Does your tech expert have a seat at the table?
How can sport truly capitalise on new technologies if the people who understand them best aren't involved in the decisions?
Our Sports Leadership Benchmark is the leading source of insight into the state of the UK sports industry. We ask C-suite leaders across all sports to rate their business’s growth opportunities, biggest challenges, and financial outlook for the year ahead.
The 2025 edition launches in September, and we’ve already started analysing the candid feedback from leaders across the sector.
Here’s one standout finding:
In a digital-first world, that’s a huge disconnect.
Technology underpins almost every area of modern sport. From driving revenue and unlocking data to streamlining operations and boosting fan engagement – smart investment in tech can transform performance.
But without the right leaders at the table, it becomes guesswork.
We’ve all seen technology bundled into sponsorship deals without any real alignment to business goals or infrastructure. Solutions that sound good on paper but fail to integrate with existing systems.
And it’s not just about spending.
Only 50% of rights-holders have a proper, company-wide process for buying or implementing new technology.
That points to a deeper issue – a lack of strategic tech leadership.
A strong technology leader brings clarity, connects departments, and ensures decisions are future-proof. And for organisations where a full-time CTO isn’t realistic, CTO-as-a-Service (CTOaaS) is a flexible, cost-effective option.
For leaner businesses, this kind of support can be game-changing.
So, the question isn’t whether to invest in technology.
It’s whether you can afford not to invest in the people who make it deliver real value.
Is your tech leader in the room where decisions are made – or stuck on the sidelines?
We provide CTO-as-a-Service support that’s flexible, cost-effective and built to drive impact from day one.
If you’re exploring how strategic tech leadership could accelerate your growth, drop us a message. We’d love to learn more about your goals and see how we can help.
Good point Ben Wells Tech is in the management team at NFF, a forward looking association for many things, and a dedicated 1:1 meeting with the CEO every week. Our take is that Tech/Digital is a critical enabler for all the departments and therefore NFF itself to reach our goals. We're lucky that the CEO and rest of the management team agree.
Founder and CEO, ProDataStack, an AI-supported software that gives professional athletes control of and access to their data. Founder and CEO, Winners, CRM and data consultancy.
3moI remember writing a paper for a client some years ago - they asked me to write a layman's terms explanation to their group of CEOs that explains why tech should be viewed as an investment not a cost....
Sports Consultant | Specialising in Sports Market Transformation | Ex-FIFA & Salesforce | Board Advisory | AI-LLM
3moCould not agree more Ben Wells!! Just had another round of discussions with Football Executives who called this out explicitly. It wasn't lost of them that I was the last sport tech exec they engaged with before a series of choices were made that ultimately didn't work out and cost a fortune.
Product | NED | Startup Consultant & Founder | Loonshot/ Edge Case Innovator | St. Peter’s, York
3moAgreed, Ben Wells. The gap between digital at the core of sports rights holders plans and the status quo is as big as the gap between between current and next gen fan consumption.