Mapping the foreign capital flowing into Latam football

Mexico has emerged as the most attractive market in the region, with six Liga MX clubs now under foreign investment and transactions ranging from minority stakes to full acquisitions. But the trend extends well beyond: from Brazil’s Botafogo to Uruguay’s Racing Club de Montevideo, from Colombia’s Internacional de Bogota to Chile’s O’Higgins FC, the map of foreign capital in Latin American football is being redrawn across the entire continent.

LATAM Football Asset, a report produced by El Míster in partnership with World Football Summit, maps every major deal across the region, the investment models behind them, and the funds and holding groups leading the charge.

Download the full report below.

Spiegel will speak at WFS Mexico City on 3–4 June at the Camino Real Polanco. This interview is a preview of LATAM Football Asset, a report produced by El Míster in partnership with World Football Summit, publishing next week.

What were the main factors behind the decision to invest in Querétaro?

When we were looking for a club to acquire anywhere in the world, we had very specific criteria. We wanted a league with growth potential, commercial viability, a quality local and international business community, access to an international airport, and a large city capable of hosting a top-level professional team. Querétaro and Liga MX met all of those requirements. The size of the opportunity and the enthusiasm of the local community to support our project have been impressive.

What do you see as the key advantages of the Liga MX market?

Liga MX is unique because it has a major commercial engine right to the north, in the United States. There is enormous growth potential coming from that market. And it doesn’t have many other sports competing for attention. While baseball is growing and the NBA G-League plays in Mexico City, 99% of people live and breathe football all year round. As a league, we are still in the early stages of modernisation. The next five to ten years will be crucial in terms of restructuring to support the growth that is coming. We have a large fanbase, which means we need to capitalise on and expand our base while improving the experience for our supporters both at the stadium and at home.

LATAM Football Asset will be available next week across WFS and El Mister channels. The full report maps over USD 1.5 billion in foreign investment into Latin American football over the past decade, analyses the three main capital models operating in the region — investment funds, multiclub holdings and private investment — and profiles the key funds and companies behind the deals across Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Uruguay.

En una iniciativa conjunta para fomentar el desarrollo profesional de futuras líderes en el sector del deporte, Johan Cruyff Institute y World Football Summit (WFS) anuncian el lanzamiento de una nueva edición del programa de becas exclusivo para mujeres. 

El programa ofrece seis becas formativas para algunos de los másteres más reconocidos del sector, incluyendo:

• Beca parcial del 50% para el Máster en Administración y Dirección del Fútbol en colaboración con el FC Barcelona
• Becas parciales del 60% para el Master in Sports Business and Marketing Blended (versión en inglés o español)
• Becas parciales del 50% para el Master in Football Business Online (versión en inglés o español)

Además de las becas, las candidatas seleccionadas obtendrán entradas para World Football Summit Madrid, que se celebrará los días 15 y 16 de septiembre en La Nave. 

La convocatoria ya está abierta — haz clic aquí para aplicar antes del 19 de junio. Las ganadoras serán anunciadas oficialmente el 18 de julio.

Un impulso al liderazgo femenino en la industria deportiva

La reducción de la brecha de género en la industria deportiva es un compromiso compartido por Johan Cruyff Institute y World Football Summit. En 2025, Johan Cruyff Institute alcanzó un hito en este sentido: por primera vez en 26 años de historia, un programa presencial contó con mayoría de estudiantes mujeres. Se trata del Máster en Marketing y Gestión Deportiva Semipresencial Barcelona, con un total de 13 mujeres y 10 hombres. WFS lo articula a través de su Female Leaders Programme, un programa de promoción del liderazgo femenino en el fútbol que incluye, entre otras iniciativas, el compromiso de que el 30% de los ponentes en sus eventos sean mujeres.

Albert Romans, General Manager de Johan Cruyff Institute, destacó el programa de becas como un impulso al liderazgo femenino en la industria deportiva:

“Con esta iniciativa buscamos seguir profesionalizando el deporte desde la formación. Estas becas refuerzan nuestro compromiso con la igualdad de oportunidades y con el desarrollo de un liderazgo femenino fuerte, preparado y con una visión global”.

Marian Otamendi, CEO de World Football Summit, señaló:

“Desde WFS estamos convencidos de que el fútbol no puede permitirse el lujo de prescindir del liderazgo femenino, por eso llevamos años trabajando para impulsar la presencia de mujeres en puestos de decisión a través de nuestro Female Leaders Programme. La formación es un requisito indispensable para conseguir este objetivo, por eso estamos encantados de poder impulsarla junto a Johan Cruyff Institute.”

Cerrando la brecha de género en el liderazgo deportivo

En la última edición del programa de becas se recibieron 94 solicitudes, de las cuales se seleccionaron 14 finalistas y tres ganadoras: Khalida Popal, Maria Tavares y Paula Regil.

Khalida Popal es ex capitana de la selección femenina de Afganistán. Además de deportista, es activista y fundadora de Girl Power Organisation, una asociación que tiene como objetivo empoderar a niñas y mujeres refugiadas y marginadas mediante el fútbol, el liderazgo y la educación.

“Estoy profundamente agradecida con Johan Cruyff Institute y World Football Summit por apoyar mi misión de usar el fútbol como herramienta de esperanza, empoderamiento y cambio”,

afirmó Khalida, que recibió una beca completa para el Máster en Administración y Dirección del Fútbol en colaboración con el FC Barcelona.

Maria Tavares es presidenta de Africa’s Global Football Management (AGFM), una agencia de gestión deportiva dedicada a acompañar a clubes, federaciones y talentos del fútbol africano en su desarrollo y proyección internacional. Maria, que recibió una beca que cubre el 50% del importe del Máster en Administración y Dirección del Fútbol Online, señaló:

“Me siento muy orgullosa de haber obtenido esta beca; recibirla significa mucho para mí y espero honrarla de la mejor manera posible”.

Paula Regil es una profesional del sector audiovisual con varios años de experiencia. A lo largo de su carrera ha trabajado en medios y centros educativos especializados como MEDIAPRO y la Escuela TAI.

“Tener la oportunidad de formarme en una entidad con el nombre de Johan Cruyff es un auténtico privilegio para mí”, afirmó Paula, que recibió una beca que cubre el 50% del importe del Máster en Sports Business Online.

That picture is completed by a clear strategic split. This season, MLS clubs chose between two roster construction models: the Designated Player pathway or the U22 Initiative. Fifteen clubs chose each, while squad values range from €83.3m at Inter Miami to €14.8m at San Jose Earthquakes.

Download the full report below.

The project is designed to create a safe environment that strengthens the social fabric of the neighbourhood and builds infrastructure that guarantees the systematic inclusion of women in sport. The community is central to the process: children from Tizapán, Álvaro Obregón, are directly involved in the design phase alongside collaborating artists. Following cleaning and priming stages, volunteer teams from the partner brands will work alongside local residents to complete the mural.

The initiative is led by former professional footballer and activist Paola ‘Wera’ Kuri, founder of the association Blue Women Pink Men. Known for her work in advancing women’s football in Mexico, Kuri played an operational role in the creation of Liga MX Femenil and brings a technical dimension to the project, combining grassroots development with tangible community impact.

Paola “Wera” Kuri, founder, Blue Women Pink Men:

“A football pitch is never just a pitch. It is a right to space, a right to play, and for girls above all, a right to belong. When we reclaim these spaces, we do more than refurbish courts, we create community, bring people together, and remind everyone that the game belongs to all of us”.

The pitch inauguration is scheduled for Tuesday, 2 June. Two days later, Mai Hernández (PPG Comex), Omar Carrión (Zucaritas) and Wera Kuri will take the WFS México City stage for the panel Brands That Change the Game: Reclaiming Spaces for a Football That Belongs to Everyone, where they will discuss the role of private partnerships in the democratisation of the sport.

Jan Alessie, Co-Founder and Managing Director, World Football Summit:

“For WFS, football is much more than an industry, it is the world’s most powerful tool for social transformation. What Wera Kuri is building is a great expression of that idea, and we are proud to be part of it and to use our platform to give it the visibility it deserves.”  

But building a platform of this scale also means continuously asking the same question: how do we make the experience better for everyone who walks through the door? And in particular, for the organisations at the very centre of the football ecosystem — the clubs, leagues and federations that own the rights, the competitions and the relationships that the entire industry revolves around.

The WFS Properties Programme is our answer to that question.

A dedicated experience within WFS

Launching at WFS Mexico City and WFS Madrid, the WFS Properties Programme is open to any representative of a club, league or federation attending the event. It offers a dedicated layer of content, networking and visibility built specifically around the needs and interests of rights holders.

The programme includes five core elements:

• Properties Lounge: A space reserved exclusively for clubs, leagues and federations — a place to meet peers, hold working sessions and connect away from the main flow of the event.
• Properties Workshop: Invitation-only sessions, curated by profile, focused on the practical challenges that matter most to rights holders today: how to measure and maximise media value, and how to structure and activate commercial partnerships more effectively.
• Properties Pitch at Speaker Corner: A platform for participating organisations to present their projects, initiatives and case studies to the broader WFS community.
• Clubs, Leagues and Federations Cocktail: An informal gathering that brings the entire properties community together at midday, within the event venue — a space to step back from the programme and continue the conversations that started on the main floor.
• Year-Round Connections: Beyond the event, the programme opens the door to curated introductions and editorial opportunities that keep the conversation — and the community — active throughout the year.

Why now

Rights holders have never been more central to the conversations that define the future of football. The decisions being made today by clubs, leagues and federations — on media rights, commercial strategy, technology, sustainability, fan engagement — are the decisions that will determine what the business of football looks like over the next decade. WFS has always been the platform where those conversations happen. The Properties Programme ensures they happen at the depth they deserve.

If you represent a club, league or federation, the programme is yours. Request your Property Pass, and we will take it from there.

Levy is CEO of Gameday by NJF, the sports and media investment platform of NJF Holdings, founded by entrepreneur and investor Nicole Junkermann. Before that, he spent nearly 17 years at Twitter and Meta, helping sports organisations navigate the shift to digital — building media partnerships, developing content strategies and unlocking new monetisation models at a time when the industry was still figuring out what social media meant for football.

In the second episode of The Pundit’s Seat, Levy draws on that experience to argue that football is navigating its own structural turning point: one where the real challenge is no longer how much fans pay for content, but how easily they can access it.

He also discusses the investment thesis behind Gameday, whose sport portfolio includes Lega Volley Femminile (Italy), and CayoTV (Spain), and what clubs and leagues are still leaving on the table.

You spent nearly 17 years at the heart of the attention economy at Twitter and Meta. How did that experience shape your perspective on football as a sport, as a business and as an entertainment product?

Sports has always been my life’s great passion, and for many years I had the opportunity to see the sports industry from the eyes of the Big Tech Companies. Sport, and football in particular, competes with every notification vibrating in a fan’s pocket. Today we live in the attention economy, and in this economy, sport (and again, football in particular) are in  a unique position because nothing brings people together like sport does.

As a business, my experience showed me that data isn’t just a “vanity metric”, it’s the language of fan loyalty. As an entertainment product, I realized the 90-minute match is merely the “anchor”; the true value today lies in the infinite conversation, the “at-the-moment” content, and the ability to fragment the experience to fit the lives of a “global, mobile-first audience”.

Nicole Junkermann recently argued that investors often misunderstand global sport by treating it as a cyclical media asset rather than long-term infrastructure. How does this ‘infrastructure mindset’ practically change the way Gameday evaluates a football property compared to traditional asset management?

Football, in general, is an industry mainly driven by a very short-term vision. Traditional asset management looks at football through the narrow window of 3-to-5-year TV rights cycles. 

At Gameday, guided by Nicole’s vision, we view it as social and digital infrastructure. A bridge or a road is valuable because of what flows across it; football is the infrastructure for community, identity, and consumption. This shift means we don’t just look for a quick “exit multiple.” We evaluate a property based on its ecosystem’s robustness, its ability to own its data, its direct-to-consumer (D2C) potential, and its resilience against market volatility. We invest in systems, not just seasons.

The “Napster moment” and the future of the industry

You’ve described sport as living through its own “Napster moment.” In the music world, that moment forced a complete pivot in how value was captured. Is football currently losing control of its distribution, or is it just failing to price it correctly for the digital age?

I often draw a parallel between music and sports because both are foundational to human identity. In the early 2000s, music hit its “Napster moment” —the internet didn’t just change the format; it shifted the power dynamic. After a painful transition, the industry emerged stronger, moving from a single-source revenue model to a diversified ecosystem of streaming, live experiences, and digital assets.

Sport is currently navigating that same inflection point. The legacy model, which leaned almost exclusively on the analog scarcity of massive media rights deals, is under immense stress. We are moving from an era where the fan hunts for content to an era where the content needs to find the fan. The barrier today isn’t price, it’s friction. Our mission at Gameday is to eliminate that friction, ensuring that the emotional bond of football isn’t lost in a fragmented digital landscape, but rather made more accessible through smarter, user-centric business models.

If the solution for sport’s “Napster moment” doesn’t come from the traditional rightsholders, what kind of actor is going to provide it, and how will that intervention redefine the industry’s revenue models and long-term business sustainability?

The solution will come from tech-integrators with an investment soul. These are actors who don’t just buy rights, but build the “operating system” of the sport. This intervention will redefine revenue models from “wholesale” rights dumping to a platform economy. We will see models driven by sponsorship, micro-transactions, gamified experiences, and mass personalization. The sustainability of the business will depend on moving from a one-size-fits-all broadcast model to a deep, data-driven relationship with each individual fan.

Technology, valuation, and lost opportunities

Beyond distribution and how we watch the game, in which specific areas is technology having the most direct and measurable impact on its market valuation?

Without a doubt, fan data is the ultimate value-unlock. In the legacy model, clubs rented their audience from broadcasters and social platforms; in the Gameday model, they own it. By replacing ‘gut feeling’ with measurable intelligence, a property transforms from a speculative asset into a predictable business. When you use AI to understand exactly who your fans are and how they transact, that shift from guesswork to data-certainty is what fundamentally re-rates a club’s business.

What specific revenue streams or operational efficiencies is the industry currently “leaving on the table” because it hasn’t yet integrated technology at a deeper level?

The biggest missed opportunity in football today is the lack of hyper–personalization. We live in an era where every other aspect of our digital life is tailored to us, but football still clings to a one-size-fits-all model. I don’t believe there is a single, hidden revenue stream left on the table – I think we are leaving growth on the table across every existing stream. Whether it’s ticketing, sponsorship, or merchandise, data acts as the ultimate multiplier. By replacing generic outreach with precision, we don’t just increase revenue, we increase operational efficiency and, ultimately, the enterprise value of the property.

There is a debate over whether technology democratizes the industry or simply helps Tier 1 properties pull further away. Does Gameday see technology as an equalizer or as a tool for further market consolidation?

At Gameday, we see it as a potential equalizer, but only for the agile. While Tier 1 properties have the capital, mid-tier properties have the speed to pivot. Technology allows a modest club to build a profitable, niche global community that can rival a giant’s margins. Sports properties need to start seeing themselves as a digital-first brand.

The investment thesis

After years at the heart of Big Tech, you moved into investment. What is the specific investment thesis at Gameday that justifies building a dedicated sports and media vertical in this current economic cycle?

Nothing brings people together like sport does. In an on-demand world, sport remains the last frontier of the ‘Live Experience’ making it fundamentally unique. In an era of infinite distraction, live sport is the only asset that guarantees mass attention in real-time—and attention is the new hard currency. Perhaps most importantly, as AI transforms every other sector, sport remains disruption-proof. You can’t automate the grit of a comeback or the raw emotion of a last-minute goal; that unscripted human achievement is our greatest asset. At Gameday, we invest at the intersection of content, data, and technology to make that human magic scalable and recession-proof.

Football is an emotional industry, but capital requires rigor. What does the experience of Gameday and Nicole Junkermann in other tech sectors bring to football that the industry is currently lacking in its decision-making?

Precision over passion. Football is perhaps the most emotional industry on earth, but at Gameday, we believe that emotion should be the fuel, not the GPS. What Nicole Junkermann and our team bring from sectors like biotech, fintech, and deep tech is a culture of extreme rigor. In high-stakes tech sectors, you don’t make multi-million dollar bets based on a gut feeling or the result of a single Sunday; you make them based on predictive modeling, data sovereignty, and long-term infrastructure health.

Specifically, we bring a data-driven approach that replaces speculation with measurable intelligence, applying the same level of due diligence found in life sciences to the football ecosystem. This is supported by ecosystem thinking, where we refuse to see football as just a game, viewing it instead as a tech-enabled platform where every touchpoint is interconnected. Finally, we implement operational discipline by bringing a relentless focus to unit economics and digital efficiency, ensuring the business is as high-performing as the athletes themselves.

By applying the Human Code, we ensure that while our decisions are powered by the cold logic of technology, they are always aimed at protecting the very thing that makes football valuable: the raw, human connection between the club and the fan.

There is a growing debate on the need to balance expansion with the nurturing of football’s emotional bond. At WFS, we believe this bond is the industry’s primary asset. Nicole recently wrote that the true value of sport lies in its ‘scarcity’—the fact that a moment cannot be infinitely replicated without losing its meaning. How do you scale a football business globally without over-commercializing it to the point where you destroy both that scarcity and the emotional bond?

The key is to scale the access, not the product. As Nicole rightly points out, the scarcity of the 90-minute match, the unscripted drama that only happens once, is the industry’s most sacred asset. If you try to replicate the match itself infinitely, you dilute its value. However, you can scale the emotional connection to that moment by using technology to remove the barriers between the club and its global community.

At Gameday, we believe that over-commercialization happens when you treat fans as a generic mass to be exploited. We avoid this by using data to provide intimacy at scale. Nothing can substitute the experience of a fan going to the stadium, but technology today allows a fan in Jakarta to feel the same connection to the club as a season-ticket holder in London, not because we’ve sold them a generic product, but because we’ve given them a personalized window into the club’s soul.

Scaling without destruction requires a Human Code approach: using technology as a bridge, not a barrier. By protecting the scarcity of the live event while hyper-personalizing the digital experience, we can grow the business globally while actually deepening the emotional bond. We aren’t just expanding a brand; we are inviting more people to participate in a shared, irreplaceable history.

The WFS Leadership Club

Gameday and World Football Summit have partnered to launch the WFS Leadership Club, an international circuit of private dinners designed to connect senior executives and investors for candid, off-the-record dialogue. What is the core value of building this specific ecosystem, and what does it offer that the traditional industry circuit does not?

The core value of the WFS Leadership Club is radical honesty. Traditional industry events are often performative, but this group provides a private environment to talk about the game behind the game. It is an ecosystem designed for high-level problem-solving away from the noise of the headlines.

What sets this apart is the move from networking to deep connection. We enable senior executives to discuss structural challenges and cross-industry innovations with total candor. We believe the most significant transformations in football won’t happen on a stage, but across a dinner table. This is the Human Code in action, building the trust and personal bonds necessary to drive the long-term sustainability of the sport.

Direct Connection with Industry Leaders

The programme operates as a recruitment engine where emerging talent meets decision-makers from the organisations defining the industry. Entities that have participated in previous matchmaking sessions to scout their next generation of leaders include:

• Global Governing Bodies & Leagues: FIFA and LaLiga.
• European Clubs: Borussia Mönchengladbach, Athletic Club, Real Betis, and Sevilla FC.
• Americas Clubs: Club América, Cruz Azul, and Rayados de Monterrey.
• Brands & Agencies: Decathlon and various sportech entities.

The programme’s scale is reflected in the metrics from the Madrid 2025 edition, which facilitated 378 one-on-one meetings between 126 pre-selected students and 40 industry professionals.

The JobMatch Experience: Programme Structure

The initiative is built around four operational pillars designed to facilitate direct professional placement:

• Employability Corner: A dedicated space managed by FutbolJobs featuring real-time access to global job openings within the football ecosystem.
• Industry Stage Masterclass: A session delivered by HR executives—with previous participation from firms like Catenon—focused on the professional roadmap to executive positions.
• FutbolJobs Workshop: A practical session titled “How to become a top executive in the football industry: From potential to professional,” providing specific market data and insights.
• 1:1 Meetings (Speed Dating): Structured face-to-face meetings throughout the two-day event. Candidates meet with representatives from leagues, federations, and brands to discuss active career opportunities.

Who is this for?

JobMatch serves as a bridge for three specific groups:

• Students & NextGen attendees: Aimed at students and recent postgraduates from all disciplines seeking a professional career within the football industry.
• Academic Institutions: Universities and business schools looking to provide students with a practical extension of their academic programmes and direct access to the international market.
• Organisations & Employers: Leagues, federations, and agencies seeking access to a pool of pre-selected candidates technically equipped for immediate hire.

The JobMatch programme is now confirmed for both WFS Mexico City and WFS Europe in Madrid. Students can access the full range of activities by securing a NextGen Pass.

Organisations looking to participate in the 1:1 meetings can click [HERE] to coordinate their involvement.

The first edition tackles one of the most important shifts in football’s business landscape: the end of the captive fan. For most of football’s history, the relationship between clubs and supporters was built on loyalty that needed no maintenance. The fan came back. That is no longer a given — and the football industry knows it.

Drawing on conversations from WFS Monterrey 2025 and WFS Madrid 2025 — with voices from LaLiga, Juventus FC, Club América, RCD Mallorca, Sevilla FC, Belgian Pro League, Liga de Portugal, G2 Esports, NJF Sports & Media and Liga Primera Nicaragua, among others — this first Half-Time Report maps the diagnosis and the responses: why broadcast revenues are no longer the anchor they once were, how clubs are rebuilding the fan relationship from the ground up, and what sponsorship, live experiences and membership look like as the new pillars of football’s commercial architecture.

Download the full report below.

In this interview — the first in The Pundit’s Seat, a new WFS content series featuring in-depth conversations with experts across different areas of the football industry — Zok introduces AI Pulse, a diagnostic tool developed by N3XT Sports that maps individual and organisational AI readiness to help sports properties move from AI adoption to AI maturity, and provides key industry benchmarks to break down the “perception gap” between leadership goals and technical reality. He explains what truly separates the organisations that merely experiment with AI from those that have the structural maturity to actually compete through it.

Does the impact of AI compare to other major technological transformations in history, or are we dealing with something qualitatively different — and does sport, as a historically slow adopter, reflect that or defy it?

We are dealing with something qualitatively different, because AI is arriving at the exact moment sport is shifting from instinct‑driven to data‑native decision‑making. N3XT Sports research shows that while around 80% percent of major sports organisations prioritise sustainability, governance and commercial growth, only 39 percent formally integrate data governance and just research shows that while around 17% percent list AI development as a strategic priority, so AI is exposing structural weaknesses in how data is treated, not just adding another tool on top. Sport therefore reflects its history as a slow adopter where it matters most – in digital infrastructure, data governance and skills – even as a small group of properties (particularly elite clubs) are starting to defy that pattern by elevating data and AI to the boardroom.

You’ve spent years working with sports organisations on digital transformation. When AI entered the conversation, what changed — and what’s actually happening inside the industry today, beyond the noise and the conference demos?

The biggest change was urgency: digital transformation stopped being framed as “modernisation” and started being framed as competitiveness. Our research shows that while around 2026 Digital Trends Report shows that across Olympic/Paralympic IFs, elite European clubs and major event organisers, organisations are heavily focused on ESG, fan engagement and commercial growth, but far less mature on the digital and data foundations that AI depends on, which makes AI an immediate strategic issue rather than a distant innovation topic. Beyond the conference demos, the reality is that most organisations are using AI tactically – to support content production, reporting and basic analytics – while a smaller, more advanced group is beginning to integrate predictive analytics into governance, performance and commercial decisionmaking in a more systematic way.

Where is AI delivering real, measurable impact inside a sports organisation today — on-field performance, operations, commercial, fan engagement? And where are the biggest opportunities that no one is effectively capturing yet?

We already see measurable impact in four domains: performance (for example, clubs like Real Madrid using AI‑driven predictive injury modelling to support player health and tactical decisions), operations (automation of registrations, approvals and reporting in projects such as Saudi Arabia’s National Sports Platform ), commercial (more granular sponsorship reporting and inventory packaging enabled by centralised data models), and fan engagement (as with FIVB, where coordinated, data‑driven content strategies contributed to over Saudi Arabia’s National Sports Platform ). However, N3XT Sports research also shows that only 36% percent of major sports entities treat digital transformation and data governance as strategic pillars, which means the biggest untapped opportunity is still to connect these pockets of AI use to a unified stakeholder database and governance framework, so that AI becomes the “binding agent” of an integrated revenue and performance engine rather than a collection of isolated use cases.

Sport has long used technology as a showcase — VAR, player performance tracking, athlete instrumentation. But how much does what happens on the pitch or on the broadcast actually reflect what’s going on inside these organisations? Is there a gap between visible innovation and real operational transformation?

There is a clear and measurable gap. Across 18 of the world’s leading competition organisers (including the Premier League, LaLiga, UEFA, FIFA and the IOC), our analysis shows that 83% percent emphasise sustainability, 72% percent fan engagement and 67% percent governance, but only 33% percent highlight digital transformation and 33% percent data governance, with just 11 percent naming AI as imperative to success. That means the product fans see – VAR, tracking, augmented broadcasts – often sits on top of fragmented systems and siloed data internally.

Some sports have always been more open to technological innovation than others — Formula 1 being the obvious example. Is that same stratification playing out with AI? And where does football sit in that map — given its global scale, what’s at stake if it moves slowly?

Yes, the stratification is already visible in the data. Among 20 leading European football clubs , 95% percent emphasise governance and integrity, 75% percent commercial expansion, 70% percent fan engagement and 90% percent ESG, while structured data governance climbs to 40% percent and around 30% percent explicitly reference AI as a strategic pillar – a higher operational maturity than we see in most federations and major events. At the same time, the wider ecosystem still treats AI as peripheral, with only 17% percent of entities across sectors naming AI development as a core strategic focus, so if football as a whole moves too slowly in normalising AI‑enabled, data‑native models, it risks building ambitious ESG and commercial agendas on fragile digital foundations and losing ground to more data‑mature sports and to tech platforms that already own the fan relationship.

Your white paper draws a distinction between organisations that use AI and those that are genuinely AI-native. What concretely separates them — is it a technology gap, a culture gap, a leadership gap?

The gap is all three, but it starts with leadership and culture and then shows up in technology. AI‑using organisations treat AI as a feature – a project or tool that sits on top of existing ways of working – whereas AI‑native organisations design their strategy, operating model and data architecture assuming that AI will be part of decisionmaking everywhere.  

You also identify a perception gap between senior leadership and operational teams. Why does that gap exist — and what are the consequences for organisations that don’t close it, commercially and eventually on the pitch?

The perception gap exists because leaders and operators are living different versions of AI adoption. On one side, our work and the 2026 Digital Trends Report show that roughly four in five sports organisations already adopt AI solutions and 98 percent plan to increase use, but only 12% percent of major leagues and federations actually position AI as a formal strategic priority, and around one in five adopters say in‑house skills are their biggest barrier – so executives hear “we’re using AI everywhere” while operational teams feel under‑resourced, under‑trained and constrained by legacy systems.

Where have you seen organisations invest seriously in AI and come away with less than they expected — and what went wrong? Is there a pattern to the failures?

The pattern is consistent: AI is deployed on top of weak or fragmented data foundations. Our cross‑sector analysis shows that while 62% percent of entities prioritise commercial expansion and 62% percent fan engagement, only 53 percent invest meaningfully in digital transformation and 39 percent in data governance , so AI is often asked to solve problems that are actually structural – siloed systems, inconsistent data, unclear ownership. As a result, many AI projects become isolated pilots inside single departments, with no centralised data core, no federated governance model and no leadership‑driven AI mandate, which means early results cannot be scaled, and AI gets wrongly labelled as “interesting but not transformative” rather than “misaligned with our foundations”.

What were you seeing with clients that wasn’t being solved — and what led you to build AI Pulse as a response to that specific problem? What does an organisation learn about itself going through it that it didn’t know before?

We kept meeting organisations that were ambitious about AI, had already made investments, but were effectively flying blind about their true readiness across strategy, technology, data, governance and people. N3XT Sports research shows the same structural misalignments at industry level – ESG without data architecture, commercial ambition without integrated fan intelligence, AI adoption without executive oversight – and we were seeing those play out inside individual clients with no shared framework to diagnose them. AI Pulse is our response: a structured, organisation‑wide assessment anchored in the Universal Data Pyramid and our cross‑sector benchmarks that gives leadership and operational teams a single, evidence‑based picture of where their real bottlenecks are, how misaligned their perceptions might be, and what a realistic 12–36 month roadmap towards becoming genuinely AI‑native looks like.

We’ve talked about what AI can do for sport — but what can it do to it? What are the risks that the industry isn’t taking seriously enough yet?

The first risk is strategic dependency: if organisations outsource too much of their AI capability without owning their data architecture and governance, they risk surrendering control over the “connective tissue” that links sustainability, fan engagement, operational efficiency and commercial growth. The second is that, as our research shows, many entities are scaling tactical AI use while lagging badly in education and governance – only about a third list digital education and change management as a priority – which creates exposure around ESG reporting, , cyber risk , and integrity if AI amplifies weak data or poor processes at scale.

Five years from now, how will AI have changed the experience of the fan — whether they’re playing the game, sitting in the stands, or watching at home? What shifts fundamentally?

Five years from now, AI will blur the line between elite and everyday experiences: the kind of data universe LaLiga already operates in – with roughly 3.5 million data points generated per match and fed into performance, production and commercial decisions – will start to reach grassroots and amateur participants through consumer‑grade tools. In stadiums and at home, the fundamental shift will be from one broadcast and one matchday journey for millions to millions of dynamically tailored journeys,