With Carlos Alcaraz and Iga Swiatek lifting the top trophies at the French Open, and the Euros kicking-off last weekend, this epic summer of sports is well and truly underway - and we’re drinking it in!

This is now the fourth round-up of innovations and trends impacting sports & esports media & communication, fan & audience experience, sustainability & impact, community & culture - and I’ll continue to keep my eyes and ears on the stories shaping the sports we’ll be watching, competing in and engaging with in the future.

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On to this week’s round-up…

🌍 IMPACT 🌍 

⚽ The British Heart Foundation (BHF) have launched A powerful new campaign titled “‘Til I Died” to generate awareness of the fact that, on average, 12 children die because of cardiac arrest every week in the UK.

⚽ JCDecaux UK and Havas Play UK are giving 100 London billboard sites to Bloomsbury Football - a non-profit that uses the power of football to improve mental and physical health, foster social cohesion and teach valuable life skills.

🇫🇷 Efforts to make Paris 2024 the greenest Olympics yet are being foiled by the stars of the show — athletes who plan to show up in Paris next month with their own air conditioners.

And as we highlighted last time, if you’d love to attend some Olympic events in Paris this summer, there are lots of resale tickets being released every week from the official ticket resale website here.

📹 MEDIA & COMMUNICATIONS 📹

⚽ A clear trend in the build-up to these Euros has been content that references the origins of each nation’s players. This England example from 50Sport is a great way of showing how representative Gareth Southgate’s squad is and mobilising different parts of the country to get behind their local lads.

⚽ Report: The New Era of Football: Content innovation in the digital world of fandom. In partnership with SportsPro, IMG have examined content creation and digital innovation in the current Football landscape to highlight the latest engagement opportunities and revenue streams for rights holders and partners alike.

⚽ OneFootball has launched an in-app marketplace to sell merchandise, tickets and subscriptions from its network of 130 partner clubs worldwide.

🏟️ FAN EXPERIENCE 🏟️

⚽ Saudi Arabia has revealed designs for a high-tech stadium atop a 656-foot-high cliff near Riyadh where it plans to host the 2034 World Cup.

The stadium design has a retractable roof and field, and an LED wall with hundreds of meters (yards) of screens to create an immersive experience for fans.

⚽ FC Barcelona have agreed a four-year partnership with Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) for advanced networking and cloud capabilities in the revamped Camp Nou stadium and associated ‘Espai Barça’ complex.

🎾 Panini and Jannik Sinner have announced an exclusive multi-year agreement covering collectible trading cards, autographed memorabilia and game gear, books and magazines, as well as digital collections featuring Sinner, the first Italian tennis player to be No. 1 in the ATP world rankings.

⚽ Retro football shirt marketplace Classic Football Shirts have raised $38.5 Million in funding, and are eyeing US Expansion before the 2026 World Cup.

🤾‍♀️ WOMEN’S SPORT ⛹️‍♀️

📱 Zoomph has released analysis on the most engaging Gen Z women athletes on social media, topped by motorsport phenom Toni Breidinger, Chicago Sky forward Angel Reese and British tennis champ Emma Raducanu.

🏀 May was the WNBA’s highest-attended opening month in 26 years and its most-watched start of season across all the networks ever.

🎮 ESPORTS 🎮 

🎮 The first Olympic Esports Games are set to be added soon to the IOC’s portfolio of events as it "seeks to attract and retain young audiences," according to the IOC.

The Esports Olympics will build on an IOC-backed week of video game competitions held last year in Singapore, which was a mix of physical simulations of Olympic sports and traditional video games.

🎮 League of Legends Esports have unveiled a new third international event and multi-regional Americas/APAC leagues

💡 INNOVATION x SPORTS 🦾

Future of Sport Lab (FSL) have announced that nine Canadian sport tech startups have been accepted into its acclaimed incubator program. The companies come from a range of sectors including AI, athlete training, fan engagement, wearable technology and smart equipment, analytics, and sports betting.

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See you next time,

Adam Reed
Innovation in Sport

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