By Rick Allen, CEO, ViewLift.

As the dust settles on 2025, it’s clear that the year was less about radical invention and more about the gritty, necessary work of integration. Meanwhile, 2026 is shaping up to be the year that broadcasters and sports leagues and teams will need to address the challenges that are emerging from several strategic friction points — from collegiate revenue models, global betting integrity and ownership models to the hyperbole and promise around AI.

The hybrid digital ecosystem of the USA

The enduring story of 2025 in the US was the resilience of the broadcasting ecosystem, proving that the demise of linear TV has been greatly exaggerated. Instead, the combination of linear exposure and Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) engagement has deepened the relationship between fans and properties.

For 2026, I expect this to expand aggressively, particularly at the women’s sports team level, but only if rights owners nail the differentiation.

The streamed product must be more fulsome than the cable offering. It can’t just be the same broadcast feed; it needs to leverage increased personalisation and data. This data is the key driver to moving fans towards longer and deeper engagement with the team, and high-value transactions such as special merchandise and live ticketing offers.

We saw this come into focus in 2025, with major league and club DTC platforms (like those in the WNBA) using customer data to trigger hyper-specific, exclusive push notifications.

Early examples will extend loyalty programme basics into the streaming realm. For example, a fan who watches three consecutive games involving a specific player could receive a unique, location-based ticket offer for the next home game or a 20% discount on that player’s jersey, all delivered directly through the streaming app’s native environment. This level of transactional personalisation is what can separate a successful DTC platform from merely a video-heavy website.

Secondly, 2025 was the year where betting scandals rocked North American sport. This suggests that the notion of placing thousands of micro-bets on individual in-game actions, like the number of fouls a specific player commits in the first five minutes (‘prop bests’) is unsustainable from an integrity standpoint. Leagues are already tightening permissible prop bets or banning them entirely as being too subject to the actions of an individual athlete.  Leagues will adjust their responses over the course of 2026, as sports books try to retain the category, which is quite popular with both veteran gamblers and first timers.

Picking up the slack will be greater integration with gaming and free-to-play models. This fits easily within the loyalty framework, centred on social, low-risk engagements where accurate predictions earn loyalty points redeemable for official team merchandise, exclusive live streaming content, or access to special events. This is easier for regulators, safer for consumers and much more social.

Finally, as far as the US is concerned, the biggest structural change at the college level making headlines in 2025 is the continued evolution of NIL (Name, Image, Likeness). As the digital tools available to athletes mature, conferences and teams will find themselves under increased pressure in 2026 and beyond to find new ways to build sustainable revenue that can be shared or utilised to maintain a competitive edge. The smart ones are already using their DTC platforms and digital tools not just for ticket sales, but as a way to engage with and communicate transparently with the broader student, alumni and local communities, turning them into micro-influencers for their own programmes.

Shifts in Mexico and Latin America

Latin America’s sports market, often characterised by passionate but fragmented digital engagement, is facing a substantial shift. Previously announced changes to Mexican football ownership rules that come into force in 2027 came to a head this year when FIFA enforced its own multi-club regulations for the 2025 Club World Cup. This led to the expulsion of a club that was due to compete against another one owned by the same organisation. Mexico’s new regulations, aimed at preventing such multi-club ownership within its Liga MX, will open up the market by making club valuations clearer and the assets both available to, and more attractive to, international investors.

This fresh wave of foreign investment will bring with it a heightened focus on the digital infrastructure that these owners will require to engage with their fans and win their trust.

Concurrently, we are witnessing the continued dominance of powerhouses like Fox Sports, that are licensing premium rights across the region, having already secured valuable assets such as major European soccer leagues. The impact of this in 2026 likely will be two-fold: it may drive up the cost of rights, but it also elevates the overall production and digital presentation standard for sports content, forcing competitors to raise their game or consolidate.

Private equity and digital democracy in Europe

In Europe, the acceleration of private equity investment across major leagues and clubs — think CVC or similar funds — is directly impacting digital strategies. These investors require rapid, measurable revenue generation, and digital platforms are the fastest path to achieve that. Consequently, we’re seeing European clubs, particularly those outside the traditional elite, aggressively adopting the US model: offering more tiered value, exclusive access, and personalised engagement to their fan bases. I expect this to accelerate in 2026 and beyond as investors seek to monetise their new assets.

The great equaliser here is the democratisation of digital tools. Modern SaaS platforms for fan engagement, CRM and content distribution are no longer exclusively accessible by only the biggest clubs. A mid-tier club in Germany or Italy can now replicate the digital strategy of a top league giant using cost-effective tools. This enables them to generate first-party fan data and create a deeper, more direct hold over their fan community, regardless of the size of their broadcast deal. Meanwhile, more and more broadcasters could decide to join the streaming party, as they seek to hold onto the eyeballs that are critical to their survival.

Finally, a global word on AI

If 2025 was the year that the sports industry declared AI was the silver bullet for everything, then 2026 needs to be the year where we introduce a healthy dose of reality, no matter where we are located.

The magic panacea narrative falls apart when you apply a simple test: replace the term ‘AI’ with ‘automate’.

Do you still believe an expensive, bespoke, black-box ‘AI solution’ will revolutionise your organisation if it’s just automating a process you could have already done with a simple script? Probably not. The simple truth is that most sports leagues and teams don’t have massive, unallocated chunks of budget to throw at opaque, complex solutions and following the ‘AI cures all’ path could be damaging.

So, what should sports teams be wary of in 2026 when it comes to AI? They should be wary of data debt and over-complication. Investing heavily in an AI tool that requires a massive, perfectly cleaned data set will only bankrupt the data team before the system even delivers its first meaningful insight.

The focus for 2026 instead must be on pragmatic, low-hanging fruit: automating the tagging of video highlights, optimising content scheduling based on engagement patterns, and searching out real insights in fan data. Don’t chase magic, chase efficiency. The genuine long-term value of AI in sports will be found in boring, cost-saving automation, not silver bullets.