- AI seen as challenge and opportunity
- YouTube tops platform ‘priority’ table
- Study highlights Amazon’s growing influence
IMG’s annual digital trends report has highlighted the growing influence of artificial intelligence (AI) on sport and reasserted the growing influence of YouTube, its ‘priority’ digital platform for the second consecutive year.
One of the key findings of the study, now in its eighth year, was the challenge of standing out amidst the exponential growth of professional and user generated content on digital platforms, all of which was competing for user attention.
The report says that finding the traditional balance between quality and quantity was no longer sufficient as both elements are required to be successful in a crowded marketplace.
Compounding this challenge is that content that focuses on athletes and creators as opposed to institutions is gaining more traction in the digital era, making authenticity and interactivity hugely important.
IMG says sports organisations must produce consistent streams of polished, relevant and authentic content by investing in talent and resources and by using AI to streamline workflows. Such a strategy will allow teams, leagues, brands and broadcasters to scale and personalise their output, aided by AI-powered real time translation technologies that can drive global appeal.
The rise of consumer-facing AI platforms is raised in the study, which says tools such as Google’s Gemini and ChatGPT have effectively replaced search for many consumers, a trend which is impacting discoverability. It argues ‘Generative Engine Optimisation’ should be considered alongside traditional search engine optimisation (SEO) and recommends sports organisations and partners take steps to protect their intellectual property in a fast-developing space.
The growing influence of Amazon is also highlighted. The tech giant is now a key supplier to the industry, as noted by a recent outage that took many popular services online, while it has deeper partnerships with many leagues and federations.
Similarly influential is YouTube given its importance in third-party platform strategies. IMG notes that the Google-owned service is the world’s biggest podcast platform, generates two billion short-form video views each month, and is the most popular connected TV app in key markets.
YouTube tops the agency’s ‘platform power rankings’, ahead of Instagram and TikTok, with Spotify included in the top 12 for the first time. IMG has also created a similar table for China, which reflects the popularity of domestic digital services in the country given the activity of several global tech brands is restricted. Douyin, owned by TikTok’s parent ByteDance, tops that list.
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