The Top 3 Sports Industry Trends to Watch in 2023 🏆
Apple and Amazon will make athletes rich, Women's football to grow 300% and will AI takeover?
Welcome to Athletic Interest.
This week’s edition is going to be a little bit different. To celebrate the new year, we are going to give you a handy breakdown of the biggest events and most interesting trends to look out for in 2023.
We told you this newsletter isn’t just memes and funny tweets…but there will be more of those next week we promise.
So, when are the biggest events of 2023?
📆 January
🎾 Australian Open (16th-29th)
📆 February
⚽️ Club World Cup (1st-11th)
🏉 Six Nations (4th - March 18th)
🏈 Super Bowl (12th February)
📆 March
🏎 First F1 GP of 2023 in Bahrain (5th)
📆 April
⛳️ Masters (6th-9th)
🐎 Grand National (15th)
📆 May
🐎 Kentucky Derby (6th)
⛳️ US PGA (18th-21st)
🏎 Indianapolis 500 (28th)
🎾 French Open (28th - June 11th)
⚽️ Europa League Final (31st)
📆 June
⚽️ Women’s Champions League Final (3rd)
⚽️ Conference League Final (7th)
⚽️ Champions League Final (10th)
🏒 Stanley Cup Finals
🏀 NBA Finals
⛳️ US Open (15th-18th)
📆 July
🚲 Tour de France (1st-23rd)
🎾 Wimbledon (3rd-16th)
⚽️ Women's World Cup (10th - Aug 20th)
⛳️ Open Championship (20th - 23rd)
📆 August
👟 World Athletics Championship (19th-27th)
🎾 US Open (28th - Sept 10th)
📆 September
🏉 World Cup (8th - Oct 28th)
⛳️ Ryder Cup (29th - Oct 1st)
📆 October
🏏 World Cup (until November TBC)
📆 November
🏎 Las Vegas Grand Prix (17th-19th)
🏎 Final Race of F1 season (26th)
📊 From top events to top trends..
Here are our three picks to look out for in 2023:
The continued rise of Women’s Football
The Big Tech Takeover
Artificial Intelligence
So, let’s start with women’s football.
According to FIFA, the Women’s game has reached “the greatest level of global interest in its history.”
As incredible as that sounds, it appears that we are still far from the peak.
One report argues that Women’s football has the potential to grow its viewership figures by at least 300% globally, and 2023 should be the year that a large chunk of this potential is realised.
That’s for one major reason…the World Cup.
The 2023 edition will kick off in Australia and New Zealand this July and is predicted to achieve a cumulative viewership well above the current record of 1 billion set at the last World Cup in 2019.
This is no surprise. World Cups, with their perfect mix of big stars and national pride, always draw in huge viewing figures.
The real impact of this tournament could be in how it changes people’s impression of the Women’s game and increases interest in the sport going forward.
Just look at how the Women’s Euro 2022 impacted opinions in the U.K.
Now over 60% of U.K. football fans have expressed greater interest in the Women’s game.
That’s just after the Euros, imagine the impact of a World Cup.
Any long-term increase in interest in Women’s football will be followed by greater investment and sponsorship. The perfect resources for Women’s football to further increase its status.
🍏 Will Apple buy Manchester United? Could Amazon purchase Liverpool…probably not.
But that doesn’t mean that big tech isn’t set to take over sport in 2023, a move that could make some athletes and clubs very rich!
With original TV and Film proving less effective at keeping subscribers, streaming services (like Netflix, Amazon and Apple) desperately looking for a new way to hook viewers.
They appear to have settled on sport as their next battleground, and the focus will fall on two key areas:
Documentaries
Live Sports
Sport is a natural fit for a documentary. Each discipline has a naturally built-in storyline that is driven by intense competition and passion. They are relatively easy to produce (No CGI required for the stunts) and have the power to draw in current fans and even create new ones.
After Netflix saw huge success from Drive to Survive, they have lined up similar series with the Tour de France, tennis, and golf. Keen to get in on the action, Apple has announced a European Super League documentary that will drop on the 13th of January, while Amazon has an ‘All or Nothing Germany’ doc coming out this year (not sure what there was to document though 👀).
The streaming giants are also trying to buy up live rights, knowing that the weekly action is an easy way to retain fans across the year.
Apple recently agreed to a $2.5B deal to stream MLS and has been showing the MLB Friday night games since early 2022. Amazon has the rights to several Champions League games and Netflix was supposedly interested in F1 rights (before publicly stating that they see no profits in live sport yet.)
We can expect the main streaming services to compete for all available sports going forward. This will increase competition for the packages and ultimately drive up prices and see lots of money trickle down to the athletes and the clubs.
Looks like 2023 will be a profitable year for some.
🤖 Of course, no outlook for 2023 would be complete without mentioning AI. But why write about something when you can ask ChatGPT to write it for you…
It is difficult to predict exactly how artificial intelligence will change sports in 2023, as it is dependent on many factors such as the rate of technological advancement and the willingness of sports organizations to adopt new technologies. However, some possible ways that artificial intelligence could impact sports in the near future include:
Improving player performance: AI could be used to analyze player data and provide personalized training recommendations to improve physical fitness and technique.
Analyzing game footage: AI could be used to analyze game footage and provide coaches with insights on team and player performance, including areas for improvement and potential strategies.
Enhancing the fan experience: AI could be used to create more immersive and personalized experiences for fans, such as virtual reality broadcasts of games or personalized highlight reels.
Facilitating better decision-making: AI could be used to assist with decision-making in sports, such as helping coaches choose the best players for a lineup or assisting officials with calls on the field.
While the above was written by an AI developed by Elon Musk, it’s actually telling the truth. We doubled checked its work and these are all areas where AI can help develop sports over the coming year.
Liverpool have already employed AI to improve football tactics, Getafe are using it to prevent player injuries and FIFA has released an app that offers fans an in-game augmented reality experience.
If are interested to learn more about the potential of AI in sports, check out our video where we explain why Ronaldo could soon be replaced by a robot:
Before we sign off, apologies to fans of the Washington Commanders. Last week we referred to your team as the Washington Raiders…clearly, we have spent too long dreaming about going to Las Vegas and got mixed up.