EXCLUSIVE: “There is a golden age of sport,” says IMG President Adam Kelly. “Look to the evidence and look to the data, we’ve seen records set time and time again for sport across multiple platforms.” He reels off several records including Sky in the UK registering its highest-ever daily viewing figures for sport earlier this year and Amazon its highest-ever ratings for the Champions League.
Kelly’s 25 years at global sports marketing agency IMG have seen him rise from intern to President, taking in roles across rights, acquisitions, distribution, and consultancy along the way. In those two and half decades, he has worked with IMG clients including Euroleague Basketball, the IOC, Rugby League, UFC, Wimbledon, The R&A, Conmebol, Arabian Gulf Cup, Major League Soccer, and now the Saudi Pro League, where Ronaldo and a host of global soccer stars ply their trade.
The TV biz, meanwhile, is used to golden eras. It had been basking in a golden era of drama before that was curtailed by the U.S. labor strikes, Covid, as well as the streamers cooling spending. Those same streamers, alongside other digital platforms, are now fueling a boom in sports coverage.
Pay and free TV remain cornerstones of sports coverage and continue to be essential in terms of reaching fans, but in terms of new players, it is Apple, Amazon, Netflix and YouTube-owner Google that are fueling demand for rights. “That’s the world’s biggest technology company, the world’s biggest retailer, the world’s biggest media platform, and the world’s biggest advertising organization; those are the places where you also want sport to be playing in the next five to ten years,” Kelly says.
The Jake Paul versus Mike Tyson fight was the most streamed sports event ever when shown on Netflix. Kelly forecasts more viewing records are about to be shattered, starting with YouTube’s coverage of next month’s NFL game between the Kansas City Chiefs and L.A. Chargers in Brazil. “It will be the highest-rated NFL game in history because they will bring in a global audience that has never been seen before,” the IMG exec says.
Viewing records make for nice headlines but wider distribution also mean big business. “What are the entities in the world that are best-placed and best able to convert attention into earnings? It’s all of those digital businesses,” Kelly says. “You take highly valuable, live, scarce and appointment-to-view material [sport] and you can forecast enormous audiences. With these new [distribution] technologies that conversion is going to deliver much greater returns.”
Netflix Comes Out Fighting
WWE execs and Superstars pose in photo alongside Netflix executives
Netflix/WWE
In terms of sports coverage, Netflix has gone from barely making the team to star player in short order. “I think that they can be defined as the world’s biggest sports broadcaster,” Kelly says. “The WWE has been in the top 20 highest rated shows, or top 10 across many markets, since day one of launch in January this year. Why? Because Netflix understood, through their data, the people that would be fans of WWE, and they surfaced it appropriately, and it has delivered and delivered for them. That doesn’t happen on many other platforms. So, that’s why Netflix have gone from this standing start to where they are today.”
Soccer Shake-Up
The temptation for rights owners will always be to cut out the likes of IMG and handle production or rights deals directly. Kelly and IMG’s job is to convince those rights holders that it can bolster the bottom line rather than just be a cost. One rights holder taking its content in-house, however, is the English Premier League, the most-watched soccer championship in the world. Late last year it said it would start handling production and distribution itself, ending a 20-year deal with IMG and meaning it will handle coverage of several hundred games and a mountain of wraparound programming.
“That’s a big call for them, a really big call, and we’re supporting the transition,” Kelly says. “There are only a handful, five or six, entities in the world of sport that could afford to do what the Premier League has done, because they will be having to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on their capital infrastructure in order to bring all of that in-house and take on a 2-300 headcount, which, for most businesses in sport, is probably the opposite of what they want.”
Sports & AI
As AI and generative AI transform the media landscape, the value of live sports events arguably increases as people schedule time to watch real-life events in real time. “AI is going to be able to produce you a 24-minute movie in the style of Mission Impossible that you can watch on your train journey. There is effectively going to be infinite content and that’s going to be on our doorstep within minutes and it’s going to change the landscape in many areas, but sport is going to be sport. People don’t want to watch a football match a minute after it happens.”
At a corporate level, Endeavor sold IMG to corporate sibling and UFC and WWE owner TKO in a transaction announced late last year and that closed in February. “IMG’s capabilities as a strategic, full-service sports marketing agency, combined with the expertise across TKO’s business, can create value and power growth for our clients and our company like no one else in sports,” Kelly says.
Whatever the corporate structure, his job is to ensure IMG is a key player. But at a moment when the market for sports rights, talent, and content is red hot, is there a risk the market could overheat?
“I describe it, in some trends that we’ve seen, as this sort of gold rush and people are piling in late and thinking there’s unlimited gold, but I have got 25 years’ experience and the business has got 65 years of legacy,” Kelly says of what he hopes is IMG’s edge in a fast-changing world. He adds: “I don’t think there’s a bubble in sport, I think there’s headroom for growth. I think there’s been a lack of evolution of the model.”
