Sports content has never been more valuable or harder to fully monetise. Global sports media rights reached $67 billion in 2026, yet for many established rights holders, broadcast revenue has plateaued. The growth is coming from somewhere else: documentaries, archive footage, short-form content, and an expanding universe of OTT platforms, social channels, sponsors, and creator-led destinations all competing for access to sports content.
Most sports organisations hold more than they can activate. But the problem they have is infrastructure. Workflows built for a handful of broadcast licensees were never designed to service dozens of partners simultaneously, deliver live highlights within minutes, surface archive footage on demand, or govern rights automatically across every distribution channel.
From Live to Licensed sets out the four operational capabilities that the rights owners capturing the most value from their content have in common: speed of activation, intelligent discovery, rights-aware distribution, and trusted AI. It draws on data from Caretta Research, Deloitte, Stats Perform and the EU AI Act, as well as a case study from the Esports World Cup Foundation — where Reuters Imagen built and deployed a full content activation platform in under two months, supporting 750 million viewers across a seven week event and beyond.
The report is written for senior decision-makers in sports rights, media operations and content strategy who are evaluating what it takes to build a content activation operation that meets the pace the market now demands.
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