6 Takeaways from the 2026 CAA World Congress of Sports
Cody Haynes - Senior Director of Business Development
What are the biggest trends reshaping sports business right now? We got our answer firsthand. I had the privilege of attending the 2026 CAA World Congress of Sports in Los Angeles alongside Angelina Lawton, Founder & CEO of DIGIDECK, and Christy Grady-Murray, our EVP of Business Development, and I’m still processing everything we heard, discussed, and debated in the hallways between sessions.
Held April 14–16 at the JW Marriott at L.A. LIVE, the World Congress is widely recognized as the largest and most prestigious sports business conference in North America. This year’s lineup said it all: NFL, AEG, Premier League, MLS, Netflix, Fanatics, FOX Sports, WWE, NBCUniversal, Disney, LA28, and more. But what struck the three of us most wasn’t the star power on stage. It was how consistent the underlying themes were. Across every keynote, every panel, and every side conversation over coffee, the same ideas kept surfacing.
Here are the six sports business trends that stood out most.
1. Sports, Media, and Entertainment Are Now One Growth Conversation
The short answer: Sports properties can no longer be valued on inventory alone. The most competitive organizations are connecting live events with year-round content, audience data, and commercial storytelling.
Walking into the opening sessions, it was immediately clear this wasn’t a traditional sports business conference. The programming didn’t treat media rights, content distribution, and fan engagement as separate tracks because the industry doesn’t anymore either.
Hearing from NFL and Premier League leaders, then pivoting to featured conversations with MLS Commissioner Don Garber, Netflix Chief Content Officer Bela Bajaria, FOX Sports CEO Eric Shanks, and WWE President Nick Khan, all in the same room, told the story on its own. The sports business of 2026 is increasingly defined by how well organizations connect live properties with year-round content, audience development, and commercial storytelling.
Another conference attendee put it well on the flight home: the value of a sports property can no longer be explained only through inventory. The strongest commercial narratives in 2026 tie together brand relevance, content reach, fan data, premium experiences, and measurable business outcomes. That is a more sophisticated sales story, and one that requires more agility than static collateral can support.
2. AI in Sports Is No Longer a Future Conversation, It's Happening Now
The short answer: At the 2026 World Congress, AI wasn’t a breakout session or a side topic. It surfaced in nearly every conversation, from how CMOs are approaching personalization, to how Fanatics is scaling its business, to how LA28 is building the infrastructure behind the world’s largest upcoming events.
This was one of the things that surprised me most. There was no single “AI in sports” panel on the official agenda and yet AI came up everywhere.
In the CMOs session featuring New Balance’s Chris Davis and Samsung’s Keena Grigsby, the conversation kept returning to how AI is changing the way brands communicate with fans at scale and how the pressure to personalize without losing brand consistency is one of the defining challenges for marketing leaders right now. Fanatics CEO Michael Rubin’s conversation touched on how technology and data are reshaping what a sports commerce and content business can look like end-to-end. And in the LA28 infrastructure session, the underlying message was clear: the connectivity and data architecture being built for the 2028 Olympics isn’t just about event logistics. It’s about enabling AI-powered fan experiences, activation tracking, and real-time engagement at a scale the industry has never seen.
For Christy, Angelina, and me, this thread connected directly to what we do every day at DIGIDECK. AI is moving from experimentation to infrastructure and the organizations that will win are the ones building the systems now to harness it in their sales and marketing motions.
3. The Creator Economy Has Moved from Experiment to Core Sports Marketing Strategy
The short answer: Creators are no longer a side channel for sports organizations. They are becoming a central part of how leagues and teams build audience reach, brand engagement, and commercial storytelling.
One of the clearest signals on the agenda was the growing strategic role of digital creators in sports marketing. Back-to-back sessions featured league executives alongside major creators and brand CMOs including NFL CMO Tim Ellis, Dhar Mann, Powerade’s Leah Macko, and creator Jesse “Jesser” Riedel. Christy and I were in the room for both, and the energy was unmistakable.
This was not a side conversation about influencer marketing. Creators are becoming central to how sports organizations build reach, relevance, and fan engagement, especially as audience attention fragments across platforms. Coming from my background running revenue teams in the NBA, the speed of this shift is striking. The playbook for reaching fans has fundamentally changed.
The organizations that win will be the ones that combine authenticity with structure, giving sales and marketing teams the ability to move quickly without sacrificing brand consistency. We kept returning to this tension in our own conversations throughout the week.
4. Sports Sponsorships Are Being Redefined Around Business Outcomes, Not Asset Packages
The short answer: In 2026, sponsors expect measurable ROI, not just logo placements. Revenue teams that can connect sponsorship to strategy, audience, and results will win the deals.
This was the theme I heard most consistently and it directly connects to the work we do at DIGIDECK every day.
Sessions on Fanatics’ innovation and expansion, transformational social impact partnerships, and deals designed to help athletes build their brands all pointed to the same shift: sports sponsorship is no longer just an asset package. It’s increasingly expected to generate real business impact across revenue, content, community, athlete brand development, and fan loyalty. The session featuring T-Mobile and SAP on brand-side transformative sponsorships made this crystal clear. These aren’t brands buying impressions. They’re building strategies.
That raises the bar for every commercial team in sports. Sellers are being asked to do more than present sponsorship menus. They need to articulate why a partnership matters, who it reaches, how it activates, and what success looks like. The more complex that environment becomes, the more important it is to present opportunities in a way that is personalized, visual, and easy for buyers to champion internally. That conversation validated much of what Angelina has been building toward since founding DIGIDECK.
5. Women's Sports Is Now a Core Commercial Growth Engine, Not an Emerging Trend
The short answer: The business conversation around women’s sports has matured from “should we invest?” to “how do we scale this?” Brands and leagues that treat it strategically, not symbolically, will lead the next era of growth.
This was the part of the conference that hit differently for all three of us. The business conversation around women’s sports has genuinely shifted.
Rather than framing women’s sports as an emerging opportunity, the 2026 World Congress agenda focused on audience growth, investment scale, valuation, visibility, and cultural relevance. The panel on the business of women’s sports featuring leaders from Angel City FC, USA Sports, PWHL, and Parity, and the featured conversation marking 30 years of the New York Liberty with Clara Wu Tsai (moderated by Kara Swisher) were standout moments. Angelina. a Forbes Top 30 Most Powerful Women in Sports honoree and a long-time advocate for women in sports business, was deep in these conversations all week.
The market is no longer asking whether women’s sports deserves attention. It’s asking how organizations can best invest, package, monetize, and grow it. For brands and commercial leaders, the opportunity is now strategic, not symbolic. The winners will be the ones who translate that momentum into clear partnership narratives and scalable go-to-market execution.
6. Major Events and Venue Infrastructure Are Becoming Sponsorship and Commercial Differentiators
The short answer: With LA28, the FIFA World Cup, and Super Bowl LXI on the horizon, infrastructure readiness is no longer just an operations topic. It directly shapes sponsorship activation, content capture, and premium fan experiences.
Los Angeles itself was a character at this conference. Sessions featuring leaders from AEG, the NBA, NBCUniversal, Disney, LAFC, and LA28 highlighted how major events, venue connectivity, and telecommunications infrastructure are shaping the next commercial era of sports business.
The LA28 blueprint session was particularly relevant, the work being done to scale venue connectivity across a decade of global events in Los Angeles isn’t just technical. It’s commercial infrastructure. Christy and I spent a lot of time discussing what this means for the revenue teams we work with, as the pressure to move faster and coordinate more stakeholders increases heading into a historic run of global events, the ability to align teams around a unified story becomes a genuine competitive advantage.
Infrastructure is no longer just an operations conversation. Connectivity, venue readiness, and integrated event planning all influence sponsorship activation, premium fan experiences, content capture, and audience engagement.
What the 2026 World Congress of Sports Means for Revenue Teams
Leaving Los Angeles, Angelina, Christy, and I kept circling back to the same observation: the commercial story in sports is getting more complex, faster than most organizations are ready for, and (not surprisingly) AI is at the core of the future of any sports enterprise.
Across every major theme at this year’s World Congress, sports media convergence, AI in sports business, creator strategy, outcome-based sponsorships, women’s sports investment, and infrastructure-driven activation, one question was constant: how do you turn that complexity into a clear, compelling story for buyers?
Buyers don’t just need to understand what they’re purchasing. They need to understand how it connects to their strategy, their audience, their brand, and their results. That’s why the ability to create personalized, polished, measurable sales experiences has never mattered more for sports revenue teams.
It’s not a nice-to-have. For modern commercial teams in sports, it’s how you compete.
Cody Haynes is Senior Director of Business Development at DIGIDECK by Sportsdigita. He brings over 15 years of front-office experience in professional sports, including leading revenue operations for ticket sales, suite sales, premium seating, and third-party events as Director of Ticket Sales for the NBA’s Houston Rockets, and earlier roles with the NHL’s Arizona Coyotes. Today he helps sports organizations and live entertainment brands tell their story and close bigger deals with DIGIDECK’s AI-powered presentation platform.