Sport as the Operating System for Culture

Of the top 100 most watched TV shows in America in any given year, about 90 are NFL games. That stat, from Henry Hodgson who spoke at Advertising Week Europe recently and who runs the NFL’s international business out of the UK, is a neat way to understand where we are with modern day sport.

Sport isn’t just another content vertical. It’s increasingly becoming a dominant layer of attention the rest of culture is increasingly built on. That sentiment will only increase after the sport events and moments we're about to witness this year.

What’s changing now is not the scale of that attention, but the way it’s being presented to audiences – it's moving from stadiums and TV into social feeds, fan group chats and increasingly into shoppable moments.

The leagues, platforms, brands and athletes that get this are treating sport as a cultural operating system. The ones that don’t are still buying perimeter boards and hoping they get some extra screen time when something happens on the field.

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