Insights
Ideas for operators.
Plain-language notes on product, platforms, and sports digital—readable for humans and extractable for answer engines.
February 4, 2026
Insight
In Celebration and Recognition of National Girls & Women in Sports Day
Given today is National Girls and Women in Sports Day AND the fact that the 2026 Milano-Cortina Olympic & Paralympic Games officially begin on Friday, we wanted to share a bit about three of our amazing Next League team members who all happen to be Team USA athletes! Learn more about Veronica Day, Rachel Rane …
July 3, 2025
Insight
Hispanic Fandom Rising: The Data Behind the Expectations and Defining Moments of 2025’s Summer of Soccer
The global soccer industry is placing a bold bet on the U.S. Hispanic fan, and for good reason. With 73 percent 1 of U.S. Hispanics 16 and older identifying as soccer fans, many describe the sport not as a pastime but as a piece of their heritage, something they were born into and are incredibly …
June 27, 2025
Insight
Why Affina’s Loyalty Model Could Be a Game-Changer
Affina, a fusion of fan-engagement platform CrowdPlay and card-linked offer specialist Rethink Loyalty, has launched a “third way” in sports loyalty programs. Recognizing that many teams lack the in-house resources to develop and operate sophisticated loyalty systems, Affina delivers a fully managed solution. It combines gamified fan interaction (like trivia and QR-code rewards) with funding …
June 16, 2025
Insight
Engagement Isn’t a Perk—It’s a Practice
“People don’t quit jobs—they quit bad managers.” It’s a phrase we’ve all heard, and for good reason: managers play a pivotal role in shaping the employee experience. They’re not just leading projects—they’re supporting the people doing the work. At their best, people managers foster engagement, satisfaction, and growth across their teams. At their worst, they’re …
June 10, 2025
Insight
The College Payday Is Here — And So Is the Chaos Coming With It
It's official. College athletes are about to get paid—and I’m not talking about NIL crumbs or free meal swipes at the training table. We’re talking direct revenue-sharing payments from schools. Real checks. Like, “Uncle Sam’s watching” checks. The recent House v. NCAA settlement means schools could be shelling out around $20 million a year to …
May 15, 2025
Insight
Gen Z Is Here | Unlocking This Critical Emerging Consumer Without Deprioritizing Your Current Revenue-Generating Fanbase
Choosing Between The Current And Next Generation Of Fans? It Doesn’t Have To Be A Binary Decision “How do we serve our current revenue-generating fans while also capturing the next generation?" We frequently hear this type of question. Engaging fanbases with different behavioral patterns and psychographics certainly increases operational complexity. Understandably, many sports teams and …
April 14, 2025
Insight
Soccer's Rise in the U.S.: A Cultural Transformation
As a female born and raised in Brazil, my passion for the sport of “Futebol” traces back to my childhood memories formed during the 1994 World Cup. After moving to the United States as a teenager, I’ve personally witnessed both the remarkable rise of soccer in this country and the transformative cultural role it has …
April 11, 2025
Insight
Inside the Evolution of Sports Storytelling: What I Saw at NAB 2025
Written by Brian JonesCollege Football Analyst, CBS SportsCollege Sports, Next League We’re entering a new era where athletes don’t just play the game, they tell the story. And the industry is only beginning to catch up. I just returned from my first trip to the annual NAB Show (and its Sports Summit more specifically) in …
April 1, 2025
Insight
The Real AI: How Athlete Intelligence Is Reshaping the Future of Sports, Technology, and Business
At Next League, we talk often about building digital solutions for What’s Next in sports. But the question every marketer, league, and team should be asking is: who knows what’s next before anyone else does? The answer is right in front of us - the athletes themselves. For too long, the industry has treated athletes …
February 5, 2025
Insight
National Girls & Women in Sports Day 2025
JUSTINE CHIUGrowing up, I didn't participate in team sports. Most of my physical activity was through Dance Dance Revolution at the mall arcade by myself, and the closest I got to an actual sport was figure skating up until the age 12, which also happened to be a highly solo sport. It was not only …
February 3, 2025
Insight
Measuring Culture
The concept of organizational culture has never been more important than it is today. Organizations that invest the time and resources in building and maintaining a strong, healthy culture tend to be more successful than those that don’t. One way to gauge the health of your organization is via employee engagement surveys. These anonymous surveys are …
April 24, 2024
Insight
Pushing for Progress
March is widely recognized as Women’s History Month and April is celebrated as Diversity Month. Given my roles as mom (to two young daughters), Chief Operating Officer at Next League and Founder of Next League’s Women’s Group, I find myself regularly reflecting on the progress of gender equality and, more specifically, opportunities for women in …
April 17, 2024
Insight
Investment in Venue Technology is Key to Maximizing Revenue, Optimizing Engagement
Venues are more than physical structures where teams play and events take place - they are complex business ecosystems being driven by technology and play an integral role in optimizing engagement and maximizing revenue for teams. According to Pollstar, there was over $100 Billion in consumer spending at live events in 2023. Sports is a business …
March 14, 2024
Insight
Big Tech is Coming for the Casual Fan
Sports fandom falls into two camps - casual and avid fans. Casual fans understand the game and consume content through various live and non-live channels. Avid fans are highly knowledgeable, follow the sport closely, and actively promote and share their love for the game. In a world where sports are the last remaining draw for live …
March 8, 2024
Insight
What International Women’s Day Means to Us
International Women’s Day is celebrated today, March 8, all over the world. It is an opportunity for us all to reflect on the progress women have made while focusing on how much further there is still to go. In recognition of the day, we asked our employees to share their thoughts on what the day …
March 7, 2024
Insight
A Convergence of Trends is Disrupting How the Sports Industry Engages Fans
Do You Have a Data Strategy to Engage Your Fanbase in Today’s Digital Landscape? Disruptive technology trends are forcing the sports industry to rethink how we engage fans, who ultimately drive our business. At Next League, we are fortunate to work with many of the world’s leading sports organizations. One of the most common topics …
February 7, 2024
Insight
The Parallels Between my Athletic and Professional Careers
I played soccer competitively for 23 years; doing so for all those years equipped me with many valuable skills applicable both on and off the field. Being a teammate, I developed effective communication, collaboration and adaptability skills, all of which are essential in a professional setting. Additionally, it helped and equipped me to navigate challenges, …
February 7, 2024
Insight
The Jump from Being a Teammate on the Field to One off it
Six months ago, my career as a competitive athlete officially came to an end. I graduated from Harvard University in May, where I was fortunate to play on their Division I Lacrosse team all four years, and started working as a Strategy Analyst for Next League shortly thereafter. In reflecting on the past six months, …
February 6, 2024
Insight
Staying Connected to Sport: My Post-Career Journey
It all started when I was 7 years old and my golf-obsessed grandpa wanted to get all of his grandchildren into golf. At the time I was a figure skater, a fairly competitive one at that. Like every typical Canadian, I probably had skates on my feet before I could walk. At first, I didn’t …
August 3, 2023
Insight
Next League Research & Development: Transforming Ideas into Action with AI
The field of artificial intelligence (AI) is experiencing a tidal wave of innovation, with natural language processing (NLP) systems demonstrating unprecedented capabilities. This revolution is led by machine learning (ML) and large language models (LLMs) - AI systems that predict subsequent words in a sentence, enabling them to generate text that emulates human conversation and …
June 7, 2023
Insight
The Human Side of HR
The people-first side of HR is here to stay, and it’s about time. Gone are the days of treating your employees as widgets and pushing them to complete as much work as possible from 9am to 5pm, or as Ariana Huffington put it in a recent article Start of the Human Energy Revolution, “Humans were …
March 31, 2023
Insight
It Really Does Take a Village
Three years ago, I was struggling with balancing motherhood, living through a pandemic, working from home, supporting a team and their at home needs, all while trying to climb the metaphorical corporate ladder. There were many days I wanted to give up and spend time arguing with my toddler about eating her veggies rather than …
March 8, 2023
Insight
What International Women's Day Means to Us
International Women’s Day is celebrated today, March 8, all over the world. It is an opportunity for us all to reflect on the progress women have made while focusing on how much further there is still to go. In recognition of the day, we asked our employees to share their thoughts on what the day …
February 13, 2023
Insight
Reflections on an Eventful 2022 in Sports Tech
In July 2022, we published a piece focused on trends in sports tech we were anticipating in the second half of 2022. By way of recap, since sports has many categories that are each significantly driven by technology (media, fan experience, esports/gaming, athlete performance, data analysis and analytics, etc.), we decided to focus on four …
September 20, 2022
Insight
What We Learned From Our NFT Project Launch - Ukraine Art Collective
As many in my community know, though I have lived in the United States for 30 years, I was born and raised in Odesa, Ukraine. I still have family, friends, and coworkers in Ukraine whose daily reality earlier this spring became the sounds of missiles and seeking safety in bomb shelters. During the early days …
August 29, 2022
Insight
The Changing Landscape of Strategic Partnerships in Sports
Megan Allison is a Managing Director at underdog venture team and has built an impressive reputation for herself in the sports partnership space, leveraging the reach and passion of sports to build visibility and acquire customers for brands like PepsiCo and Advanced Auto Parts. I recently had the opportunity to sit down and speak with …
July 22, 2022
Insight
Technology Affords Us Time…But What Do We Do With It?
Most people understand we now live in a world where time is our most valuable currency. The average human lives 79 years or 28,835 days. So, there are an average of 692,040 hours in a lifetime. (Here’s an interesting, albeit slightly morbid, calculator on how much time you may have left.) Most people understand we now live …
July 21, 2022
Insight
Web3 Still Holds Key to Sports Tech Market in 2022's Second Half
It’s been quite a year so far in sports technology. We went into 2022 still coming out of a pandemic with a sports industry that was evolving more quickly than it ever has. The race to Web3 and the legalization of sports betting drove much of this, but sports technology, already a very complicated topic, …
June 28, 2022
Insight
Feeling Overwhelmed By The Pace And Volume Of New Technology? You’re Not Alone
Being a digital executive these days is difficult. To start with, many organizations are no longer satisfied with digital technology as a cost center; executives are often expected to manage a P&L that generates real revenue and ROI. Digital technology executives are also, I would argue unreasonably, expected to have a perspective on every new …
June 24, 2022
Insight
I Come from a Family of Athletes. Thanks to Title IX, I Am One Too
I grew up in a hardcore sports family. Throughout my childhood I was brought to all of my older brother's games, and now get to cheer for him in his professional baseball career. We have a long history of baseball in my family and I still hear my grandfather’s stories about playing in the Negro …
June 22, 2022
Insight
The Impact and Role Sports Has Had on My Life
Thanks to my dad, I’ve been a sports fan as long as I can remember. We are a New York Jets, New York Yankees and Seton Hall Pirates basketball family. I grew up playing and watching sports; some of my earliest – and fondest – memories have to do with them. I have vivid memories of …
April 22, 2022
Insight
How Do You Measure the Success of Your Web3 Project?
For years, you have measured project success with key performance indicators (KPIs) like traffic, engagement and monetization through ads, sponsorship or subscription. Those measurements focus on what value the project brings to your company. In Web3, it’s not about you. You’ll find that Web3 projects will likely get judged differently, focused on the value the …
March 30, 2022
Insight
Web2 vs. Web3: Why Monetization Models Are About to Change
With all the talk about Web 3.0 and how it is, or will be, replacing Web 2.0, we thought we’d start this piece with a quick description of each. You’ll get lots of opinions on this, so we are generalizing a little. Web 2.0 is primarily about content distribution, social media and ecommerce. It includes …
January 27, 2022
Insight
Micro-Betting Will Change Sports, but Tech Challenges Remain
In the same way fantasy sports changed the sports business by engaging fans in player performance outside of their favorite teams, U.S. sports betting will engage a new generation of fans, generate billions in betting revenue, and millions in additional ad and sponsorship revenue driven by a massive amount of new fan engagement. But traditional “outcome-based” betting …
January 1, 2022
Insight
How Business is Like Fishing...
What follows is an excerpt from my book, “Zero Sales”. I left the majority of the content intact, but have expounded on certain areas. I’ve also included a video of me creating a wooden fishing lure in my wood shop. The point of this video is that in business, and lure-making, there is a required …