You wouldn’t build a 60,000 seat stadium on a foundation of sand. Yet, under the hood of many sports organisations sophisticated AI ambitions rest on crumbling legacy stacks. Fixing the fundamentals isn’t just IT housekeeping, it’s a primary value driver.

Once addressed, and to extend the analogy, proprietary data and models is your home advantage. These themes are at the centre of our two-part series with Unofficial Partner on the application of AI in sport.  In it, our Head of TFG Labs Andy Shora talks about how “every organisation that’s building with AI tools is realising that they need to get their house in order.”

This principle applies to all organisations across sports, and is a particular challenge in the attention economy. Earning the right to a fan’s attention through telling compelling stories is increasingly challenging using the traditional model of human editorial manually interfacing with legacy tech infrastructure.