When Adam Kelly joined IMG a quarter of a century ago, the sports business was still largely built around broadcast schedules, ticket sales and a handful of dominant media rights buyers.
Today, as president of the global sports marketing agency, now part of TKO Group Holdings — after its acquisition of IMG from Endeavor last year — he is operating in a market being reshaped by technology platforms that measure everything and expect content to do more than fill airtime. Here, he explains why rights to live sports are turning into media’s central battleground, what rights holders should do to keep control of their intellectual property and why sport is a counterweight to AI “slop”.