Sports marketing faces AI reckoning as machines choose what fans see

MUMBAI: The sports industry is hurtling towards a future where artificial intelligence decides what fans watch, buy and attend—and most organisations are woefully unprepared. That’s the stark warning from IMG’s Digital Trends Report 2026, which argues that AI has become “the heart of all change” in sports marketing.

The report, drawn from insights across IMG’s 200-strong digital team spanning five continents, upends conventional wisdom about content strategy. Quality over quantity? Dead. Sports brands must now churn out high-volume, high-quality material constantly across every platform, using AI to streamline production whilst investing heavily in creative talent. “The brands that scale up production without sacrificing purpose or originality will dominate attention and engagement,” the report concludes.

But volume alone won’t cut it. As AI assistants and agentic search tools increasingly curate what fans discover—often through zero-click searches that bypass traditional websites—sports organisations face a brutal new reality: become the source that machines trust, or vanish. IMG has coined a term for this challenge: Generative Engine Optimisation, or GEO. It demands authoritative, structured content that AI agents can confidently cite and recommend.

Amazon emerges as a particularly disruptive force. The tech giant now occupies “the intersection of sports, technology, and fan experience”, seamlessly connecting live streaming, AWS-powered analytics, and integrated commerce. Rightsholders must develop Amazon-specific strategies or risk losing control of their data, intellectual property and commercial relationships.

The report identifies YouTube as the priority platform globally for the second consecutive year, followed by Instagram, TikTok and Facebook. Spotify enters the rankings for the first time, reflecting sport’s deepening entanglement with entertainment. In China, Douyin dominates, whilst Xiaohongshu—a hybrid of search, social media and shopping—has become Gen Alpha’s discovery engine.

Yet amid the technological upheaval, IMG stresses that human creativity remains irreplaceable. Real-time AI translation may render content globally fluent, but only humans grasp tone, humour and cultural nuance. Similarly, whilst short-form video drives discovery, long-form content builds genuine fandom and revenue. The digital era also favours individuals over institutions—fans follow creators, not corporations—forcing sports organisations to develop on-camera talent and embrace two-way dialogue.

Lewis Wiltshire, senior vice president and managing director for digital at IMG, captured the paradox: “Amidst the technological advances, we predict that human creativity and local insight will matter more than ever as we move into 2026.”

The message is clear: master the machines, but don’t become one. Sports organisations that cling to traditional broadcast control whilst algorithms reshape discovery will find themselves shouting into the void. The future belongs to those who can feed the AI beast without losing their soul.
The full report is available to read here.