Most Innovative

Teams

Our Innovation Score Methodology

  • Revenue diversification means that sports properties are able to go beyond ticketing, concessions, media rights, and traditional sponsorship categories to drive fandom. Some of those metrics include: ownership models, mixed-use development venues, multilingual social media capabilities, sports betting partnerships, owned OTT channels, association with a women’s team, and more.

    We track how teams are broadening fan scope and driving revenue through alternative channels.

  • The category of technology enablement is about analyzing specific Fluid Fan behaviors through technologies. In order to empower Fluid Fandom, teams must engage on many platforms to attract, maintain, and fulfill the attention of their viewers. Fluid Fans are open to change, empowered to choose, and continuously evolving. Teams that understand how to use technology to enable the ten core behaviors—Access, Bet, Co-Watch, Connect, Create, Learn, Listen, Own/Buy, Participate, and Show Up/Go—are innovative.

    We track the strength of association between teams and technologies associated with fan behaviors across the most meaningful and important public data sources.

  • The category of organizational agility is about staffing for the future, leveraging new skill sets, and looking to other industries for talent. The teams who are most innovative are able to invest in talent, leverage data, learn from adjacent industries, and launch new ventures. Some of those metrics include: Accelerator Programs, Business Intelligence and Analytics Groups, D/E/I Initiatives, Social Justice Initiatives, Internal Staffing Structure, Talent Development, and more.

    We track how team front offices are organized and staffed, and how they incorporate data and business intelligence into the operations.

  • We continuously collect multiple streams of publicly available data on teams, from press releases, news reports, team websites, LinkedIn, and other freely available sources aggregating and algorithmically processing that data into three discrete metrics.

View more reports:

Most Innovative Sponsors