AI is shaking up sports such as rugby, football and cricket

Since then there has been no turning back. The team won the 2022 Premiership, top of the table among 13 other teams, thanks to AI tools created by London-based sports data company Prospect and its subsidiary Oval.

Similar successes in cricket, football and other sports point to the power of AI in shaking up sport as we know it.

The technology has numerous applications, including helping clubs search for players, analyze their performances and plan tactics against opponents in ways previously considered too complex. It also opens up new opportunities for fans and teams to connect with each other, tapping into the ever-growing interest in sports.

AI offers new opportunities for sports properties to commercialize their fan and athlete data, deepening insight into their customers and stakeholders and making their brand more attractive to investors, says Motasem El Bawab, the chief information officer at Barcelona-based consultancy N3XT Sports, narrated Fortune.

The implication? The influence of AI on fan interest, team performance and overall competitiveness in sports can increase the value of sports clubs.

According to German Bank analysts, sports mergers, acquisitions and investment deals have increased eightfold in just four years to approximately $37 billion. Sports have attracted a lot of money, as we can see with Saudi Arabia interest in football when it paid Cristiano Ronaldo millions of dollars, making him the highest-paid athlete ever. Interestingly, the timing overlaps exactly with when interest rates shot up in response to high inflation, pushing back dealmaking in other sectors.

AI is one of the reasons why sports clubs have emerged victorious, the bank said in a note last week. This also means that it is up to sports teams to find the best data tools and use them more efficiently to stay ahead of the competition.

The naysayers argue that sports statistics will be a zero-sum game once every team has them. We believe the opposite, banking analysts Luke Templeman and Galina Pozdnyakova wrote in a note last week. We argue that the proliferation of advanced sports data analytics will level the playing field in leagues dominated by a small number of teams.

How does AI help make the big bucks?

There is a lot to consider when valuing sports clubs. Aside from financial metrics like winnings, team levels, who plays for them, and their track record also matter.

Now that teams have AI tools, there are countless opportunities to do what they do, and do it better, says El Bawab. He gave the example of how better performance and management strategies can directly increase ticket and merchandise sales.

All of these factors can significantly increase a sports club's valuation by demonstrating the potential for higher, more sustainable revenues, he said.

Given everything that depends on such predictions, robust data is critical. FC Barcelona, ​​for example, uses footage from previous football matches to gauge the opponent's behavioral patterns and draw up game plans based on that. The England women's cricket team has partnered with Prospect to use AI to pick the right players for different opponents by simulating mock matches under thousands of scenarios.

For the most ambitious and innovative teams, there's now an exciting opportunity to leverage it all [computing power and modeling tech] and dare to do things a little differently, says Jack Tozer, co-founder of Prospects Fortune. Teams that can use AI better than others will undoubtedly benefit from this.

Mark Lillie, partner at Deloitte and leader in the UK sports industry, said Fortune that while sports organizations are still preparing to increase investment in AI and data, the technology is likely to play a major role soon enough.

As AI becomes a standard tool for competitive advantage, teams with strong AI capabilities and associated benefits could become more attractive investments, potentially driving up valuations, Lillie said, cautioning that the AI ​​won't solve every problem even if it is very powerful .

For sports personnel who are skeptical about how AI does their job, Lillie says human expertise, intuition and leadership will still be crucial to success.

Creating more impact among sports fans

No matter the sport, fans are the lifeblood of the industry. Their interest helps increase the popularity of various clubs and leagues, bringing legions of supporters to the stadiums and motivating players.

Even though fans have long been an important part of the sport, there is still a lack of engagement, says Ryan Beal, CEO of SentientSports Fortune.

You get a wave in a season where it's game day and a few days before the game this all builds up to the game and after the game this kind of thing tapers off, he said. When interest wanes, teams lose engagement with their fans, which presents a huge revenue generation opportunity that AI can help fulfill.

This could be in the form of new content based on fan preferences, allowing each person to interact with their team of choice in a personalized way. AI tools can also help teams like Manchester United communicate with a global fan base in their native language. Manchester United's turnover was a record high of 648.4 million ($805 million) by 2023, but there is potential to nearly double that number if it takes advantage of AI, Beal said.

Digital experiences that help grow fan bases could open up a whole new revenue stream for sports clubs, which have until now relied on ticket sales, sponsorships and TV rights to make money.

The shift to using AI is well underway, Deutsche Banks told Templeman Fortune that all sports teams are thinking about using AI, with the only difference being how they want to implement it.

As more examples emerge of established teams deferring to new tech tools, others will also adopt similar skills to keep up.

There are opportunities for data to help smaller teams become large teams [and] major teams to start monetizing their global fan bases, Beal said. So you either become a disruptor and everyone else catches up with you, or [you find] a new inefficiency that we must address to stay ahead, and that is what makes sport so exciting.