4 Trailblazing Innovations in Sport

Sport's willingness to experiment continues to produce some genuinely novel ideas — here are four organisations pushing into new territory.

Fan-owned team in SailGP

Since its 2019 debut, SailGP has built the largest US sailing audience since 1992, and is now exploring a fan-owned team with a say over everything from athlete selection to livery colours — a rare experiment in decentralised sports governance.

MLS goes all-in on streaming

Rather than splitting rights across national and regional broadcasters, MLS signed an exclusive global streaming deal with Apple TV, timed with Lionel Messi's arrival in the league, avoiding the unpredictable regional sports network landscape entirely.

Facial recognition entry from the Phillies

The Phillies' MLB Go-Ahead Entry technology lets registered fans walk straight into the stadium via facial recognition, removing the friction of scanning tickets or fumbling with phone brightness at the gate.

The NFL's animated broadcast

"Funday Football," a fully animated Toy Story-themed simulcast of an NFL game, gave a new, younger audience an entry point into the sport — an early version of the strategy behind the league's later SpongeBob-themed Super Bowl broadcast.

Each of these ideas reflects the same underlying principle: understanding fans deeply enough to meet them somewhere genuinely new.