In December 2023, Shohei Ohtani’s $700m (€595) contract delivered an industry wake-up call. On the surface, it was a record-breaking baseball agreement. But beneath that headline, it was something else entirely. A signal to the sports industry that value is no longer determined solely by performance or pedigree. It is measured by presence, participation and platform. Ohtani’s deal wasn’t just what a team was willing to pay. It reflected what he already delivers: global pull and commercial gravity.
What made that number possible wasn’t just talent. It was all about infrastructure: brand power, audience loyalty, merchandise conversion, content reach and media magnetism. The numbers weren’t negotiated in a vacuum. They were supported by data, modelled by systems, and justified by impact.
This isn’t a one-off story. It’s the start of a structural shift. And it raises the most important question for anyone in the industry: What happens when athletes no longer need to argue their worth, but instead prove it with data?
Fierce competition in the entertainment economy
For years, sports have positioned themselves as the king of TV and the pinnacle of attention. Fans, sponsors and brands gravitate toward the stadium, the screen, the star. But today, screen time is no longer the exclusive territory of live broadcasts, and the competition doesn’t just come from rival clubs or global tournaments.
According to 2024 Ofcom data, less than half of Gen Z in the UK now watches broadcast TV on a weekly basis. Meanwhile, a 2025 report from DataReportal suggests streaming accounts for 43 per cent of global viewing. Young audiences favour creators, entertainers and personalities who operate with more speed, flexibility and cultural fluency.
Think about where the audience spends their time: Sidemen clips, Savannah Bananas skits and Kings League stunts. Not broadcasts. Personalities. Elite athletes now compete with Logan Paul, K-pop idols and streamers, who all deliver content faster and more personally. Prestige, tradition, league affiliation and broadcast rights no longer guarantee the same levels of attention. What wins is emotional connection, story architecture and participatory moments that extend far beyond the field.
This doesn’t mean sport has become any less important. It means it must operate differently. Athletic skill and scoreboard stats are no longer the only metrics that define value. It’s not about box scores anymore. It’s about cultural velocity. And the most valuable players are those who can move, entertain and engage people.
When impact becomes measurable
The shift is happening in real time. Athletes at every level are using tools that track and quantify their brand power with more precision than any agent pitch or marketing deck ever could. These aren’t just dashboards built for superstars. They’re functional, accessible systems that allow any athlete to measure performance, fan sentiment, media impact and commercial momentum, all from a phone.
Transfermarkt.com, once known for assigning player values based on match stats and scouting reports, now factors in social media metrics. Blinkfire Analytics calculates brand exposure in real time across social posts. Out2Win gives college athletes a live brand score tied to their digital influence. The pattern is clear: value is no longer static. It updates with every game, every post and every moment that resonates.
We’re entering an era where brand value moves like a stock ticker. One viral moment spikes it. One controversy sinks it. One merch drop earns a season’s salary. But at the top end, the real story is influence.
Luka Dončić wasn’t traded for underperforming; he was traded because his value was judged on box scores, not brand gravity. The Mavericks saw stats. The Lakers saw storylines, identity and revenue pull. Fans didn’t revolt over analytics. They revolted because they lost the figure who made the franchise feel like theirs. That kind of value used to be anecdotal. Now it’s quantified in merch drops, subscriber counts and the emotional heat around every post.
“Brand value moves like a stock ticker. One viral moment spikes it. One controversy sinks it.”
The exposure economy is dead
For decades, sponsorship value was calculated based on brand and logo visibility. Brands paid for placement on jerseys, on boards, and broadcasts. The calculation was simple: the more people are exposed to your logo, the higher the value of your sponsorship package. The uncomfortable truth? Most of those eyeballs are blind.
In a world where audiences scroll, swipe, mute and skip, exposure no longer equals engagement. It equals noise. Broadbent’s principle suggests that our brains filter out non-essential information to avoid overload. In sports, this means that fans often overlook passive branding, such as badges, sideline ads or commercials during games.
With Gen Z and Gen Alpha consuming sports through highlights, social feeds and short-form clips, the traditional sponsorship model has lost its punch. What’s the last sponsor you can remember? Perimeter boards have become the banner ads of sports: sold but rarely seen. Ask yourself: Who sponsors Borussia Dortmund? Which brand is on the LA Lakers jersey? If even industry insiders can’t recall the sponsors of some of the world’s most iconic assets, what’s the worth of those exposure deals?
What drives real commercial value today isn’t exposure, it’s emotional equity. The athletes who build parasocial closeness with their audience are becoming media economies unto themselves. Brands chasing awareness are fading. Brands chasing intimacy are paying.
Even more staggering, sports economist Ryan Brewer estimated that Caitlin Clark was responsible for 26.5 per cent of all WNBA economic activity in 2024. That includes ticket sales, TV audiences and merchandise. Yet her base salary was just $78,000. Her influence didn’t just complement the system, it eclipsed it. This wasn’t brand exposure. It was brand gravity. And it wasn’t negotiated. It was calculated in real-time by fans voting with their attention, money and trust.
The athlete data dashboard is here
Celebrity marketing used to require an entourage. Now it starts with a Notion board. Leading creators are quietly building operating systems that track everything, including content performance, merchandise revenue, follower sentiment, brand alignment, and even the optimal time to release a podcast episode or promote a product link.
These dashboards aren’t built by tech giants or agency conglomerates. They’re often stitched together by the athletes themselves, or their close circle, using no-code tools like Notion, Glide, Airtable, Zapier and ChatGPT.
It’s not the software that matters. It’s the autonomy. These systems give athletes control over their business in a way few federations, leagues, clubs or sponsors ever have. They can launch limited runs of apparel, automate booking processes, run digital fan clubs, or track which brands are gaining popularity among their audience.
And none of this is just for the elite. Out2Win now tracks over 250,000 college athletes; its brand scores inform nearly 70 per cent of NIL deals today. Lower-division players are monetising niche fan bases with direct-to-fan merch and gated content. Even injured athletes are creating income streams by leveraging their community and insights. This is no longer side hustle territory. It has quickly become foundational brand architecture.
“A new model is emerging, where value originates with the athlete and extends outwards”
From control to co-creation: the new deal flow
Legacy sports institutions were built on a foundation of control. Many of them still operate under the belief that they “own their sport”. They control media access, sponsorship rights and institutional IP. That model is breaking.
Today’s most commercially agile athletes aren’t waiting for permission. They’re launching newsletters, YouTube series, live streams, and collaborating directly with brands, building apps and engaging in ventures that often bypass traditional sports infrastructure entirely. What appears to be disloyalty to some is, in fact, a rational move in a system that rarely offers ownership.
Forward-thinking organisations are adapting. Instead of funnelling everything through central control, they’re opening new lanes: co-owned IP, rev-share content, flexible media licensing, tokenised fan experiences and collaborative product drops. These aren’t gimmicks. They’re business models. They attract younger fans, facilitate agile partnerships, and enable athletes to bring their entire brand to the table, not just their likeness. It requires a mindset shift. From ownership to orchestration. From command to collaboration.
The future of relevance is athlete-built
For decades, athletes drew value from the systems around them. Leagues created stars. Clubs conferred prestige. A jersey defined your worth. That era is ending. A new model is emerging, where value originates with the athlete and extends outward. They are not waiting to be discovered. They are building systems. Monetising loyalty. Measuring impact in ways federations cannot. From college players with a thousand fans to global icons running billion-dollar ecosystems, the pattern is clear: value is now structured, trackable and owned.
Fans were once told the badge mattered more than the name on the back. But their behaviour says otherwise. Younger and more remote fans are increasingly following athletes across clubs, platforms and borders. Loyalty and spending are shifting from institutions to individuals.
This is not a trend. It’s a reset. The next wave of deals will not be negotiated in boardrooms. They will be priced in real time and validated by audience response. Sport’s future will not run on exposure. It will run on trust, participation and co-creation. The smartest organisations will not resist this. They will build with it. In sport’s next era, value won’t be guessed. It will be built, proven and calculated.
Thomas Van Schaik is a leading expert in athlete branding and sports marketing, having held senior roles at Adidas, NFL Europe, and the Dutch Olympic Committee. He is co-founder of The Athlete Brand and author of The Athlete Brand Book.
