WHAT'S SHAPING SPORTS? WEEKLY EDITION #001
The signals, insights and trends that are shaping how sport is evolving and experienced.
Welcome to the first of a weekly digest that tracks the key signals, insights and trends that are shaping how sport is evolving and experienced.
Each Thursday I’ll be looking at these across 3 macro clusters covering:
Sports Fandom, Culture and Experience
How people watch, follow, express, access and emotionally connect with sport across fan behaviour, culture, media, retail and live experiences.
Athlete Empowerment, Performance and Innovation
How athletes, teams and talent systems are being shaped by performance demands, technology, workload, wellbeing and empowerment.
Sports Growth, Power and Society Impact
How sport grows, who shapes it, and how it impacts communities, politics, participation, public value and wider society.
These micro signals and things of interest that are spotted will form larger research and trend reports on Vivrant in the weeks and months to come, looking at the bigger picture and what they mean for how sport is watched, played and experienced.
On to this week’s edition, which given it’s out the day a certain global football tournament that has already been causing much controversy begins, will lean heavily on the football side but will be more balanced in future and still contains signals from the world of basketball, cricket, Formula 1 and card collectables.
Themes in this cluster include the Fan Experience | Future of Fandom | Cultural Crossover | Retail as Connection
Football without fans to exploit is nothing
This week I covered how fans give the World Cup meaning and shape the story, despite FIFA’s best efforts to make the tournament inaccessible through extortionate ticket prices. It seems FIFA’s aim to extort as much money out of fans as possible knows no bounds, with the news they’ll charge $79 for a stadium shout out on the big screens. FIFA also wants your data as well and are encouraging match attendees to pick up a Fan ID card that they can then link to and enjoy exclusive content, unforgettable experiences and memories.
Fresh injection into the football x fashion category
I’ve written about the football shirts role as a fashion grails before and the how they’ve impacted wider fashion & streetwear culture as well as being influenced by it. It’s now become such an established product move for sportswear, streetwear and fashion brands to work together and have mutual influence that this sub-category can feel samey, but Nike have kicked new energy into things ahead of the World Cup. By partnering with a well known fashion or streetwear brand in each featured nation, they’ve elevated what would easily be overlooked functional pre-match wear to create looks that rival some of their actual match shirts. In France, it’s with Jacquemus, Canada it’s Nocta, in the Netherlands it’s Patta, the USA have dipped into the Virgil Abloh archives and in England we have Palace Skateboards. My favourite might be for a team that didn’t qualify for the big tournament, with Slawn’s work for Nigeria. The roll out of pre-game tracksuits, shirts and other fits for their World Cup team rosters happened in the recent World Cup warm-up games and they look great.
adidas have heavy kit presence at the tournament as well as being one of the main sponsors and they went extra hard on their kit launches this year with elaborate launches and bringing back the trefoil for the aways. Most best kit lists have multiple adidas entries in the top five and while the focus has been on the match kits, they’ve also dropped some heat with collaborators. See the Thrasher link up with Argentina and Kith for the blue and white’s captain and game’s GOAT Lionel Messi. They’ve also released a third kit with social enterprise Someone Somewhere, which has split opinions on it’s production methods.
Every brand that has any sort of relationship with or love of football has been releasing football related wears for an alternative look to rocking a current or retro team jersey. Highlights come from Corteiz, Drama Call and About:Blank.
You thought the World Cup was expensive
Ticket prices at the World Cup are high, but not New York Knicks in their first NBA Finals since 1999 high. The final’s rematch against the San Antonio Spurs has been close and entertaining, with resale tickets for the highest sections reaching over $7,000 a ticket while closer to the court has fetched over $100k in some instances. To sit in celeb row, an auction for two tickets raised over $1 million for the Garden of Dreams Foundation - the highest single donation ever received.
Ultra’s inspire NBA atmosphere initiative
The NBA wants to launch in Europe and a San Antonio fan club founded by their French superstar Victor Wembanyama, called The Jackals, are bringing a European football atmosphere to the NBA finals with chants and tifos. Wembanyama drew inspiration from the ultras of Paris Saint-Germain, who he admired while growing up in France. The NBA Commissioner Adam Silver is hopeful an NBA League will begin in 2027 with final bids for permanent franchises due by the end of this month and awards expected as soon as autumn. I previously wrote about this here and will be following up soon.
Live selling is a new commercial frontier in sports card selling
The biggest live-selling businesses in the trading card category are estimated to be generating $100 million or more per year in revenue through box breaks and live selling. It’s helping a hobby turned profession scale to new heights, bringing a layer of performance, while also raising issues over trust and market integrity.
Entertainment crossovers
Stepping outside of sport to reach new audiences and gain cultural relevance is a go to tactic for growth and both F1 and Cricket have announced interesting partnerships lately. In recent years, Formula 1 has seen a huge surge in growth with younger fans and data shows that more than four million children aged 8-12 now actively follow the sport, so announcing a deal with Disney where Mickey & Friends will be across F1 experiences, content and merchandise feels a natural fit. While not as big in scale as a full blown merchandise and experience ecosystem, as part of the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup and in partnership with Sky Sports, the West End and Broadway global musical Wicked will perform as the opening performance at the tournament’s first match in Birmingham on 12 June.
Themes in this cluster include Player Empowerment | Athlete Overload | The Optimised Athlete
Lebron is TIME Magazine’s athlete of the century
LeBron James is named by TIME as the defining model of the modern athlete. Some one who is not just an elite performer, but a businessman, cultural figure, political voice and power broker. I’ll alway put Michael Jordan as my GOAT personally, but I’m a big Lebron fan and he’s paved the way for many athletes to show they’re more than just an athlete and don’t need to just ‘stick to sports’. He’s showed a player can build companies, use their platform politically, create opportunities for friends and partners, invest in media, tech and community projects, and still remain at the top of the game. Combine Lebron’s playing peak, longevity and off-court influence, few athletes come close and he epitomises the player empowerment and player-led media movements I love to talk about and will feature heavily at Vivrant.
NIL is reducing the number of players declaring for the NBA Draft
When Name, Image, Likeness was passed so college athletes could finally generate revenue that used to only be for their colleges, it was seen as a win for athletes but uncharted territories for what other impact it would have. One area we can see big impact on now is the number of college basketball players declaring for the NBA Draft dropping. Since the bill passed in 2021, the first season of NIL had 353 players declare early-entry. In April this year, that number dropped to 71, a 79% reduction which then saw a further decline with 38 players subsequently withdrawing. With the money now on offer to college athletes through their own brand deals and revenue sharing with the colleges, the opportunity is there to earn more money than a late first round pick could. Braylon Mullins, a very likely first round pick this year, decided to return to UConn. “I think the world has changed. There’s not this pressure to go to the NBA now because of the money situation [due to NIL]. Players like Braylon are probably, he would probably make more money at UConn next year than he would if he were the No. 15 pick [at the NBA draft],” his head coach Dan Hurley told The Athletic. More returning players is making the college game stronger and creating more household names than the one year and done era. There is still a risk to injury, drops in performance or other hurdles that could impact a draft position by staying in college longer, but it may also help players where another year in college is more beneficial to their longer term pro prospects and now they have a financial reason to stay instead of a potentially too early jump.
Something that also has an interesting knock on effect, the prom NIL era. The high school rite of passage has turned into into a cultural phenomenon, part victory lap and part personal branding opportunity.
Pat Mcafee to double his ESPN salary
One of the big stars in sports media and key driver of the player led media era is inline for another big payday as ESPN look to increase their deal with the former Indianapolis Colts punter Pat Mcafee from $30 million a year to $60 million.
Themes in this cluster include Sports Growth | Participation & Community Sport | Society Impact | Sports Politics
All the risk, for FIFA’s rewards
Not everyone wants the World Cup on their doorstep and the Chicago mayor, Rahm Emanuel, revealed why he turned down the opportunity to host games in the city. FIFA are expected to make $11 billion from the tournament, with cities being asked to take on all the risk, while FIFA takes home the rewards.
School cancelled for football
I always dreamed of days like that when I was at school, but it’s actually happening in Mexico City to ease traffic for the host’s opener against South Africa at the Estadio Azteca, alongside workers being asked to work from home.
ICC Women’s World Cup set to be the biggest
With around 200,000 tickets sold already, the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup is set to be the biggest yet with record-breaking figures achieved before the tournament has even begun and comfortably eclipsing previous ICC Women’s T20 World Cup benchmarks for tournament which begins in England tomorrow, 12th June. A launch with all 12 captains in attendance too place under London’s famous Waterloo Bridge, transformed into a massive cricket pitch for the first time.
A landmark signing for the WSL, but the game needs to move from visibility to viability
London City Lionesses rise has been remarkable, if not without it’s controversy and this week they made another big step to shaking up the WSL by signing one of the best players in the world, Alexia Putellas, with Mary Earps reportedly already signed. The team, owned by American businesswoman Michele Kang has just finished its debut season in the top flight and as its only independent, is looking to make major moves in the game. While London City is one of the game’s examples of the popularity and growth in the game, a recently released report suggests the women’s game is at a crucial point.
The Cutback has some of the best writing on football on the internet and what they do for women’s football coverage is outstanding. They’ve recently released a definitive free-to-read report on the present and future of women’s football which outlines why visibility isn’t the issue, but viability is with attendance retention one of the key barriers to overcome. An informative document which reads as a state of the nation address, as well as providing a blueprint for the key next phase in women’s football.
Li-Ning look set to make a big US retail push with Steph Curry deal
Chinese sports brand L-Ning and Anta have been making moves the last few years to sign NBA stars with the sport very popular in China. The latter signed Kyrie Irving after he left Nike under controversial circumstances and his popular Kai silo has helped make waves in basketball. Li-Ning have a steady roster of credible NBA players and both brands would like to grow their presence not just in basketball, but in the US retail arena. Li-Ning may have just made the signing that will open the doors to that with a major move in partnering with arguably the greatest shooter of all time in Steph Curry, to a ten year deal. Curry caused a big shock when he parted ways with Under Armour last year and was able to take his Curry brand with him. For the rest of the season we got to see arguably the greatest sneaker free agent run with Curry wearing a variety of current and classic franchises and silos across all the current major and once beloved brands. The excellent sports, fashion and culture writer Daniel-Yaw Miller has a great breakdown on why the move happened on SportsVerse.
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