous fan group.

Supertri’s Chris Williams knows the commercial consequence of that. Relying purely on broadcast numbers, he says, leaves you exposed on your sponsorship proposition.

The Anonymous Fan Index sets out what closing that gap looks like. Download it free and use the Fan Revenue Calculator to put a number on your own opportunity.

Try the Fan Revenue Calendar

SPORTS PUNDIT PODCAST

Jada Balster [#89] - How Perk Is Using Sport to Accelerate Brand Growth in a New Era of B2B Marketing 🏎️

On today’s episode of the Sports Pundit Podcast, I’m joined by Jada Balster, CMO at Perk.

Jada is a B2B marketing leader with more than 20 years of experience across companies including Epicor, S&P Global, and Adobe. Today she leads marketing at Perk, the all-in-one travel and spend management platform formerly known as TravelPerk.

In this conversation, we explore how B2B marketing has evolved from a demand generation discipline into a brand-building function, and why Perk recently embarked on its biggest ever marketing investment through a company-wide rebrand. We discuss the role sport can play in accelerating brand growth, including why Perk selected the Audi Revolut Formula One team as its first major sports partnership, and how the company plans to stand out as Formula One continues to get noisier for incoming brands.

Timestamps

• 02:00 - Jada’s Career Journey

• 04:00 - TravelPerk Becomes Perk

• 06:00 - Rebrand Rollout and Metrics

• 10:00 - Why Sport and F1 Fit

• 15:00 - Choosing the Audi Partnership

• 24:00 - Integration Beyond the Logo

• 27:00 - Activating Across Channels

• 34:00 - What’s Next for Perk

🔍 Search ‘Sports Pundit Podcast’ wherever you listen, available on Spotify, Apple, and YouTube 🎧

About The Host

Andy Marston is the founder of Sports Pundit, a community and media platform for sports and technology executives. Through a weekly newsletter, podcast network, lively group chat, and regular social events, he shares industry analysis and connects leaders across the sector. Alongside Sports Pundit, Andy leads Corporate Venture at athlete-backed venture firm, The Players Fund, where he works with high-profile sports IP such as Como 1907 to design venture strategies and drive innovation initiatives.

Jada is a B2B marketing leader with more than 20 years of experience across companies including Epicor, S&P Global, and Adobe. Today she leads marketing at Perk, the all-in-one travel and spend management platform formerly known as TravelPerk.

In this conversation, we explore how B2B marketing has evolved from a demand generation discipline into a brand-building function, and why Perk recently embarked on its biggest ever marketing investment through a company-wide rebrand.

We discuss the role sport can play in accelerating brand growth, including why Perk selected the Audi Revolut Formula One team as its first major sports partnership, and how the company plans to stand out as Formula One continues to get noisier for incoming brands.

Timestamps

02:00 - Jada’s Career Journey

04:00 - TravelPerk Becomes Perk

06:00 - Rebrand Rollout and Metrics10:00 - Why Sport and F1 Fit

15:00 - Choosing the Audi Partnership24:00 - Integration Beyond the Logo

27:00 - Activating Across Channels

34:00 - What’s Next for Perk

About The Host

Andy Marston is the founder of Sports Pundit, a community and media platform for sports and technology executives. Through a weekly newsletter, podcast network, lively group chat, and regular social events, he shares industry analysis and connects leaders across the sector. Alongside Sports Pundit, Andy leads Corporate Venture at athlete-backed venture firm, The Players Fund, where he works with high-profile sports IP such as Como 1907 to design venture strategies and drive innovation initiatives.

This newsletter explores ideas discussed on The Pitch podcast, where Drew and I bring a theme, provocation or emerging idea from across the sports industry and pitch it to one another.

This week, we’re picking up a thread that started with a cricket match on a laptop screen and ended up somewhere considerably more interesting: what happens when the stadium becomes the office, and what the co-working trend might actually be worth to sports organisations that are willing to think beyond just selling a few extra £15 tickets.

Enjoy, and let me know what you think!

THE PITCH

The San Diego Padres recently announced Remote Work Wednesday, tied to a 1:10 PM start against the Cincinnati Reds at Petco Park. The premise was fairly simple. Essentially, trade your desk for sunshine, baseball, and a workspace with considerably better scenery (if you like baseball).

Hundreds of fans showed up with laptops open, admission plus $10 in Friar Funds in hand, and the genuine intention (or at least the genuine excuse) to work from one of America’s finest ballparks.

The reality, predictably, was a little messier.

Several attendees told Axios they had deliberately kept their bosses out of the loop. The WiFi was described as “a little glitchy, but OK.” One woman cut off a journalist mid-interview to take a call.

The honest reality of co-working in a stadium, without meaningful infrastructure behind it, is that the appeal is largely limited to people who are quietly skiving, and the anecdotal evidence from Petco Park bears that out.

That is not necessarily a criticism of the initiative. Getting people through the gate on a Wednesday afternoon is a genuine win, but it does define the ceiling of what a ‘bring your laptop to the match’ marketing campaign can realistically deliver.

If the WiFi drops during an important call, or someone gets caught out by their manager, the experiment ends there for that person, and the chances of them coming back are seriously diminished.

Having proven the demand exists, the Padres would be well advised to look across the pond at what Surrey County Cricket Club have done with a similar idea.

Over the winter, Surrey upgraded the Kia Oval to WiFi 7, installed dedicated work areas with power access throughout the ground, and launched their Work From Oval campaign inviting hybrid and remote workers to spend their working day at the ground.

This infrastructure layer is the important first step as it protects attendees against a lot of the potential downside. The 100-plus workers who turned up across the first four-day fixture of the 2026 County Championship season can come back again with confidence, knowing the WiFi will hold if there is a Zoom call they cannot move or an email that demands an immediate response.

However, when considering the opportunity to leverage stadia for co-working, it is also important for organisations to lean into what their stadium can offer that a co-working space fundamentally cannot.

A WeWork has desks, WiFi, and phone booths. That is table stakes. What it does not have is a room full of people who share a common interest, and the organic social energy that creates. That is the stadium’s structural advantage, and it points toward a different product offering. Rather than positioning co-working days as a place to grind through a full working day, what if the real opportunity is to host a networking afternoon that happens to also have the co-working facilities for the email you need to send or the call you could not move. The cricket ground or ballpark in this instance instead acts as a connector.

Lean into that and segmentation becomes the next unlock. Host a sports business day, a finance day, a media day, and structure it around a specific professional community each time. This way you give people a genuine reason to be in the room together beyond the cricket. The shared interest that already exists between everyone in the ground becomes a feature rather. And suddenly, instead of sneaking out from behind their boss’s back, this is an afternoon of lead generation (that is encouraged in many roles).

That is also where the commercial logic gets interesting, too. This is no longer just a way for teams to sell a few more cheap tickets. For B2B brands in particular, co-working days structured around sector-specific networking can become a sponsorable asset in their own right. A club that can reliably put a room of insurance executives together on the same afternoon is able to justifiably offer that direct, relaxed access to brands looking to connect with that audience. And better still, it is an environment those professionals have actively chosen to be in.

As well as a ticket boost, clubs now get a pipeline of senior professionals building a recurring relationship with their venue, and a growing set of first-party audience data (which industries, which companies, how often) that most rights holders can currently only approximate. The more intentional the programming, the more valuable that data becomes.

The Padres proved the appetite is there among hybrid and remote workers. Surrey built the infrastructure to do something more recurring with it. The next step is for them, or someone else, is to recognise that the real asset (beyond the desk or the WiFi) is in being able to connect the room.

P.S. If someone would like to try this with a sports executive audience, get in touch, we would love to help make it happen (this is called The Pitch, after all).

SPONSORED BY FANZO

Michelob ULTRA Enlists FANZO and Men In Blazers to Launch First Integrated Out-of-Home Campaign for FIFA World Cup 2026 ⚽️

Michelob ULTRA has launched the first technology-led out-of-home campaign by a FIFA World Cup™ sponsor, partnering with FANZO and Men In Blazers to connect both international visitors and American soccer fans to the best venues for watching the tournament.

• The campaign targets the 1.24 million foreign fans expected to travel to the US for the tournament, using QR codes across airports, train stations and metro systems in host cities to direct arriving fans to a Michelob ULTRA venue map powered by FANZO, recognising that with average trip durations of 14 days, most of the fan experience happens away from stadiums.

• For domestic fans, Men In Blazers has curated a list of the 250 best soccer fan venues in the country, selected by their audience based on atmosphere, community and experience rather than geography, with FANZO’s technology powering discovery of official Michelob ULTRA partner venues nationwide.

• FANZO, the world’s leading platform for finding live sport in pubs, bars and fan zones provides the underlying venue technology for both arms of the campaign, having recently expanded into New Zealand as part of its continued international growth.

• Men In Blazers, the podcast and media network credited with helping grow soccer culture in the US, brings cultural credibility to the campaign, with founder Roger Bennett describing American soccer bars as “sacred places” and true communities that have helped drive the sport’s rise across the nation.

• The partnership is being positioned as a watershed moment for sports sponsorship, with FANZO CEO Leo MacLehose arguing it proves the out-of-home audience can be “reached, served and measured at scale,” potentially shifting how rights holders and brands think about where future sponsorship investment goes.

Learn More

THE PITCH

On this episode of The Pitch, Andy and Drew dig into two ideas that both orbit the same macro challenge: how do sports venues generate more value on the days when the stands aren't full?

Andy kicks things off with Surrey County Cricket Club's move to turn the Oval into a midweek co-working destination, installing Wi-Fi and laptop-friendly desks to pull remote workers into four-day county fixtures. Drew draws the comparison to the San Diego Padres' Remote Work Wednesday experiment and the pair debate the real ROI of infrastructure investment versus a lighter-touch marketing play.

The conversation quickly expands beyond simple attendance tactics. Andy pitches the idea of segmenting co-working days by industry, turning the stadium into a genuine networking event, and ultimately folding the whole concept into corporate sponsorship packages that give brands a physical home inside the venue on non-match days.

Then Drew takes the mic with a pitch around legends football, asking what would happen if the one-off celebrity and former player games that clubs like Liverpool and Manchester United already run were structured into a proper secondary league, complete with tracked stats, betting markets, and miniature club contracts. Andy traces the idea back to Sky Sports' Masters Football series from the early 2000s and the pair explore how the Kings League and Baller League have already proved the appetite exists, and why a Premier League-backed version could be close to unstoppable.

Finally, the duo zoom out to look at why all of this matters now, connecting stadium monetisation directly to financial fair play regulations in European football, before grounding the conversation in practical examples from Southampton FC's in-stadium pub and arcade to the Bernabeu's surprisingly affordable Starbucks.

Timestamps

• 01:30 - The Surrey Oval Co-Working Idea

• 04:00 - Baseball Comparison and the ROI Question

• 07:00 - Networking, Industry Days, and Segmenting the Crowd

• 10:00 - Sponsor Suites as Co-Working Infrastructure

• 15:30 - The Legends League Pitch

• 18:30 - Kings League, Club Partnerships, and Defensive Moats

• 21:00 - Stadium Revenue and the Financial Fair Play Macro

• 24:00 - Spurs, Southampton, the Bernabeu, and What’s Actually Replicable

🔍 Search ‘Sports Pundit Podcast’ wherever you listen, available on Spotify, Apple, and YouTube 🎧

The Pitch is the conversational show from the Sports Pundit Podcast Network, hosted by Andy Marston and Drew Rauso.

It’s a play on words, with each host bringing an idea, theme, or provocation that they pitch to the other. Together they react, debate, and explore what’s really happening across the sports industry, from shifting media models to the next wave of innovation.

Each episode mixes perspective with practicality, with occasional appearances from other Sports Pundit hosts from across the Network.

About The Hosts

Drew Rauso is a versatile media operator with a proven track record of building and scaling sports media ventures at the intersection of content, commerce, and creator strategy. He currently leads Brand, Strategy, and Operations at Playmaker HQ, a leading sports podcast network owned by Better Collective, home to shows featuring Shaquille O’Neal, Angel Reese, and Marshawn Lynch. Previously at The Players’ Tribune, Drew has been instrumental in shaping athlete-driven media, overseeing partnerships, production, and growth initiatives that connect fans and talent in meaningful ways.

Andy Marston is the founder of Sports Pundit, a community and media platform for sports and technology executives. Through a weekly newsletter, podcast network, lively group chat, and regular social events, he shares industry analysis and connects leaders across the sector. Alongside Sports Pundit, Andy leads Corporate Venture at athlete-backed venture firm, The Players Fund, where he works with high-profile sports IP such as Como 1907 and Juventus to design venture strategies and drive innovation initiatives.

Andy kicks things off with Surrey County Cricket Club's move to turn the Oval into a midweek co-working destination, installing Wi-Fi and laptop-friendly desks to pull remote workers into four-day county fixtures. Drew draws the comparison to the San Diego Padres' Remote Work Wednesday experiment and the pair debate the real ROI of infrastructure investment versus a lighter-touch marketing play.

The conversation quickly expands beyond simple attendance tactics. Andy pitches the idea of segmenting co-working days by industry, turning the stadium into a genuine networking event, and ultimately folding the whole concept into corporate sponsorship packages that give brands a physical home inside the venue on non-match days.

Then Drew takes the mic with a pitch around legends football, asking what would happen if the one-off celebrity and former player games that clubs like Liverpool and Manchester United already run were structured into a proper secondary league, complete with tracked stats, betting markets, and miniature club contracts. Andy traces the idea back to Sky Sports' Masters Football series from the early 2000s and the pair explore how the Kings League and Baller League have already proved the appetite exists, and why a Premier League-backed version could be close to unstoppable.

Finally, the duo zoom out to look at why all of this matters now, connecting stadium monetisation directly to financial fair play regulations in European football, before grounding the conversation in practical examples from Southampton FC's in-stadium pub and arcade to the Bernabeu's surprisingly affordable Starbucks.

Timestamps

• 01:30 - The Surrey Oval Co-Working Idea

• 04:00 - Baseball Comparison and the ROI Question

• 07:00 - Networking, Industry Days, and Segmenting the Crowd

• 10:00 - Sponsor Suites as Co-Working Infrastructure

• 15:30 - The Legends League Pitch

• 18:30 - Kings League, Club Partnerships, and Defensive Moats

• 21:00 - Stadium Revenue and the Financial Fair Play Macro

• 24:00 - Spurs, Southampton, the Bernabeu, and What's Actually Replicable

About The ShowThe Pitch is the conversational show from the Sports Pundit Podcast Network, hosted by Andy Marston and Drew Rauso. It's a play on words, with each host bringing an idea, theme, or provocation that they pitch to the other. Together they react, debate, and explore what's really happening across the sports industry, from shifting media models to the next wave of innovation.

Each episode mixes perspective with practicality, with occasional appearances from other Sports Pundit hosts from across the Network.

About The Hosts
Drew Rauso is a versatile media operator with a proven track record of building and scaling sports media ventures at the intersection of content, commerce, and creator strategy. He currently leads Brand, Strategy, and Operations at Playmaker HQ, a leading sports podcast network owned by Better Collective, home to shows featuring Shaquille O'Neal, Angel Reese, and Marshawn Lynch. Previously at The Players' Tribune, Drew has been instrumental in shaping athlete-driven media, overseeing partnerships, production, and growth initiatives that connect fans and talent in meaningful ways.

Andy Marston is the founder of Sports Pundit, a community and media platform for sports and technology executives. Through a weekly newsletter, podcast network, lively group chat, and regular social events, he shares industry analysis and connects leaders across the sector. Alongside Sports Pundit, Andy leads Corporate Venture at athlete-backed venture firm, The Players Fund, where he works with high-profile sports IP such as Como 1907 and Juventus to design venture strategies and drive innovation initiatives.

Firstly, a huge thank you to Julia Wall Clarke (the 7th ever guest on the Sports Pundit Podcast, over two years ago) for kindly inviting me to join her at the HSBC Championships at Queen’s Club London. Given we're now firmly in grass court season, what better time to talk tennis?

In other news, yesterday saw the final Sports Pundit Social of the summer in London (I’ll bring them back in September after a summer break). Sadhna Raj Kanoria is kindly trialling one in Dubai this evening, which I’m excited about. And I love that this community brings people together in person.

Coincidentally, being rooted in one place and wanting to reach people somewhere else is exactly the challenge today's main story serves up…

Here’s what’s coming up:

• All England Club announce pop-up grass court in Central Park 🎾

• Adidas and WhatsApp replace football emoji for the World Cup ⚽

• Charlie Kurian speaks on Implementing AI at the San Antonio Spurs 🏀

Let’s get into it!

COURTING INTERNATIONAL FANS

Last week, the All England Club announced that a pop-up grass court will be installed in Central Park from 26–29 June 2026, marking the most ambitious instalment yet of an ongoing US activation programme designed to extend the brand into markets The Championships physically cannot reach.

• From Friday 26 to Monday 29 June, the famous Wollman Rink will be transformed into a fully playable pop-up grass court, installed and maintained by Wimbledon’s own expert groundstaff.

• The four-day event is headlined by The Wimbledon Court Invitational on Friday 26 June, a doubles exhibition featuring tennis icons Andre Agassi, Caroline Wozniacki, James Blake, and Genie Bouchard.

• Across Saturday and Sunday, a small number of fans will be balloted for the rare opportunity to play on the pop-up grass court themselves, presented by Barclays (the Official Banking Partner of The Championships).

• Programming spans the full four days with coaching clinics, strawberries and cream, Pimm’s, Champagne Lanson, a Monday session for 15–24 year olds from Barclays Net Work in the Bronx, and giant-screen broadcasts of Wimbledon’s opening day live from Central Park to close the event.

Why It Matters

While the proposed £200m Wimbledon Park expansion will triple the grounds to 115 acres by the 2030s, capacity isn’t the only constraint for The Championships.

The heritage of “tennis in an English garden,” as the marketing director puts it, is closely tied to SW19. The product IS the place, and their position in the tennis calendar is also largely fixed.

We’ve seen the Australian Open respond to this second challenge with the launch of the AO 1 Point Slam, an innovative, sudden-death knockout tennis exhibition held days before the Australian Open main draw. In doing so, they extend their reach on the calendar.

However, this initiative from Wimbledon acts to solve the geographic constraint.

Of course, the traditional answer to this has been broadcast and licensing. Let the world watch from afar and protect the home event. However, what is shifting is the demand from audiences for a second, more experiential layer, at a time when in-person events are being craved more and more. Simply watching at home (or on the move on a phone) isn’t enough. See also Casa Atleti and PSG’s Run Club and La Maison Exhibitions.

The decision to expand the Championships’ physical brand presence in markets like New York is no coincidence and is the culmination of a longer term plan.

The Hill launched in 2022 as a viewing experience; the 2026 instalment adds a playable grass court, exhibition match, public participation, and a community programme. This is an incremental roadmap where demand has been validated over a five-year arc.

I love the attention to detail in how they are choosing to show up, too. Laying a grass court is one thing but having it installed by Wimbledon’s groundstaff is another level. Adding in the experiential elements like strawberries, Pimm’s, and Champagne Lanson helps to give fans a taste (literally) of Wimbledon. Even the line-up is cast for the market, with James Blake (New York’s own former World No.4) alongside Agassi, Wozniacki, and Bouchard.

There isn’t going to be a lesson in here for everyone, but for other rights holders capped in similar ways the logic travels (no pun intended). When you can’t scale your geography, scaling the brand experience outward becomes the route to new audiences and recurring touchpoints.

SUPPORTED BY DIZPLAI 📲

Your biggest fans are invisible to you. Here’s the proof…

The channels that give you the most reach give you the least data. The Anonymous Fan Index, Dizplai’s benchmark study, proves it.

Ticketing is the richest source of fan data, cited by 67% of respondents. Membership and loyalty programmes came in at 48%, social media at 41%. Broadcast audiences, where most organisations have their greatest reach, are the hardest to convert. 67% said broadcast viewers were their most anonymous fan group.

Supertri’s Chris Williams knows the commercial consequence of that. Relying purely on broadcast numbers, he says, leaves you exposed on your sponsorship proposition.

The Anonymous Fan Index sets out what closing that gap looks like. Download it free and use the Fan Revenue Calculator to put a number on your own opportunity.

Try the Fan Revenue Calendar

HIGHLIGHTS

Real Madrid extend Emirates partnership until 2031 in record €100m-a-year European sponsorship deal ✈️

• Real Madrid have extended their shirt sponsorship agreement with Emirates through to 2031 at a reported €100m per year, a significant uplift on the previous €70m annual deal and a new record for a European football sponsorship.

• The expanded deal covers the men’s and women’s teams, training kits, youth teams, increased Bernabeu stadium visibility, and Real Madrid’s basketball division, cementing what is already the longest-running shirt sponsorship in LaLiga as it approaches its 20-year anniversary.

Revolut takes Audi F1 show car on 14-city UK tour 🏎️

• Revolut is running a three-week nationwide tour of the Audi Revolut F1 Team’s R26 show car across 14 UK cities throughout June, offering fans direct access to the car alongside the chance to win Silverstone weekend rewards.

• The activation directly addresses the gap between growing motorsport fandom and live race accessibility, bringing the product to communities rather than expecting fans to come to it.

New York Jets go AI-first across the organisation with 91% of front office on Microsoft Copilot 🤖

• The Jets have made a deliberate shift to AI-first operations under new Chief Data and Analytics Officer Iwao Fusillo, with 91% of the front office now using Microsoft Copilot daily across sponsorship research, scouting, and business intelligence.

• The initiative, driven from the top by owner Woody Johnson over the past two years, is one of the more concrete public examples of an NFL franchise embedding AI as genuine operating infrastructure rather than a pilot programme.

Adidas and WhatsApp replace the football emoji with World Cup 2026 match ball ⚽

• Adidas has partnered with WhatsApp to replace the standard football emoji with a version of the Trionda (the official FIFA World Cup 2026 match ball) across the platform for the duration of the tournament.

• The activation effectively turns the world’s most-used messaging platform into a World Cup ambient marketing channel, reaching fans in private conversations without requiring any paid media placement.

Durham Women FC faces closure without investment within 21 days ⚠️

• Durham Women Football Club has publicly confirmed it is seeking urgent investment or a full sale, warning that without a buyer or investor within 21 days the club will cease operations entirely.

• The situation is a stark illustration of the financial fragility at the second tier of women’s football, particularly for those built without the backing of a men’s professional team.

Saudi Arabia opens five football clubs to private investors as privatisation drive accelerates 🇸🇦

• Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Sport and National Centre for Privatization have formally offered five clubs (Al Riyadh, Abha, Al Fateh, Al Tai, and Al Shoulla) to private investors, with expressions of interest open until 5 July.

• The move is a direct continuation of the privatisation story (which we discussed previously with the Al Hilal news) developing across the Saudi sports landscape, extending the model beyond the top four PIF clubs to the broader football pyramid and inviting private capital to take full ownership rather than minority stakes.

SPORTS PUNDIT PODCAST

Charlie Kurian [#88] - How the Spurs Are Using AI for Both Value Capture and Value Creation 🤖

On today’s episode of the Sports Pundit Podcast, I’m joined by Charlie Kurian, Director of Innovation and Strategy at the San Antonio Spurs.

Charlie has had a non-traditional path into professional sport, with experience spanning Big Tech, startups and venture capital. Prior to joining the Spurs, he served as Investor and Chief of Staff at Soma Capital, a $412M venture fund that was an early investor in companies including Deel, Rippling and Ramp.

In this conversation, we explore how lessons from these areas, particularly venture, can be applied inside a sports organisation. We also discuss the Spurs’ AI adoption journey, their leadership guide with OpenAI, surprising internal use cases, and the launch of Spurs AI Studio, whose first activation delivered an AI-generated tunnel walk experience for Michelob Ultra.

Finally, we explore how AI is changing partner expectations and where the next wave of opportunity may emerge for sports organisations.

Timestamps

• 02:00 - Charlie’s Non-Linear Career Path

• 06:00 - Spurs Strategy & Innovation Role

• 10:00 - Translating Trends into Value

• 15:00 - OpenAI Partnership & Adoption Playbook

• 21:00 - Surprising Internal AI Use Cases

• 24:00 - Spurs AI Studio Revenue Creation

• 30:00 - Licensing and Partner Expectations Shift

• 33:30 - Build vs Buy and Startup Collaboration

🔍 Search ‘Sports Pundit Podcast’ wherever you listen, available on Spotify, Apple, and YouTube 🎧

About The Host

Andy Marston is the founder of Sports Pundit, a community and media platform for sports and technology executives. Through a weekly newsletter, podcast network, lively group chat, and regular social events, he shares industry analysis and connects leaders across the sector. Alongside Sports Pundit, Andy leads Corporate Venture at athlete-backed venture firm, The Players Fund, where he works with high-profile sports IP such as Como 1907 to design venture strategies and drive innovation initiatives.

Charlie has had a non-traditional path into professional sport, with experience spanning Big Tech, startups and venture capital. Prior to joining the Spurs, he served as Investor and Chief of Staff at Soma Capital, a $412M venture fund that was an early investor in companies including Deel, Rippling and Ramp.

In this conversation, we explore how lessons from these areas, particularly venture, can be applied inside a sports organisation. We also discuss the Spurs’ AI adoption journey, their leadership guide with OpenAI, surprising internal use cases, and the launch of Spurs AI Studio, whose first activation delivered an AI-generated tunnel walk experience for Michelob Ultra.

Finally, we explore how AI is changing partner expectations and where the next wave of opportunity may emerge for sports organisations.

Timestamps

• 02:00 - Charlie’s Non-Linear Career Path

• 06:00 - Spurs Strategy & Innovation Role

• 10:00 - Translating Trends into Value

• 15:00 - OpenAI Partnership & Adoption Playbook

• 21:00 - Surprising Internal AI Use Cases

• 24:00 - Spurs AI Studio Revenue Creation

• 30:00 - Licensing and Partner Expectations Shift

• 33:30 - Build vs Buy and Startup Collaboration

About The Host

Andy Marston is the founder of Sports Pundit, a community and media platform for sports and technology executives. Through a weekly newsletter, podcast network, lively group chat, and regular social events, he shares industry analysis and connects leaders across the sector. Alongside Sports Pundit, Andy leads Corporate Venture at athlete-backed venture firm, The Players Fund, where he works with high-profile sports IP such as Como 1907 to design venture strategies and drive innovation initiatives.

The Knicks are in the NBA Finals for the first time since 1999 but this week’s top story looks at what is happening off the court. Madison Square Garden Sports (MSG) has filed to split the Knicks and Rangers into two separate public companies.

Keeping on the same theme, I’ll soon be sharing a podcast episode with the Knicks’ adversaries for this year’s Finals, the San Antonio Spurs. I recently sat down with their Director of Strategy & Innovation, Charlie Kurian, who has been instrumental in the launch of the Spurs AI Studio, something previously covered in this newsletter.

One last thing before we get into it… Next week we will be hosting a social in London and, thanks to the proactiveness of one of our lovely readers, Sadhna Raj Kanoria, we will also be trialling a meet up in Dubai hosted by her and a few other Dubai-based readers (I won't be there, maybe in future though). You can RSVP to either by heading to luma.com/spsc.

See you in London, and can’t wait to hear how the Dubai link-up goes, please share your updates!

Here’s what’s coming up:

• MSG files to separate the Knicks and Rangers 💼

• San Antonio Spurs return to Paris in January 2027 🏀

• Miami Marlins sell 15% stake at $1.55 Billion Valuation ⚾

• Dizplai Announce Anonymous Fan Index iPad Winner 🥇

Let’s get into it!

SPLIT THE (MS)G

Madison Square Garden Sports Corp. has filed with the SEC to separate the New York Knicks and New York Rangers into two independently traded public companies. The proposed spin-off would require approval from both the NBA and NHL.

• Sportico’s most recent valuations place the Knicks at $9.85 billion and the Rangers at $3.65 billion, a combined private-market value of $13.5 billion. MSG Sports’ current public market value sits at approximately $9.6 billion. That is a 29% discount, representing roughly $3.9 billion in value that public markets have declined to recognise.

• Wall Street has long applied what it calls the “Dolan discount,” a haircut reflecting the complexity of the Dolan family’s corporate ecosystem across MSG Sports, MSG Entertainment, and Sphere Entertainment, with overlapping governance and super-voting share structures.

• The split runs counter to the dominant trend in North American sports ownership, where multi-franchise platforms like MLSE, FSG, and Harris Blitzer have been built around shared infrastructure and centralised commercial strategy.

• The Knicks enter the 2026 NBA Finals having won 11 consecutive playoff games by an average margin of 23.8 points, the greatest 11-game stretch in the 80-year history of the NBA.

Why It Matters

Public markets and private buyers value sports assets using fundamentally different logic, as explained very well in this week’s Owners Club newsletter by FanClub Sports.

Public markets price on cash flow and earnings. Private buyers price on scarcity, long-term appreciation, and optionality across adjacent businesses like real estate, media, and betting. Those two frameworks consistently produce different numbers.

When a publicly traded sports asset trades persistently below what a private buyer would pay, it becomes an open invitation and the valuation gap for MSG is not a one-off. Jim Ratcliffe’s investment into Manchester United showed this clearly. Ratcliffe paid a 66% premium to the public market price for his 25% stake.

What makes MSG instructive is that the problem was not owning multiple teams. Multi-club platforms that share commercial teams, arenas, and media rights strategies create real value and the market rewards that. However, what it generally punishes is corporate complexity that makes it hard for investors to understand what they are actually buying. Bundling without clarity produces a penalty rather than a premium.

By splitting the Knicks and Rangers into separate vehicles, each team’s revenue, media rights position, and growth story becomes easier to evaluate on its own merit. That matters because it opens the door to investors who were previously put off by the structure.

The wider learning is relevant for any ownership group holding multiple sports properties, especially those already on (or considering) the public markets. Public markets are structurally set up to undervalue these assets relative to what private buyers will pay.

The MSG experience suggests that targeted minority sales to institutional investors, priced at private-market levels may be a smarter route than a public listing, which is why the likes of Fenway Sports Group have opted for selective minority sales, such as the RedBird Capital Partners investment, rather than taking that path.

HIGHLIGHTS

San Antonio Spurs return to Paris in January 2027 🏀

• The Spurs are heading back to Paris for an NBA international game in January 2027, with jersey patch sponsor Ledger using the announcement to reinforce its positioning as a Paris-based brand with deep ties to French basketball culture.

• The game is further evidence of France cementing itself as one of the NBA’s most strategically important international markets.

Dua Lipa launches 130-place recommendation list on Google Maps 🗺️

• Dua Lipa has published a curated list of over 130 of her favourite places around the world directly on Google Maps, extending her Service95 editorial brand into one of the world’s most used navigation platforms.

• The collaboration is a smart example of a celebrity using existing platform infrastructure to distribute taste-led content at scale, rather than building a standalone destination for it.

Club Brugge flies four gold members over championship celebrations in a Cessna ✈️

• To mark their 20th Belgian title, Club Brugge gave four top-tier loyalty members the chance to fly over the city in a Cessna, releasing black and blue smoke above the championship celebrations at the exact moment golden stars were unveiled on stage.

• The activation is a compelling example of what genuinely differentiated fan loyalty looks like in practice where earned status is translated into a once-in-a-lifetime moment tied directly to a historic club milestone.

Miami Marlins sell 15% stake at $1.55 billion valuation ⚾

• The Miami Marlins has sold approximately 15% of the club to a pair of South Florida-connected families this spring, at a valuation of $1.55 billion, primarily to pay down debt.

• The transaction adds to the steady flow of minority stake sales across MLB as franchises use private capital to manage balance sheets without ceding majority control.

Alo Yoga activates superyacht wellness club off Cannes during film festival 🧘

• Alo Yoga has launched a floating wellness club on a superyacht for the Cannes Film Festival, positioning the brand at the intersection of luxury, culture, and physical wellness.

• The activation is a useful case study in signal over scale with Alo using a single high-visibility moment in the right context to earn cultural positioning that volume-based influencer spend cannot buy.

Diamond Baseball Holdings and Machete Group invest in Louisville development around Slugger Field ⚾

• A parking lot outside Louisville’s Slugger Field is set to be redeveloped into a year-round mixed-use destination, backed by Diamond Baseball Holdings and Machete Group.

• The project reflects a growing trend of sports venue owners extending their commercial footprint into surrounding real estate to generate year-round economic activity.

SUPPORTED BY DIZPLAI 📲

We have a winner! 🥇

Devin Bhatia is the proud owner of a brand new iPad from our competition. Congratulations, Devin! Dizplai will be in touch with you shortly.

If it wasn’t you this time, thank you for being part of it. Every entry mattered, and we want to make sure you leave with something useful regardless. So, based on the findings from the Anonymous Fan Index, here are five things you can do this week:

1. Audit how many of your fans you can actually identify

2. Pick one high-reach, low-data channel and what’s not converting

3. Add one interactive element to your next live event

4. Reframe your sponsor conversations around known fans (not reach)

5. Start reporting known fan growth as a monthly metric

Of course, these aren’t long-term projects but they are starting points to get you moving in the right direction. If you want help working through any of them, book a free 30-minute call with the Dizplai team.

Book a Meeting

SPORTS PUNDIT PODCAST

Brett Johnson [#87] - Why the USL Could Offer a Strategic Opportunity for MCOs ⚽

On today’s episode of the ⁠Sports Pundit⁠ Podcast, host ⁠Vansa Chatikavanij⁠ is joined by ⁠Brett Johnson⁠, Founder & CEO of ⁠Benevolent Capital⁠, Chairman of Rhode Island FC and Centerville Bank Stadium, and a shareholder and director at Ipswich Town.

Brett reflects on the development of the $140M Centerville Bank Stadium project in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, and explains how the wider Tidewater Landing vision combines sport, real estate, hospitality, and community infrastructure into a long-term economic engine.

The conversation explores partnership-driven leadership, the “Who Not How” mindset, and why Brett believes the sports industry is still in the early innings of value creation.

Finally, he also breaks down why aligned incentives between clubs and venue ownership matter, how sports assets can create commercial flywheels beyond matchday revenue, and the future of ⁠United Soccer League (USL)⁠.

Timestamps

• 05:00 - Building Benevolent Capital

• 12:00 - Leaning Into “Who Not How”

• 15:00 - The Rise & Rise of Ipswich Town

• 21:00 - Stadium Economics Explained

• 32:00 - Fans and Community Flywheel

• 36:00 - USL’s Role in the Multi-Club Ownership Future

🔍 Search ‘Sports Pundit Podcast’ wherever you listen, available on Spotify, Apple, and YouTube 🎧

About The Hosts

Vansa Chatikavanij is Co-Founder & Managing Partner at Present Ventures, an investment firm focused on emerging sports, media, and technology. She previously led strategy at Omise (“Stripe of Asia”) and co-founded OmiseGO Network, reaching a $1B+ market cap. Earlier in her career, she worked at the World Bank across 13 markets and has advised organisations including the World Economic Forum, GSIC powered by Microsoft, and Real Madrid NEXT Asia.

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Produced by OH SIX

The Sports Pundit Podcast is proudly produced by OH SIX, a content marketing agency specialising in producing digital and social-first content that connects. Trusted by Premier League clubs, F1 teams, and top brands, OH SIX deliver premium content end-to-end, from ideation, working with talent during production and platform specific content to reach audiences on screen.

Today I’m Paris-bound as I’ll be attending and speaking (alongside the great Como 1907) at SportGEN Summit, the first business conference of its kind in the French capital, taking place during Roland Garros no-less.

On the subject of heading to Europe (and a Grand Slam)… tonight sees Crystal Palace feature in their first ever European final, a year on from winning the FA Cup.

Regardless of tonight’s result, it appears the club can’t stop winning at the moment, having landed a new front-of-shirt deal that will have caught the attention of many Premier League rivals. Today’s newsletter takes a look at that win, as well as what it will take for others to attract and service similar partners.

Here’s what’s coming up:

• Palace swaps NET88 with Temporal ⚽

• League One Volleyball expands to Miami 🏐

• WSL grows audience 40% year-on-year 🌊

Let’s get into it!

SHIRT SWAP

Crystal Palace have announced that Temporal, an AI infrastructure company, will become their front-of-shirt partner from the 2026/27 Premier League season, replacing online gaming and betting platform NET88.

• Founded in 2019, Temporal is the infrastructure layer underneath long-running, mission-critical applications at companies including OpenAI, Netflix, and JPMorgan. The company’s co-founders previously built workflow infrastructure at Amazon, Microsoft and Uber.

• The deal goes beyond the shirt. Temporal’s own announcement describes Palace becoming a Cloud customer, embedded into the club’s ongoing stadium redevelopment across payments, ecommerce and matchday operations.

• Palace are currently in their debut European campaign having reached the final of Conference League Final and having won the FA Cup in May 2025. The club’s commercial profile is meaningfully different to where it was even two seasons ago.

• Their upcoming stadium redevelopment represents a once-in-a-generation infrastructure moment for the club, with technology decisions being made now that will shape how Palace operates for the next twenty years.

Why It Matters

Temporal at Palace is exciting. It is also the bet (pun very much intended) a lot of people made when betting regulation changes were confirmed, that AI and technology companies would move to fill the commercial void.

Besides seeing that prediction play out, what I find more interesting is that the deals coming in are not all the same.

A few weeks ago I covered Harvey’s strategy of using sport as a GTM channel, anchoring partnerships to city office openings and building hospitality programmes designed to get in front of general counsels and managing partners. It has since also been covered excellently by Shripal Shah in JohnWallStreet.

Temporal’s relationship with Palace is built around a different logic.

The emphasis is on operational integration rather than audience access or hospitality. The logo on the shirt essentially acts as part of a high-profile customer case study and testimonial.

Both models are landing in football simultaneously, but they ask very different things of a club’s commercial team.

Harvey-type partners need the right hospitality structure and geographic alignment, and there is an element of postcode lottery to who they end up picking based on their GTM plans.

Temporal-type partners need something harder to manufacture but arguably more open access, as it depends on a club’s attitude and internal culture rather than something physical. They need a club that understands its own operational problems, has people inside who can evaluate a technology product, and can move from conversation to working pilot without losing six months in the process. Building that kind of innovation capability is something most commercial teams have never been asked to do before.

For those now looking to do so, Juventus (personal bias aside) is a great reference point.

Juventus Forward is built around exactly this gap. It is a structured innovation programme designed to serve both the club’s own operational needs and the needs of existing and incoming partners, an emphasis that is now being actively dialled up. That dual purpose is what makes it genuinely useful rather than a PR exercise, and my expectation is that what the Bianconeri have been doing becomes increasingly expected by partners as more deals like this Temporal one continue to land.

There is also a supply dynamic worth calling out, which adds further emphasis to this.

The AI and infrastructure companies stepping in are not short of inventory right now. Betting regulation has freed up significant shirt and stadium real estate across European football, and these companies have options. The clubs that attract these option-rich buyers will be the ones that can demonstrate a credible internal function ready to make the relationship work and not simply a commercial team that can sell a one-time package.

In Palace’s case, they have made a significant public commitment to Temporal. Someone inside the club now needs to own that, map it to real operational problems, and make sure it delivers beyond the announcement. Essentially, that work doesn’t happen without the right structure behind it.

Whether teams have already signed deals in this space or are still looking to, it is worth them asking honestly whether that structure exists for them.

Formula 1 has typically done this type of activation much better than football, building commercial partnerships around genuine operational integration rather than the logo placement. The shift forced by betting regulation in English top flight football is, in my view, a good one for the protections it creates. However, a nice side-effect is that I think it will also lead to more creativity, better alignment between clubs and partners, and a real opportunity to make these flagship relationships count for something more.

HIGHLIGHTS

League One Volleyball expands to Miami 🏐

• LOVB, the women’s professional volleyball league, has announced Miami as its latest expansion city, adding to its growing footprint across the US.

• The move reflects both the strength of Miami’s sports culture and the continued momentum behind women’s professional sport as an investment and expansion category.

NHL partners with Honeywell to make arenas more affordable and energy efficient 🏒

• The NHL has agreed a three-year partnership with Honeywell, making the NASDAQ-listed company its Official Building Automation and Energy Management Partner, the firm’s first league-level deal in sport.

• The collaboration aims to make arenas at all levels more affordable and accessible through smarter energy management, with Honeywell already holding existing relationships with NBA teams including the Hornets and Hawks.

Guinness revives “The World’s Cup” tagline in World Cup ambush marketing play 🍺

• Guinness has relaunched its decades-old “The World’s Cup” tagline ahead of the FIFA World Cup, exploiting a long-standing gap in IP protection to position itself in the tournament conversation without being an official sponsor.

• The move puts it in direct conflict with Anheuser-Busch, which has been the official World Cup beer sponsor for 40 years, a textbook example of ambush marketing executed with genuine legal cover.

Matthew Stafford signs $55m extension that could make him first NFL player to earn $500m 🏈

• The Los Angeles Rams have signed Matthew Stafford to a one-year, $55m extension through the 2027 season, following his first MVP campaign in 17 NFL seasons.

• If Stafford plays out the deal, he would become the first player in NFL history to earn $500m in playing salary, surpassing his own record as the league’s all-time career earnings leader at $408m.

World Surf League applies streaming-era thinking to grow audience 40% year-on-year 🌊

• The WSL has recorded a 40% rise in audience reach in FY2025 versus FY2024, driven not by changes in measurement methodology but by a revamped approach to digital marketing and consumer targeting led by CEO Ryan Crosby, who joined from the streaming industry in 2024.

• The growth, delivered through YouTube and freely distributed owned channels, offers a useful case study in how sports properties can build audiences without relying on traditional broadcast infrastructure.

MSG Sports stock rises 3% as New York Knicks reach NBA Finals for first time since ‘99 🏀

• Madison Square Garden Sports shares rose 3% in premarket trading after the Knicks swept the Cleveland Cavaliers to reach the NBA Finals for the first time in 26 years.

• The move is a reminder of the direct commercial relationship between on-court performance and publicly listed sports franchise valuations, showing how playoff runs translate quickly into shareholder returns.

SUPPORTED BY DIZPLAI 📲

Can we finally settle the free vs paywall divide?

The Anonymous Fan Index is Dizplai’s research across 50 sports organisations, and one of its most debated findings is the content strategy divide.

Half of sports organisations make almost all their content freely available. 20% gate nearly everything. Almost nobody sits in the middle, and even at leadership level there’s no consensus on which approach is right.

Gareth Rees, Head of Commercial Distribution at World Rugby, sums up where most organisations actually are: “It’s not just about capturing data, it’s about finding the right tech partner with the right commercial model, and then actually being able to monetise those outcomes. That’s where we still need the breakthrough.”

If nobody has this figured out yet, that’s the opening. The Anonymous Fan Index sets out what being bold in that middle ground actually looks like in practice. This is your last chance to download the Anonymous Fan Index, enter the draw, and win an iPad.

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SPORTS PUNDIT PODCAST

Brett Johnson [#87] - Why the USL Could Offer a Strategic Opportunity for MCOs ⚽

On today’s episode of the ⁠Sports Pundit⁠ Podcast, host ⁠Vansa Chatikavanij⁠ is joined by ⁠Brett Johnson⁠, Founder & CEO of ⁠Benevolent Capital⁠, Chairman of Rhode Island FC and Centerville Bank Stadium, and a shareholder and director at Ipswich Town.

Brett reflects on the development of the $140M Centerville Bank Stadium project in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, and explains how the wider Tidewater Landing vision combines sport, real estate, hospitality, and community infrastructure into a long-term economic engine.

The conversation explores partnership-driven leadership, the “Who Not How” mindset, and why Brett believes the sports industry is still in the early innings of value creation.

Finally, he also breaks down why aligned incentives between clubs and venue ownership matter, how sports assets can create commercial flywheels beyond matchday revenue, and the future of ⁠United Soccer League (USL)⁠.

Timestamps

• 05:00 - Building Benevolent Capital

• 12:00 - Leaning Into “Who Not How”

• 15:00 - The Rise & Rise of Ipswich Town

• 21:00 - Stadium Economics Explained

• 32:00 - Fans and Community Flywheel

• 36:00 - USL’s Role in the Multi-Club Ownership Future

🔍 Search ‘Sports Pundit Podcast’ wherever you listen, available on Spotify, Apple, and YouTube 🎧

About The Hosts

Vansa Chatikavanij is Co-Founder & Managing Partner at Present Ventures, an investment firm focused on emerging sports, media, and technology. She previously led strategy at Omise (“Stripe of Asia”) and co-founded OmiseGO Network, reaching a $1B+ market cap. Earlier in her career, she worked at the World Bank across 13 markets and has advised organisations including the World Economic Forum, GSIC powered by Microsoft, and Real Madrid NEXT Asia.

Connect on LinkedIn

Produced by OH SIX

The Sports Pundit Podcast is proudly produced by OH SIX, a content marketing agency specialising in producing digital and social-first content that connects. Trusted by Premier League clubs, F1 teams, and top brands, OH SIX deliver premium content end-to-end, from ideation, working with talent during production and platform specific content to reach audiences on screen.