SPORTS & ENTERTAINMENT
STARTUPS TO FOLLOW
Our year-to-year perspective on how the sports innovation landscape has changed with reports focusing on the top startups to follow in the industry - capturing the priorities, technologies and collaborations shaping the sports and entertainment landscape at each moment in time.
FOURTH EDITION - 2026
Back for 2026, our Sports & Entertainment Startups to Follow report highlights the technologies and companies shaping how sport is played, experienced, and operated. It brings together emerging and scaling startups we’ve encountered throughout the year, offering a practical view of where innovation is being applied across the ecosystem. Our winning formula and methodology remained the same with 40 startups featured, each addressing concrete challenges across the sports value chain.
THIRD EDITION - 2025
At the third edition leveraging on our unique position at the intersection of sport, media, and technology, our vision remained the same to create a comprehensive, curated resource for industry leaders. In the report we kept the on & off the pitch structure with the addition of key trends and dynamics to watch out for in the industry that year focusing on technology, market growth, economic dynamics and investment shifts. In this report startups realted to AI dominated the field with more than 40 promising startups featured in this year’s edition.
SECOND EDITION - 2024
Following the success and the momentum of the first edition, the second report continued our commitment to support decision-makers across the ecosystem. In this report we provided updates about startups from last year and then highlighted new startups with a different segmentation. This time we diveded them into on & off the pitch groups because many fell into the intersection of multiple categories. The end product consists of a list featuring 35+ promising startups in the sports industry, spanning various businesses and operational as well as performance areas.
FIRST EDITION - 2023
At the very first edition of our startup report we dived into the trends of that year with the goal of helping clubs, leagues, federations, and media transform their businesses through innovative solutions with the goals of saving costs, increasing new revenues and creating innovative experiences. The main pillars leading to these were content, broadcast and social media, gamification and loyalty, web3 and virtual worlds, in-stadium and operational management across the sport and entertainment industry.
