An independent research and advisory firm decoding how fans, technology, media and capital are disrupting and reshaping the business of sports.

The global sports landscape—particularly in the United States—is undergoing an unprecedented wave of disruption. Huge changes are reshaping long-standing business models, introducing uncertainty, and creating the potential for backlash among players, owners, advertisers, and fans.

Betting and prediction markets are now embedded across nearly every aspect of sports. As betting expands to encompass every moment of a game, the audience is increasing but questions arise about the impact of betting on trust and the perceived integrity of competition. At the same time, structural changes in college athletics—including payment of student-athletes for name, image, and likeness (NIL) rights, the wide-open transfer portal, and large deficits for athletic departments—are redefining the foundation of college sports. These changes bring rising costs for institutions and growing uncertainty for fans, raising the prospect that college sports will look fundamentally different from their historical form, and may be unsustainable for most colleges.

New ownership and financing models, including private equity, are entering both professional and collegiate sports. Meanwhile, artificial intelligence is poised to transform the industry—from performance analytics to officiating. As technologies evolve, fundamental questions emerge: Should sports pursue “perfect” decision-making through automation, or preserve the human element that has long defined competition?

Rarely has the sports industry faced this magnitude of change from so many directions simultaneously. These shifts are likely to be experienced differently across generations, with younger fans often more adaptable, while older fans may feel a deeper sense of disruption tied to tradition and legacy.

Understanding which innovations and disruptions deepen fan engagement, media consumption, team and league operations and value—and which erode them—will take time. During this transitional period, confusion and frustration are inevitable across stakeholders.

The Center for Sports Intelligence (CSI) was established to bring clarity to this evolving landscape. Through rigorous data collection and analysis, CSI tracks attitudes, behaviors, and emerging trends across fans, media, teams, leagues, players and investors—replacing uncertainty with evidence and insight.

As a result, CSI can provide stakeholders across the sports landscape with actionable perspectives on how to meet the challenges of the present, and prepare to thrive in the emerging sports world of the future.