PUBLISHED DATE: 2023-11-15 00:23:14

How Digital Boosts Growth for the Sports Industry | Publicis Sapient Telecommunications, Media & Technology

The Next Wave in Sports

While sports continue to gain global appeal and attract fans all over the world, there remains a sizeable opportunity to engage with fans, regardless of their geography, in more meaningful ways—consequently generating greater business value.

Today’s Dynamic Sports Scene: Evolving Now and Into the Future

  1. The Generational Divide
    Younger fans are displaying starkly different behavior than their predecessors.
  2. Digitization and Audience Fragmentation
    Content is consumed across a varied number of platforms and formats, both linear and digital, with no one catch-all source.
  3. Competition for Attention & New Media
    Consumers have access to greater options and choices for entertainment and consumption habits continue to evolve.
  4. Growth Beyond Local Markets
    Growth in fandom across major leagues is borderless, with fans actively seeking content and viewing options.
  5. After the Whistle
    Sports is no longer defined by what happens between the lines. Social activism and player engagement represent new entry points to fandom.
  6. Changing Economic Priorities
    Fans are making considered vs. emotional choices, impacting attendance and manifesting in different generational priorities.

Unlocking New Avenues to Connect With Fans

Live sporting events are no longer the only way for fans to engage with their favorite teams, leagues, players, public figures or organizations. With innovative online and virtual tools—including digital gamification, streaming, social media, and more—industry leaders are now able to blend physical and digital experiences, delighting fans beyond and between the events they attend in-person.

The Opportunity: Transform from a media-centric business model to an engagement model.

Where do you start? From ticket sales and demand generation to boosts in loyalty, brand relevance and more, there are many benefits to unifying fan experiences across disconnected ecosystems. But it can be challenging to identify the best starting point for your brand. Begin by asking yourself which of these questions or issues you’d like to solve for first.

Taking the first steps: Bringing fans and teams closer together

Engagement with fans in channels they want at the time they want it, regardless of geography.

The Opportunity

Teams have access to fan data, but it’s often siloed, with no singular record of truth. Fans expect you to know them, especially younger fans who hold every brand to the standard of the best experiences they have today.

How We Can Help

Deliver measurable business value by enabling personalized experiences and predicting your fans’ preferences with our CDP offerings. We can help select the right product, collect disparate data sources, uncover actionable insights and unlock value rapidly. Our solutions help to remove friction, better represent how fans wish to engage with you and bring the digital and physical worlds together.

The Opportunity

Half of Gen Z have never attended a professional sporting event. Younger fans are not satisfied with venue access alone and increasingly expect their digital-first desires be met.

How We Can Help

Taking a service design-led approach, we focus on customer need states, build out strategy to support the customer journey and create mutual value for all stakeholders. Extend fan engagement throughout the season and offseason by creating opportunities for brand interaction before and after what happens on the field.

The Opportunity

Digitally empowered fans expect more than a one-size-fits-all experience. On the other hand, casual fans may encounter choice overload and unnecessary clutter, which can impact engagement.

How We Can Help

We work with sports organizations to improve experiences and increase fan engagement by understanding people’s desires and orchestrating messaging in relevant, targeted ways. Deploying state-of-the-art AI, we can help suggest next-best actions and use data signals generated over time to iterate and optimize. Build your competitive edge by creating new revenue streams, delivering the messages your fans want, and increasing value for you and your partners.

The Opportunity

The way sports are consumed today is changing. Shifts in privacy policy have increased the value of 1st-party data, allowing teams to generate new and measurable economic benefit from all available data sources.

How We Can Help

Data monetization opportunities allow teams access to media networks and data marketplaces at a marginal cost. By delivering heightened experiences, teams create greater engagement for their members, partners and affiliates. Craft digital experiences that offer greater access and deeper engagement opportunities to capture the imagination of fans in venues and on devices all around the world.

The Opportunity

With fans accessing content from a variety of sources, sports brands have many new tools at their disposal to help create value-driving interactive experiences.

How We Can Help

With Web3 capabilities, we can create engagement and additional revenue by considering each fan’s experience, geography and needs. Then, we’ll help define the right use cases to invest against and track data points that will help measure your success. By strategically employing AI, our digital solutions boost profits and create memorable experiences across organizations and their fan ecosystems.

The Opportunity

AI has been powering consumer applications for several years, even within the sports world. Teams can employ AI as a value driver to enhance fan experiences and create operational efficiency across a multitude of use cases.

How We Can Help

Our disciplined approach starts with understanding business problems that AI can address. Then we build thoughtful solutions against potentially valuable use cases, all while balancing risks, costs and speed. Remove friction from experiences and connect data and technology across the enterprise to optimize engagement and revenue.

The Opportunity

Siloed data and tech-stack limitations can inhibit teams from creating and delivering revenue-generating activities and heightened experiences.

How We Can Help

We make it easy for sports fans to engage, buy and interact—first by understanding your brand’s current state, and then by introducing fluidity, flexibility and connectivity.

What Professional Sports Teams Should Consider to Drive Revenue and Protect Financial Investments

Professional sports teams must better understand today’s fans in order to drive growth in the future. They can do this by becoming engagement-centric rather than focusing on media.

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Our Offerings — A Better How

Discover new ways to connect, create efficiency and grow your top line with proven solutions like CDPs, data monetization and digital identity. Learn more

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Modernize your IT systems with solutions that include software delivery, digital engineering and cloud infrastructure and strategy. Learn more

Transform the way your brand and your customers interact with exceptional customer, employee and partner-centered offerings and services. Learn more

Build the type of momentum that only comes with scalable optimization strategies, cross-channel communication and value-generating data visibility.

Customer Engagement

Discover new ways to connect, create efficiency and grow your top line with proven solutions like CDPs, data monetization and digital identity. Learn more

Total Commerce

Deliver exceptional digital commerce experiences through omnichannel commerce, digital sales and order management. Learn more

Technology Modernization

Modernize your IT systems with solutions that include software delivery, digital engineering and cloud infrastructure and strategy. Learn more

Experience Transformation

Transform the way your brand and your customers interact with exceptional customer, employee and partner-centered offerings and services. Learn more

Sustain

Build the type of momentum that only comes with scalable optimization strategies, cross-channel communication and value-generating data visibility.

Partnerships

Premier Partner Adobe

Adobe is the leader in digital experience technology. Adobe helps Publicis Sapient power transformations through its Adobe Experience Cloud and Adobe Experience Platform. We’ve been the organization’s Partner of the Year seven times—more than any other partner. Discover more

Premier Partner AWS

Amazon Web Services’ industry-leading cloud solutions enable Publicis Sapient to generate real business value for our clients. Over the last ten years we’ve helped businesses rise to the challenge of greater demands from their customers. Discover more

Premier Partner Salesforce

We’re a Platinum Partner of the world’s leading CRM platform provider. During our decade-long partnership, we have become Salesforce’s strategic advisers driving innovation and customer-centricity, backed by the power of the organization’s suite of platforms. Discover more

Premier Partner Microsoft

The Azure cloud solution was at the foundation of Publicis Sapient’s work on AGTB — the world’s first fully digital trade finance bank. With Microsoft’s help, we took AGTB from concept to live in a matter of months. Discover more

Premier Partner Google Cloud

A Global Premier Partner of Google Cloud, Publicis Sapient combined the speed and storage of Google Cloud Platform and rich data sets in Google Marketing Platform and Ads Data Hub to create the Customer Data Platform. Discover more

Premier Partner MACH Alliance

A global community of certified digital innovation advocates, the MACH alliance sets, communicates and enforces high standards for building future-proof solutions. As a member, we help guide and partake in cross-industry conversations as we pursue next-level digital excellence through customer-centric experience design. Discover more

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Raj Shah
Telecommunications, Media & Technology Lead, North America
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Rizwan Devji
Lead Sports and Fan Engagement for TMT
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