By Jordi Ferré
The role of innovation in sport has matured during recent years, with sports organizations exploring ways to be more competitive and improve their overall performance. These include opportunities for generating new revenue streams and business growth, while optimizing their operational processes to enhance organizational efficiency or retaining talent.
In response, many top-flight leagues and teams are hiring their very own innovation specialists. Among the industry’s benchmarks, almost two-thirds (63.3 percent) of National Basketball Association (NBA) franchises hire an innovation lead, according to research conducted by N3XT Sports. By comparison, fewer than two in five Bundesliga clubs (38.9 percent), National Football League (NFL) franchises (35.5 percent) and LaLiga clubs (35 percent) hire innovation experts, with many others following suit.
Outside Europe’s and North America’s most popular elite clubs and franchises, established sports organizers are also hiring innovation leads, including FIFA, the International Olympic Committee (IOC), and the Formula 1 motorsport championship. Meanwhile, the golf venture TMRW Sports, co-founded by golfing icons Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy, are among emerging properties building their brand’s identity through innovation.
Whereas the sector understands the importance of innovation, it is one thing bringing aboard dedicated innovation personnel to solve the concept of “innovation” within an organization, as many do. It’s another entirely for them to create a strategy, process, culture and infrastructure which fully embraces innovation across the business and promotes sustainable growth.
Without the buy-in of the whole organization, nor the vehicles to source, trial, and scale innovative solutions for new technologies, services, and business models, many organizations lose patience with the concept quickly when they don’t see immediate results – highlighting their lack of an innovation strategy, culture, or process. This is compounded by the fact that, while the vast majority of sports organizations are innovating around new fan experiences and sport performance analytics into their ecosystems, according to N3XT Sports research, as few as 28 percent of top-flight teams and competition organizers have dedicated personnel who are responsible for the organization’s innovation needs, while fewer own an innovation unit.
By way of example, albeit European club football sits at the forefront of sports innovation, only a third of Europe’s most digitally mature clubs invest in a dedicated innovation department and is a much smaller percentage across the professional football ecosystem. The problem, more often than not, isn’t that an organization is failing to recognize the need to innovate, but simply that it has yet to step back to consider why they want to innovate in the first place, what challenges they want to overcome, and the best option for bringing new solutions (leveraging technologies) into the mix.
There are many opportunities for sports organizations to embrace innovation. This underscores the importance of establishing a dedicated innovation department, which requires three key steps to succeed. Whether your organization is considering launching its first innovation initiative or aspires to build a fully integrated innovation platform within a portfolio of initiatives, it must: (1) define innovation’s role in their organization; (2) align its innovation processes with its organizational needs; and (3) embed an organizational structure for sustainable innovation.
Step 1: Defining innovation’s role in a sports organization
Every sports organization considering an innovation structure must first ask itself a set of fundamental questions: Why do we need to innovate, and how does it fit within our overall strategy? What exactly will we do, what resources will we commit, and how will success be measured? How will successful pilots or initiatives be scaled and embedded into the core organization? These are the critical reflections that top management must address before committing to building an innovation unit, as they determine whether innovation will be a strategic growth engine or a costly, disconnected experiment.
Defining innovation’s role in the organization’s business objectives within a well-structured strategy is the first vital step for building an effective and company-efficient innovation structure. The act of defining the “priorities and processes” will make or break a successful innovation program, helping decision-makers to:
-
- Identify areas where improvement is needed, and prioritize and define key outcomes;
- Understanding how different innovation processes can support these priorities;
- Outline key stages for identifying, testing, adopting and scaling new solutions.
In the summer of 2021, the NBA rolled out NBA Launchpad, the league’s research and development (R&D) vehicle designed to source and pilot new and emerging technologies. The initiative, engineered to enhance areas of the company which the NBA’s leadership identify as business priorities, is among a host of initiatives – built within a clear innovation strategy – which is turning North America’s preeminent men’s basketball competition not only into a testbed for innovation but a benchmark for what a true sports innovation infrastructure entails.
Over time, the NBA’s innovation strategy has evolved from a single initiative into a fully integrated platform. By seamlessly aligning multiple vehicles and processes with its strategic goals, the NBA has built a system that can identify and source new technologies, rigorously test and validate them, and ultimately deploy them at scale. This structured approach is a major reason why the NBA is widely regarded as one of the most innovative sports competitions in the world.
The platform brings together initiatives such as the NBA Launchpad, the NBA Basketball Tech Expo, and development leagues like the Summer League and G-League, alongside the flagship NBA competition itself, all within one overarching strategy. This integrated model enables ventures to mature progressively, from initial sourcing to full deployment, supported by a well-designed infrastructure and process. Guided by top management’s vision and fueled by enablers such as NBA equity to drive growth, the league has successfully transitioned from isolated innovation projects to a holistic, organization-wide platform.
As a result, the NBA has delivered multiple high-impact outcomes: empowering teams and athletes with advanced health and wellbeing solutions, enhancing the fan experience, generating new revenue streams, and investing in startups as both an early-stage funder and venture client—ultimately strengthening and diversifying its equity portfolio.
Step 2: Designing an innovation process aligned with organizational needs
Even when sports organizations commit to innovation, they often encounter a common challenge: the willingness to adopt new technologies may be there, but the necessary structures, frameworks, or budget to deliver on that ambition are often missing. This gap creates uncertainty, posing questions like: should the organization run a hackathon, launch a startup competition, or pursue another mechanism entirely? Without clarity, initiatives risk becoming isolated experiments rather than scalable solutions.
This is why understanding both the challenges of innovation and the processes required to innovate effectively becomes the second key milestone on any sports organization’s innovation journey. Overcoming this barrier requires identifying and implementing mechanisms that are not only innovative but also realistic and aligned with the organization’s goals, resources, and culture. To achieve this, sports properties can explore a variety of vehicles and approaches, each tailored to their specific needs and context. Examples include:
-
- Technology-startup campaigns which help organizations nurture collaboration with entrepreneurs. For example, the UEFA Innovation Hub (UIH) launched the annual UEFA Champions Innovate program during the 2023/24 season, a groundbreaking initiative designed in collaboration with N3XT Sports. The program challenges entrepreneurs with improving the social and environmental impact of the men’s UEFA Champions League Final (UCLF) and leaving a lasting legacy in the host city. Furthermore, the program has been designed with clear outcomes for all parties, making it highly successful and engaging. UEFA provides a strong host city legacy project through the program, commercial partners offer new solutions with the potential to be adopted and deliver high social and environmental impact, and startups benefit from well-paid pilot cases with strong PR dissemination and the capacity to scale up if successful.
- A focus on performance-led innovation which unlocks growth opportunities company-wide. In 2021, N3XT Sports collaborated on the conceptualization and implementation of Italian football club Parma Calcio’s very own Performance and Analytics (P&A) Department, which has embedded new ways for the organization to innovate on and off the field of play. As well as improvements to its player management, the initiative serves the development of strategic technology partnerships across the sports sector, while highlighting investment opportunities that broaden the club’s approach to innovation.
-
- Digital transformation projects which lay the groundwork for an organization’s “innovation” activities. During the Covid pandemic, N3XT Sports set up a league-wide framework for EuroLeague Basketball teams to enhance digital capabilities across their business operations and fan engagement. By exploring areas where clubs can boost their operational efficiency and effectiveness, the league launched its very own Digital Transformation Fund (DTF) to allow clubs to tailor their respective innovation strategies and investment, and to engage a new generation of customers and technology partners.
To find out more on these topics, download our Football Innovation Report, which presents the different innovation mechanisms that are widely used throughout the sports industry.
Step 3: Embedding an organizational structure for sustainable innovation
Designing and launching an innovation unit, for most organizations, is considered a risk with no guaranteed return on innovation. This is why de-risking initiatives as early as possible and demonstrating tangible results is the most effective strategy to build momentum, secure continuous buy-in, and ensure long-term success. To overcome this barrier, it’s vitally important that an innovation strategy includes early-winning initiatives which demonstrate the visible, tangible impact innovation offers the sports organization. Managing expectations for these first initiatives is critical to generate excitement, build strong marketing and PR campaigns around them, and create momentum.
Measuring success through the concept of transversal return on innovation (ROI) is equally important, as innovation projects can generate multiple types of value – from business growth, technology development, and process efficiency to talent retention and organizational visibility. The focus should always be on showcasing this transversal impact. By combining a clear innovation strategy within a well-connected company structure, an innovation unit not only becomes more cost-efficient, but also a more sustainable enterprise. This effort turns “innovation” from a one-dimensional concept, which simply reacts to industry trends, into a sound investment.
For example, in 2022, N3XT Sports helped United World Wrestling (UWW) conceptualize, launch, and scale UWW+, a multi-tiered over-the-top (OTT) service, starting with a pilot to stream the UWW World Championships. The pilot proved so successful that it was subsequently scaled for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games and deployed across multiple events, driving measurable audience growth and increased engagement. Beyond the service itself, the initiative was embedded into UWW’s organizational structure, integrating open innovation practices and expanding the internal team involved, from digital and IT to commercial, ensuring long-term sustainability. Furthermore, the service generated new revenue streams through a subscription model and unlocked additional commercial opportunities.
To learn more, see the UWW+ case study: from concept to successful launch.
Nurturing an innovation culture will help align objectives
While sourcing and then piloting new technologies is a challenge at the outset, the biggest barrier to innovation isn’t necessarily finding the right gateway for technology companies to become sports clients, but the challenge of building an innovation unit that works seamlessly with departments and enables technological solutions to be implemented at scale.
This point is highlighted well by UIH manager Charles Frémont, who explains that the role of innovation in sports properties is “not only about adopting and implementing new technologies but working on the [innovation] culture”, by integrating well-oiled innovation processes and methodologies into UEFA’s and its stakeholders’ daily operations. An innovation unit needs to connect every department, so to extract knowledge and expertise across the entire organization and to have the greatest impact.
When implementing an innovation unit, organizations at the forefront of this movement are often the first to move the needle on technological trends across the industry, with both regional and global competition organizers also recognizing the need for hiring “innovation” personnel and teams within their workforce. Organizations need clear responsibilities for decision-making and well-defined processes for identifying, implementing, and scaling technology. This requires a clear organizational objective for innovation, ensuring that all stakeholders buy into the company’s overriding goals, so as to avoid fragmented efforts internally and ensure successful implementation and scalability.
Our team at N3XT Sports understands this intrinsically, ensuring that each of our clients beginning their own innovation journey takes a unique approach to their internal workforce development and considers the necessary strategy, structures and processes they require to innovate effectively. To find out more about how N3XT Sports can serve your organization, fill out the form below, and we’ll be in touch. Our goal is to drive the digitalization and modernization of the sports industry and our clients.
