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The Shifting Sports Paradigm: NIL and Emerging Technology

Before the 2021 NFL Draft, I sat down with former NFL player and current financial advisor, Adewale Ogunleye, on how the soon to be drafted players need to prepare for their windfalls responsibly. Since then, the college football landscape has been rocked with the passage of new NIL rules that allow college athletes to…

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The Shifting Sports Paradigm: NIL and Emerging Technology

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Before the 2021 NFL Draft, I sat down with former NFL player and current financial advisor, Adewale Ogunleye, on how the soon to be drafted players need to prepare for their windfalls responsibly. Since then, the college football landscape has been rocked with the passage of new NIL rules that allow college athletes to profit off their athletic ability. I checked in with Ogunleye to learn more about how athletes can leverage NIL to their benefit and what they need to keep in mind to be fiscally responsible.

In late 2019, before COVID was even twinkle in our eyes, MarketScale interviewed technology and stadium expert Tod Caflisch on what trends will define the future of sports venues. And I was surprised to learn that, according to Caflisch, most stadiums will be smaller than the current giants.

The top deck of a stadium is the most expensive to design, build, and staff accordingly. With more competition for dollar spend among entertainment options many sports teams were looking at what their best break event attendance would be in the future and often it hovered around 40,000 fans.

I also caught up with Caflish to discuss how COVID-19 has further evolved what fans expect when they visit sports arenas and stadiums.

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Uefa is selling referee sleeve ads, and it changes how brands buy football

Uefa is selling referee sleeve ads, and it changes how brands buy football

Uefa is selling branding on referees’ sleeves, starting with workwear brand Strauss, according to SportBusiness. It shifts inventory from clubs and broadcasters to the governing body. Match-day teams now own more production, compliance, and brand-safety work.

  • 01Referee kit becomes sellable inventory, which forces new governance on who approves marks, colors, and placement before matchday.
  • 02Because referees appear in every match and key moment, sleeve placements can deliver high-frequency exposure, but only if broadcast framing and graphics rules are negotiated up front.
  • 03The referee sleeve mark shifts the control point from clubs to the governing body: approvals, kit chain of custody, category-conflict rules, and broadcast measurement become the rights holder's and officiating operations' work on match day.

Sep 6, 2026

Presidio’s Resonate uses agentic AI to turn sports archives into searchable inventory

Presidio’s Resonate uses agentic AI to turn sports archives into searchable inventory

Presidio’s Resonate ingests and tags media for natural-language retrieval. Presidio calls archives “unsold inventory.” It pitches the tool as cutting manual tagging and speeding clip turnaround, while separate DraftKings work targeted game-day readiness.

  • 01If media ops still measure archive value by storage cost, Presidio’s framing flips it: the archive is inventory whose revenue decays by the hour after a live moment.
  • 02Resonate’s promise is labor substitution in logging and retrieval, the benchmark is fewer human touches between ingest and clip publish, not just “AI search.”
  • 03For teams and leagues already on AWS, the architectural decision shifts to governance: who owns metadata schemas, rights, and prompt access across production and sporting ops.

Sep 6, 2026

30% of high schools have canceled games for referee shortages, AB survey finds

Officials are a scheduling constraint in high school sports. According to Athletic Business survey data, 30% of high schools canceled games due to referee shortages. Athletic Business also reports that, in its college athletics survey, 45% of respondents have a facilities project underway or breaking ground in 2026.

  • 01Referee availability is becoming a hard scheduling constraint: 30% of high school respondents reported canceling games due to shortages, according to Athletic Business.
  • 02Facility investments are still moving in college athletics, with 45% reporting projects underway or breaking ground in 2026, even as most departments say non-traditional revenue is under 25% of total, per Athletic Business.
  • 03The practical procurement pivot is away from one-time capex toward outcomes-based contracts and designs that work for both event experience and compliance needs, including mass-notification audio under NFPA 72, per Athletic Business.

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