The Future of Sports Technology: Predictions from PEAK

What is the future of sports technology?

The future of sports technology is the shift from tools beside the business to AI that runs inside it. It plays out across ticketing, venue operations, officiating, athlete performance, fan engagement, and commercial strategy. Above all, the defining forces are autonomous AI agents, connected venues, and investment that treats sport as a serious asset class.

That was the throughline across the PEAK stages. The people building and funding this industry have moved past apps and dashboards. They talk now about agents that act, venues that think, officials assisted by machines, and capital betting the whole stack will compound. What follows are the shifts they expect to define the next few years.

The biggest shift: from apps to agents

The clearest signal from PEAK was that the interface itself is changing. On a ticketing panel, leaders argued the familiar app-and-website model is on its way out. In its place: AI that transacts on a fan’s behalf. One speaker said modern consumer web interfaces are heading toward obsolete. In fact, people are already buying through AI rather than browsing a site.

Aaron Holland predicted the first AI-native ticketing systems. Each would be designed one-to-one for a property, not forced into a one-size-fits-all platform. The logic is simple. For instance, the UFC, the Masters, and a college program want very different fan experiences. Generative tools finally let them build exactly that. The shopping surface then shrinks to what a buyer actually needs: price, location, and the benefits attached to the seat.

The more striking prediction went a step further. Fans will stop transacting at all. Instead, their agents will do it for them.

“You’re going to be talking to your fan’s agent, not your fan. The fan’s agent and the ticketing agent will negotiate the sale and transact, without either side having a human conversation.”

Donny White, Satisfi Labs

If that sounds distant, the speakers framed it in months, not years. A recurring joke across sessions: a five-year forecast is now almost impossible. Teams plan in three-to-six-month cycles instead.

AI moves from beside the business to inside it

A second theme: AI is moving from a helper bolted onto existing software. Increasingly it becomes the layer the business runs on. Edward Khoury of Jump described this as a change in where the intelligence sits.

“This is not AI sitting next to your systems. This is AI operating inside your business.”

Edward Khoury, Jump

The practical version is the rise of discrete, task-specific agents. For example, one operator described running several at once: guest services, ticketing, fan experience, and food and beverage. He manages them much like staff. They get objectives, run campaigns, and have their results measured. He can even bring them on or stand them down for specific campaigns. The framing was pointed. The goal is not to replace humans, but to do work humans cannot do at that speed.

Microsoft’s Sebastian Lancestremere placed this in a broader arc. Copilots, he argued, are becoming the user interface of AI. The next stage is agents interacting with other agents to drive business. Khoury’s warning was about timing. The advantage compounds. As a result, teams that move early get cleaner data and faster execution. By contrast, teams that wait end up on an entirely different curve.

AI moves onto the field: officiating and integrity

AI is also moving onto the field of play, into the officiating and integrity of the game. Leigh Maxwell of Hawk-Eye made that case at PEAK. His company has spent 25 years on it. It started as a broadcast tool in cricket, before officials judged it accurate enough to call live decisions. Today Hawk-Eye works across more than 30 sports and around 100,000 events a year.

The frontier now is what Maxwell calls simulation-based probability. Hawk-Eye’s Games Engine, built with Cambridge University’s machine-learning department, trains on live tracking data. It learns how a team plays, its tendencies, and each player’s habits. From there it can simulate forward play and estimate likely outcomes. Maxwell’s framing is telling. The volume of data in sport has not really changed. What has changed is how AI lets people draw insight from it.

That same capability is reshaping the broadcast. Sebastian Lancestremere pointed to LaLiga, which now surfaces live goal probability on replays. A chance rated below 5% that finds the net creates instant drama. That number can then be sold through the league’s own channels, its broadcasters, and its sponsors. The lesson is consistent. The data was always there. AI is what turns it into officiating accuracy, fan engagement, and new commercial inventory at once. The same tracking data can even power alternate broadcasts. Maxwell noted that a sister company can re-skin live play for new audiences, rendering a real game as animated characters for younger viewers. The pipe that calls a close decision also builds a second, very different show.

AI is democratizing athlete performance, with a catch

For athletes, the shift is about access. Tools once reserved for elite teams are reaching every level of sport. Jason Syversen of SportsVisio described turning a single phone camera into a full analytics package. What used to be a $50,000 system can now run on a smartphone at a middle-school or rec-league game. It generates box scores and player insight from video alone. The point is not only elite gains. It is surfacing the player who quietly led the game in rebounds or assists, and letting any family follow along. He drew a parallel to DARPA technology like GPS and drones. Each moved from a multimillion-dollar military tool to a cheap consumer device. AI, he argued, is on the same path.

But his deeper point was a warning against hype. A flashy demo is easy. Production-grade computer vision is not. Getting from a 65% accurate demo to 98 or 99% accuracy is, in his word, a chasm. His company raised more than $9 million, and most of it went into unglamorous work. That meant annotating tens of thousands of games, and handling many camera angles, whistles, poor lighting, and ponytails that hide jersey numbers.

It is a useful corrective to the agentic optimism elsewhere. The demo is cheap. The reliability is expensive. And reliability, not the demo, is what actually ships.

The connected-venue and data layer keeps compounding

None of this works without a connected-venue and data foundation underneath it. It is the kind of smart stadium build that defines our smart venues coverage. Lancestremere expects the cost of a stadium digital twin to fall sharply. In turn, that capability moves from flagship venues toward the wider market.

The bigger point: AI is only as good as the data feeding it. The recurring obstacle operators named was siloed systems. Data sits trapped in tools that do not talk to each other. Julia Martensen of ServiceNow argued the goal is a single connected experience. A unified fan profile, CRM, and media would feed one clean source of truth. Without it, the agents have nothing reliable to act on. With it, personalization and new revenue become possible at scale.

Media, creators, and streaming redraw the broadcast

Meanwhile, the future of how fans watch was a theme in its own right. Panelists predicted the biggest events move decisively to streaming, the Super Bowl and the World Series among them. Audiences increasingly log in through a single portal rather than flipping channels.

The other shift is who owns the reaction. Creators, the argument went, increasingly own the culture around the game. That is the live reaction and commentary rights holders now want inside their ecosystems. Major media-rights renewals are on the horizon. So expect leagues to build creator reaction into the broadcast itself, not leave it on the open internet. The race is to keep both the game and the conversation around it inside one experience.

Capital is betting on the whole stack

Underwriting all of this is a flood of money. Across PEAK’s investment sessions, the recurring message was that sport has changed category. Mohit Pareek described it moving from a shiny trophy asset to a serious, institutional-grade asset class. The market is consolidating fast and professionalizing quickly.

Tax adviser Lucy Lee works with family offices and institutional investors. She explained why the capital keeps coming.

“Sports hits the trifecta. It is scarce, it is stable, and it is scalable.”

Lucy Lee, Citrin Cooperman

Her point: supply is fixed, since there are only so many teams. Demand is recession-resistant. Live-rights and streaming deals turn franchises into reliable annuity streams. The growth, several noted, is concentrating at the expanding edges of the ecosystem: women’s sports, data and media platforms, and the real estate around venues. Still, several investors cautioned that sport is a long game. Cultural value takes a decade or more to mature, not a quick flip. But the direction is clear. Consolidation is accelerating, with operators pushing to simplify bloated vendor stacks. Billions in new growth capital are chasing businesses that can scale across the ecosystem.

What will not change

For all the talk of agents and automation, the most grounded prediction was about what stays the same. Leaders in youth sports made the case that the underlying product is a constant. After all, people will always care about their kids’ games. Live events remain a kind of ground truth no model replaces.

The same realism showed up on the AI side. The goal described, repeatedly, was augmentation rather than replacement. As the performance engineers warned, the demo is the easy part, and reliability is hard-won. Trust is the other constant. Fans and athletes have to believe the officiating call, the underlying data, and the way their information is used. Several speakers admitted they could be wrong about the specifics. That humility is itself a useful forecast. The tools will keep changing on a six-month cycle. But the job stays the same: connecting real fans to the sport they love, through faster and more personal means.

Frequently asked questions

What is the future of sports technology?

The next phase moves from software that assists to AI that acts. Expect autonomous AI agents handling tasks like ticketing and fan service. Venues grow more connected, built on digital twins. And investment increasingly treats sport as an institutional-grade asset class.

What is agentic AI in sports?

Agentic AI refers to autonomous software agents that carry out tasks rather than just answer questions. In sport, that includes ticketing, guest-service, and fan-experience agents. They run campaigns and even negotiate transactions, increasingly agent-to-agent, with limited human input.

How is AI used in sports officiating?

Companies such as Hawk-Eye use computer vision and tracking data to support officiating across more than 30 sports. Newer systems add simulation-based probability, training on live data to model how teams and players behave and to estimate likely outcomes in real time.

How is AI changing athlete performance analysis?

AI and computer vision can turn a single phone camera into an analytics package, generating box scores and player insight from video. Tools once reserved for elite teams now reach school and rec-league level, though production-grade accuracy stays hard and expensive to build.

Will AI replace jobs in sports?

Leaders at PEAK framed it as augmentation, not replacement. The aim is to automate slow, manual work so staff can focus on higher-value tasks. AI agents are managed much like team members, through objectives and measurable campaigns.

How is technology changing sports ticketing?

Ticketing is moving toward AI-native systems, built one-to-one for each property. It is also shifting to agent-led purchases. A fan’s AI agent negotiates and transacts with the venue’s agent. As a result, several leaders expect the traditional app-and-website model to fade.

Why is so much money flowing into sports technology?

Investors describe sport as scarce, stable, and scalable. Team supply is limited, demand resists recessions, and rights and streaming deals create reliable revenue. As a result, sport has shifted from a trophy asset into a fast-consolidating, institutional-grade asset class.

What is the biggest sports technology trend right now?

The shift from apps to AI agents. Across venues, ticketing, fan engagement, and commercial operations, the pattern is the same. The defining trend is autonomous agents that act inside the business, not tools sitting alongside it.