Sep 10, 2026 · 51 min · 10 segments
Sports organisations have spent years talking about data as the key to growth. But what if most are approaching it the wrong way? In the latest episode of our *New Economics of Fandom* miniseries…
Roman PutschGuestChris StoneHost
Nick MeachamHostAnd just to kind of catch people up, this, like I mentioned, is the second episode of the mini series that we're doing on the new economics of fandom.
Correct me if I misspeak here at any point, but the real, I think, purpose of that episode or a lot of what Mark focused on was the changing dynamics of the economics around fandom where so long historically sports has been focused around the media rights deals, whereas now there seems to be a changing need for to build more relationships directly with fans, as well as the infrastructure in place to take advantage of that relationship for so long.
Broadcasters had owned that relationship with the fans at sports organizations, hadn't necessarily developed that direct-to-consumer relationship with people.
Whereas now there feels to be sort of a changing of that, particularly, Nick, some of the things we've covered on the Streamtime podcast about stagnating media rights, just the urgency or necessity for sports organizations to no longer be wholly reliant on that broadcast revenue and starting to focus more around the actual relationship with the fans.
I mean, in short, it's basically the industry's moving away from being solely built around those third party relationships where you sign over your rights to someone, whether it be licensing rights, media rights, sponsorship rights, whatever it may be, taking that revenue and then come back to that relationship a few years later to try and see if there can be another deal done.
to also taking a bit more control of that relationship with consumers and fans, and also unlocking new revenue streams.
And it's been one of these areas of focus for the industry for many, many years.
And it really feels like we have hit a bit of a tipping point with regards to what those opportunities look like and what we can do with that better intelligence and insight and data around the fan and what they want, what they consume, and what they're interested in.
So yeah, really excited to be able to have that conversation with Mark a few weeks back now.
And I think continue to talk to people like Roman about how they're approaching what is, you know, it's really quite a transformation for the industry, because it means that you go back where we were 10 to 20 years ago, most of these sports organizations didn't need to have People like Roman in those types of roles, well, now they're absolutely essential to have people driving that connectivity with fans through all the different touch points.
And today for this episode, we're going to be focusing more around the data side of things.
Obviously, in that initial kickoff, Mark talked about owning data and how the ownership of data can help power things like AI and other tools that we're talking about quite a bit.
But Roman, just to kind of kick things off on a more general level, talking about data, you and I had a little bit of a prep call before this.
And just to kind of catch people up, this, like I mentioned, is the second episode of the mini series that we're doing on the new economics of fandom.
Correct me if I misspeak here at any point, but the real, I think, purpose of that episode or a lot of what Mark focused on was the changing dynamics of the economics around fandom where so long historically sports has been focused around the media rights deals, whereas now there seems to be a changing need for to build more relationships directly with fans, as well as the infrastructure in place to take advantage of that relationship for so long.
Broadcasters had owned that relationship with the fans at sports organizations, hadn't necessarily developed that direct-to-consumer relationship with people.
Whereas now there feels to be sort of a changing of that, particularly, Nick, some of the things we've covered on the Streamtime podcast about stagnating media rights, just the urgency or necessity for sports organizations to no longer be wholly reliant on that broadcast revenue and starting to focus more around the actual relationship with the fans.
I mean, in short, it's basically the industry's moving away from being solely built around those third party relationships where you sign over your rights to someone, whether it be licensing rights, media rights, sponsorship rights, whatever it may be, taking that revenue and then come back to that relationship a few years later to try and see if there can be another deal done.
to also taking a bit more control of that relationship with consumers and fans, and also unlocking new revenue streams.
And it's been one of these areas of focus for the industry for many, many years.
And it really feels like we have hit a bit of a tipping point with regards to what those opportunities look like and what we can do with that better intelligence and insight and data around the fan and what they want, what they consume, and what they're interested in.
So yeah, really excited to be able to have that conversation with Mark a few weeks back now.
And I think continue to talk to people like Roman about how they're approaching what is, you know, it's really quite a transformation for the industry, because it means that you go back where we were 10 to 20 years ago, most of these sports organizations didn't need to have People like Roman in those types of roles, well, now they're absolutely essential to have people driving that connectivity with fans through all the different touch points.
And today for this episode, we're going to be focusing more around the data side of things.
Obviously, in that initial kickoff, Mark talked about owning data and how the ownership of data can help power things like AI and other tools that we're talking about quite a bit.
But Roman, just to kind of kick things off on a more general level, talking about data, you and I had a little bit of a prep call before this.
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