How New Sports Formats are Shaping the Future of the Industry
The format of traditional sports such as football, rugby, and cricket may not remain identical as we know them today, considering the rapid evolution of the sports industry. This transformation is driven by external factors like new technologies and changing consumer behaviors, which have led to the development of innovative content formats, experiences, and events. From Esports to virtual reality, social media, and direct-to-consumer offerings, sports organizations are actively experimenting with novel ways to engage fans and create additional revenue streams. Consequently, their events and competitions have taken center stage in this evolution. To stay relevant, attractive, and commercially viable, established rights holders, often pushed by new entrants or threats of breakaway competitions, have modified sports formats. New sports formats have emerged in recent years, often played in urban areas and designed to appeal to a wider audience by being shorter and more fast-paced. Sports like 5-a-side football or 3v3 basketball are gaining prominence as they reinforce the sports' footprint while creating new business opportunities. These emerging formats play a pivotal role in shaping the future of the sports industry. However, it is worth noting that while some of these remodelled formats have experienced significant growth in commercial value, their appeal to fans may vary. This article aims to examine the impact of these two factors, the evolution of traditional sports formats, and their importance in driving the future of the sports industry.
New Formats in Sports: History and Recent Examples
Evolution of Sports Events and formats over the years.
Sports events and formats have always evolved and adapted to changing times, reflecting their respective eras' cultural, technological, and societal changes. The eldest sport event leads by example: the Olympic Games has integrated many new sports to keep up with changing times. Of course, breakdancing and snowboarding weren’t part of the show in 1896. Similarly, the FIFA World Cup was created in 1930 to replace the Summer Olympic tournament. Since the first edition, this competition has seen several changes to its format, including the number of participants and new rounds and stages, because its popularity increased through the years. More recently, in the mid-20th century, television greatly impacted sports events and formats. It led to the growth of sports as a mass media entertainment, significantly driving the development of new formats and experiences while developing new revenue for rights holders and event organisers. And nowadays, this is still more than relevant in our ever-changing digital world. Innovation and experimentation are key drivers of the sports formats revolution, translated into the extension of competition or the creation of new ones.
Of course, this isn’t always a guarantee, and sometimes it fails to win unanimous support, as commercial interests clash with fans’ interests or traditions.. This was the case in 2021 with the Super League project. When Florentino Perez claimed/said that the Super League would combat the fading interest levels in the sport amongst the youth seemed to be correct for the younger audiences, the competition suffered great resistance from older generations and many commentators. as it would incorporate more competitive games in a season. More recently, the launch of LIV Golf, an alternative to the traditional PGA Tour has also received major backlash from golf’s faithful fanbase. Whether successful or not, there have been a lot of recent initiatives to make sports evolve.
5 Recent Sports Formats that are Changing the Game
Basketball: 3v3 Basketball
We believe this is the most outstanding example of sport evolving with its time. Though playing basketball with fewer players has been around for many years, the FIBA officially introduced 3x3 basketball in 2007 and launched the FIBA 3x3 World Tour in 2012. Since then, FIBA has promoted 3v3 through World Championships (men and women), and it became an Olympic sport in 2021 in Tokyo, making it a great example of an incumbent rights holder adapting to the changing needs of fans and embracing change. The creation of private leagues who adapt the format of a sport to ensure its attractiveness, illustrates the power of this new, more modern discipline: Co-founded in 2017 by rapper Ice Cube and Jeff Kwatinetz, BIG3 is a basketball league mainly starring former NBA players. RedBull also launched RedBull 3X, a tournament across the U.S. in partnership with Basketball USA.
Tennis: Ultimate Tennis Showdown & Laver Cup (UTS)
UTS Tennis League was created in 2020, during the pandemic, by Patrick Mouratoglou. The French coach aimed to bring a fresh and innovative approach to attract a new and young audience, as Tennis is quite an ageing sport. Its breeding ground is Mouratoglou Tennis Academy, which operates in Southeastern France, but the league features a group of professional players who compete against each other in a series of matches and tournaments. The 2023 formula will showcase a mini-championship in four legs, dispatched between the U.S., Europe, and the Middle East. As for any sports, widespread media coverage and broadcasting deals are essential for its global expansion. But the four first editions were showcased in 100+ countries, gathering over 1,7 million fans on Social Media. Rather promising. Similarly, in 2017, Roger Federer's management company, TEAM8, Brazilian businessman Jorge Paulo Lemann, and Tennis Australia partnered to create the Laver Cup, a tournament between Team Europe and Team World. The competition is made of 12 matches played over three days. Matches differ from conventional 3-set matches (10 points Tie-Break if one set all) to ensure that all matches conclude within a reasonable timeframe of approximately 2 hours. This tournament, innovative in its design and closely attached to the Federer Brand, bears the symbol of serving new and younger demographics. With the support of the ATP and some crucial broadcasting deals, Laver Cup is impacting the circuit while putting the traditional Davis Cup in the background.
Golf: LIV GOLF:
Launched in 2021 and owned by the Saudi Arabia Sports Investment Fund (SIF), the comparatively new league competed with the established PGA Tour until the two entities merged in 2023. Leveraging the frustrations that lived with the established PGA golfers, LIV Golf promises a golfer-centric competition by reducing the number of tournaments (and traveling), reshuffling the deck with dynamic marketing efforts to develop the competition. With some changes in the format (team system, shotgun starts, fewer rounds) and a strong appetite for innovative technology, LIV Golf focuses a lot on the fan experience, with various interactive features, including live statistics, 3D course maps, and virtual reality views of the action. Contradictory however, the competition is equally criticized for being too commercially driven and lacking tradition. This partnership between LIV and the PGA Tour signifies the prowess of sport and its valor in international politics. Sport has a clear reflection on society and countries and state backed unions recognize this. With the merger, Saudi Arabia now becomes co-owner of one of the world's major sports, strengthening its intent to become a regional or even global powerhouse and demonstrating the controversial role sports can play on the geopolitical agenda.
Cricket: T20 & T10
Cricket may not be the most popular sport in Europe, but it is fascinating to demonstrate how essential sports need to evolve. Cricket in its traditional format - Test Cricket, is renowned to be a very long and inaccessible sport. The England Cricket Board introduced Twenty20, a shortened and more dynamic version of the game, in the early 2000s. At that time, the sport was quickly recognised by the ICC. Twenty years later, T20 cricket has become the sport’s most popular format and the ‘growth engine’ for the sport's global development.
More recently, in 2017, the UAE-based Emirates Cricket Board (ECB) created the Abu Dhabi T10. The competition is an even shorter version of Crickets, aiming to go from 3 hours to only 1h30, the equivalent of a football match. This fast-paced and shortened version aims at making the sport more exciting for a broader audience. This new format is gaining popularity worldwide as some countries have embraced the new discipline. In March 2023, the only Indian sport-listed company Toyam Sports Limited announced the launch of a T10 Legends Cricket League with 6 Countries.
Formula One: F1 Sprint
Formula One is a sport that inherently faces many challenges to secure a sustainable business future, and has been innovative on many fronts to anticipate those challenges. Besides their sustainability agenda and new content formats like Drive to Survive, they have also tried to appeal to the audiences by testing new race formats. Introduced in 2021 by Formula One, the F1 Sprints are a recent and shorter format that happens alongside the traditional F1 season. The F1 Sprints are races lasting around 25-30 minutes and are designed to provide a fast-paced racing spectacle with a strong emphasis on attacking. In 2023, pilots will compete six times on Saturdays to earn points that will count on the championship. If the objective is to bring more action over the weekend (and not only on race day - Sunday), this new format has to evolve over the past 3 years to best fit with the entire program. The number of races has doubled this year; this may be a sign of good results; in any case, it shows the desire of F1 to continue in this direction.
What’s new in football?
Besides the Super League and UEFA's recent reforms of European competitions and the creation of the Nations League, football is not evolving much in its core sports format. Traditionally played 11v11 in 90 minutes, variations are quite limited at a professional level. The creation of futsal can be traced back to the 1930s in Uruguay and is the most advanced format, acknowledged institutionally, with competitions such as FIFA Futsal World Cup or EURO Futsal. We could also mention Beach-soccer or Jorkyball (2v2), which have international institutions affiliated with FIFA but remain isolated. On the other hand, 5-a-side initiatives like Neymar Jr’s Five andZidane 5 Club, are unlikely to gather great audiences and grow professionally as they are more informal and driven by operators or entrepreneurs.
LeCorner Podcast - LeFive
If not the 5-a-side, perhaps the 7-a-side?
In 2022, The Kosmos group, founded by ex-Barcelona footballer Gerard Piquè, launched the Kings League in Barcelona. Post their remodeled Davis Cup venture, this was the group’s second attempt at altering the format of a sport to draw large audiences abiding by overall entertainment as the fundamental offering for the viewers.
A smart mix between changes to the traditional format combined with an innovative content and distribution strategy promised greater engagement by new generations of fans. The first edition is generally perceived as a success with over 6 billion views on Tiktok and a sold-out final in Nou Camp. Now, the challenge will be to build a sustainable business model to further scale the competition, without losing sight of the raison d’être of the competition. And will the incumbent rights holders draw learnings from the success of King’s League to apply a more progressive approach with regards to innovating the game’s format?
As you can see, formats are evolving faster in the most popular sports worldwide. But why, though? What are the stakes behind these evolutions?
Why new sports formats? What do they bring?
Evolve with time & anticipate future trends.
Fans are always at the centre of sports, rights holders need to keep them engaged, especially new and younger audiences that will make the sports of tomorrow! New generations (GenZ and GenAlpha) are vital to keeping the sport alive over time and ensuring it remains a powerful generator of emotion and togetherness. And the thing is that these new generations consume sports differently than their elders. They have grown up in an era of rapidly evolving technology and are exposed to constant information through social media, instant messaging, and other digital platforms. This overwhelming amount of content to engage with impacts their ability to focus on a single task - or even on a distraction like consuming sports - for an extended period.
Moreover, they have shown interest in new sports (Esport to name only one), new formats of entertainment (online concerts, community video games, etc.) and new ways of interacting with sports properties (twitch channels, discord communities, Athlete-content consumption). Now, more than ever, sports has become part of the entertainment business. Sports rights holders have more often than not maintained a rigid stance on incorporating new formats. Modifications to pre-existing sports formats, if any, have been driven by new entrants willing to challenge the status quo. Rethinking how competition and formats are created today is essential to remain relevant and anticipate the future. New formats could be an important tool to generate more excitement and engagement around the sport.
Enhance Business Opportunities & Create New Revenue Streams
When new sports formats are created or existing ones are reshaped, it’s often because the right holder has identified business opportunities or a new entrant sees an opportunity to answer sports fans’ needs that haven’t been answered by the traditional players. Below, we have identified some traditional revenue sources and see how format changes can impact those.
Media Rights:
For incumbent rights holders, media rights are often one of their main revenue sources. Although many factors impact, negatively or positively, the media rights value of a sports competition or property, exploring new sports formats could allow rights holders to diversify their relationship with broadcasters and maybe use the new sports format to explore new forms of distribution channels. As new sports formats often bring a fresh and unique appeal to the sports landscape, they can attract new and diverse audiences and capture the attention of non-engaged viewers with traditional sports. This presents an opportunity for broadcasters to tap into new markets and expand their viewer base. Sail GP serves as a great example. Launched in 2019, they have been excelling at selling their media rights to premium broadcasters such as Sky in the UK, CBS in the US and Canal+ in France. Each year, they have grown their roster to make the competition even more important, generating more commercial opportunities while strategically selling their rights.
When we look at entirely new entrants like Kings League, their main focus at first will be to build an audience and reach. Primary revenue sources will be advertising, sponsorships and merchandising, not media rights. Afterwards, the challenge will be to capture the value they are creating through media rights as well, without losing the key drivers for their growth and avoiding alienation from their audience. Similar to King’s League’s, Overtime Inc in the US has built its audience (even before building its product) and only afterwards, in 2022, struck its first media rights deal with Amazon Prime for Overtime Elite.
Sponsorship & Partnerships:
As new sports formats are tailor-made for the younger generations' tastes, they will likely attract new fans, which is highly appealing to brands aiming to reach and engage with new market segments. Sponsoring new competitions and sports formats also enable brands to establish themselves as pioneers and trendsetters in the industry. By associating their brand with cutting-edge sports, sponsors can enhance their image as innovative and forward-thinking. There are significant opportunities for sponsors here as the potential for growth and increasing popularity is exponential. This can also be a smart way for sports properties to establish long-term partnerships, leveraging the rise of their new formats to expand their reach and create a new fandom culture. The energy drink RedBull has pioneered sponsoring and organising extreme sports events such as Red Bull Cliff Diving, Red Bull X-Fighters, and Red Bull Air Race. In India, the IPL has also attracted multiple brands to attach their names to the new T20 competition. Companies like Vivo, Pepsi, and Dream11 have secured lucrative deals.
Host City & Infrastructure:
New sports formats often offer venue flexibility, including sports halls, community centres or rooftops. This scalability allows creating of a wide range of business models, from informal drop-in sessions to competitive leagues and tournaments. When launching a new format, a new competition or a new tour, you need cities to host your events. As for the media and the sponsors, there are many reasons why some cities would position themselves as host cities for it. Hosting new sports formats and competitions can provide a significant economic boost (through tourism) and international exposure (through media coverage). It can also lead to developing new infrastructure with unique requirements involving business opportunities in building, designing and re-purposing the venues. Overall, new formats in sports are an important building block in a sports organisation's strategy as it enables it to engage new generations of fans, remain competitive in a rapidly changing environment and generate business opportunities crucial to its long-term development. While the introduction of new formats in sports can bring many benefits, potential risks and challenges are also involved. Teams and leagues must carefully assess the potential impact of each new format before introducing them to ensure long-term success and minimise possible negative consequences. It’s not always easy for new formats to gain initial traction and compete with established formats: fans or players may not embrace those formats, they may lack tradition and history, and it could lead to poor attendance at events. All those possibilities have to be anticipated.
Funding New Sports Formats
An intriguing thing to note is how these new sports formats are being shaped and the role of private funding often involved in ensuring these new formats can scale. In the examples we showcased above, investment and private equity companies are never too far from it; in some cases, they are directly involved or at the project's origin. The Saudi Arabia Sports Investment Fund owns LIV Golf, Abu Dhabi T10 is operated by Ten Sports Management, backed by Mulk International, a multinational conglomerate with diversified business interests in construction, energy, etc. UTS was created by a private company owned by Patrick Moratoglou and Alex Popyrin. This shouldn’t be a surprise, as new entrants face the enormous challenge of taking on existing structures; they require resources to grow their new sport or competition rapidly.
As you have seen, these new sports formats have the potential to shape and disrupt our industry's future. From 5-a-side football and 3v3 basketball to Ultimate Tennis Showdown and T10 cricket, these new formats offer shorter, fast-paced experiences that cater to younger generations' preferences while opening up new revenue streams and business opportunities.
For existing rights owners, it's about experimenting and innovating to stay relevant and keep engagement across the different generations of fans. It’s about disrupting your business model to avoid being disrupted by others. This requires vision, knowledge and a good amount of courage to balance innovation and staying true to your traditions. The challenges and opportunities for new entrants are equally big, as they will need to build an audience and scale rapidly to grow from niche sports to established challengers with a sustainable business model.
Introducing new sports formats allows sports to evolve, appealing to audiences with shorter attention spans and a constant stream of information, creating new revenue streams. Shorter formats make sports more viable for broadcasting, sponsorship, and monetization opportunities. However, this progress won’t come without risks and challenges. Traditionalists may resist change - at least at first - leading to poor attendance and initial financial losses. However, significant infrastructure changes may also be required, adding to the cost and complexity of implementing new formats. At LaSource, we are constantly navigating the sports ecosystem and staying on top of trends across data, innovation and new technologies to enable you and your business to anticipate the future and grow your business in accordance with the present landscape.