In edition 125 of The SEG3 Report, it’s sports (again!) as we explore IBM’s recently published Sports Intelligence Report, which explores how AI impacts fandom, and the perhaps unsurprising factor at the bottom of it all: trust.

Plus, our speed reads:

Let’s get into it.

Regardless of where you fall on the spectrum of AI-doomers to AI-champions, one thing that’s for sure is that it is here to stay. Inherently, that isn’t a bad thing. 

But one thread I noticed in listening to our various SEG3 speakers and podcast guests is that AI isn’t a panacea. It can’t leapfrog over a problem or gap without human strategy, intention, and intervention.

Deploying AI responsibly is as important as using it efficiently, and oftentimes that means putting it in places a consumer or fan never sees (a little golden bit of wisdom, in my opinion, from London Marathon Events’ Chief Technology Officer Bhavesh Vaghela shared with us on The Speakeasy).

Bhavesh’s point, that consumers shouldn’t notice the technology (just that the problem it solved went away) is effectively the through line of IBM's Sports Intelligence Report, produced with feedback from 20,000 fans in 12 markets. 

These key findings are ones most of us are already aware of:

But beyond that, the thing that I came away with was that despite the proliferation of the use of AI, it doesn’t mean we all trust it.

69% of fans globally now use generative AI, up in every one of the twelve markets IBM surveyed. But counterintuitively, trust in AI-generated sports content actually fell in seven of those same twelve markets over the same period. Globally, trust sits at 59%, which is down on last year. 

Sports fans who use AI regularly are still nearly three times more likely to trust it than fans who don't, but the overall line is moving in the opposite direction from adoption, not alongside it.

That gap isn't unique to sports, either. 7% of consumers say seeing AI-labelled marketing content makes them trust a brand more. But nearly five times as many, 31%, say it makes them trust that brand less. In AI search specifically, the share of people who found AI results genuinely more useful than a normal search dropped from 82% to 54% in a single year. People are using AI more, and believing it less, at the same time, across categories. 

Given the trust issue at heart, the report goes on to explore what separates the AI fans embrace from the AI fans reject.

Mostly, it’s accuracy, which isn’t exactly surprising.

How many of us have become frustrated by an AI answer that is patently wrong, and wind up back on the hunt or in Wikipedia footnotes trying to find the actual answer? 

The fans IBM surveyed favoured accuracy over speed by nearly two to one, and when asked what actually earns their trust in a company providing AI-powered insight, "accuracy of information" tops the list at 45%. That was ahead of brand reputation, quality of UX, partnerships, and AI transparency. 

An in-practice case study of IBM’s own strategy comes from Chris Clements, Wimbledon's Digital Strategy & Products Lead. Wimbledon and IBM have worked together since 1990, and speaking to SEG3 on The Speakeasy, Chris explained that was because of what their partnership chooses to prioritise.

In his words, innovation "needs to be thoughtful and meaningful," not something you roll out just because the technology happens to be available. (In the words of the notorious Jonathan Van Ness, “just because you American doesn’t mean you Amerishould”).

Chris described where Wimbledon tries to sit: "at the curve of adoption... rather than at the curve of the technology." Sometimes they move first, like with Match Chat, their in-match AI assistant, which was the first of its kind when it launched last year. More often they wait, until something's proven enough elsewhere that fans can trust it works before they're asked to use it.

39% of sports fans say managing multiple subscriptions to follow their sport has become genuinely frustrating, worst among the people watching the most, which are exactly who any rights holder most needs to keep. Streaming has now reached rough parity with linear broadcast, and linear's remaining strength sits almost entirely with Gen X and Boomers.

There is a fix, according to the report: 47% of fans say they'd download a single app that brought all their sport into one place. But the problem with this is that only 30% say they'd actually pay for one.

There’s another issue with the ‘build the app to end all apps’ solution, which is that inherently it won’t actually fix the problem. Fragmentation still exists, beyond what channels sports is being officially distributed on. There’s still TikTok, YouTube, Snapchat and many other social platforms supplanting ‘traditional’ viewing apps (a statement that feels like an oxymoron somehow). 

Instead of fighting fragmentation, there’s an option to lean into it, which is what FIFA did around the World Cup. Rather than trying to pull attention toward an owned FIFA hub, they made TikTok their first-ever "Preferred Platform," letting rights-holding broadcasters livestream up to ten minutes of every one of the 104 matches directly inside the app, alongside monetisation tools and a creator programme built around FIFA's own archive (a strategy we covered in edition 113).

The tournament generated 465 million live streams on TikTok alone, with FIFA's in-app hub visited more than 413 million times. TikTok's own stats claimed fans were 42% more likely to tune into a live match after watching sports content on the platform.

This decision was built to solve the foundational problem we’ve all known about, that we covered back in edition 34. It isn’t that younger fans had stopped watching sports, but rather they were watching it scattered across a dozen different platforms.

Of course, this isn’t a strategy every rights holder can duplicate in its entirety. But the heart of the strategy itself can be applied elsewhere: meet fans in the places they've already chosen to exercise their fandom or view their chosen sports, and make those places do some work for you.

Fans have already decided what good technology looks like: it’s something that quietly removes a step or friction they used to have to think about, and does so with accuracy.

If you take this as the baseline strategy for any tech build, it necessitates a serious consideration: what problem are you trying to solve with AI (or any technology for that matter?).

If it’s capturing attention, you may be fighting a losing battle. But if it’s creating a seamless viewing and participatory fan experience, you’re on a better track.

In short, it’s about investing in a utility layer of tech (real-time, accurate, low-friction) wherever your fans already spend time, rather than assuming a shinier subscription or a flashier AI feature alone will pull them back.

By doing so, you build trust. And trust is the key factor this report proves is getting harder and harder to maintain. 

Netflix & AB InBev have partnered for a multi-market brand collaboration around season 2 of The Gentlemen, with David Beckham & Theo James headlining the collaboration.

TL:DR -

Why you should care

ABinBev has been on a journey to reposition Stella Artois as a premium beer brand for a number of years now, and sports & entertainment has been central to helping them do so.

An official beer partner of Wimbledon for over a decade, and now, a multi-market brand collaboration built around the second season of The Gentlemen.

The through-line of the partnership centres around power, heritage and rituals - with the five vignettes shining a light on Stella’s five-step pouring ritual: The Clean-Up, The Sacrifice, The Angle, The Cut, and The Judgement.

But beyond the social content, this is another example of Netflix, and a brand partner, prioritising experiential as a core part of launching a new series.

It’s somewhere for fans to meet the moment the show lands, and puts Stella’s rituals at the centre of the experience at a moment when fans are desperate for more and have nothing left to watch (after bingeing!).

Working on anything cool, or have a press release you would like us to cover? Send it in for the chance for it to be covered in next week’s edition!

That’s all for now, everyone - thanks again for reading the latest edition of The SEG3 Report. If you found it of interest, please do consider sharing with a colleague or friend who’d enjoy it too!