Sports Loft is at the forefront of what’s new and possible in sports, media, and entertainment. Our monthly newsletter helps senior executives from teams, leagues, brands and broadcasters discover the technologies they need to know about.
Welcome back to the Sports Loft Newsletter!
We've had a busy month ahead of this year’s Sports Loft Summit - launching our new website, recording two great podcast episodes, hosting two events, and Charlie has been in the US finalising the companies that will present at the Summit on May 13th.
In this edition
🗓️ The Sports Loft Summit 2026
🎙️ Takeaways from our recent podcasts with Badge and The Realest
🌉 Our recent invite-only events
P.S. We’ve changed our newsletter platform, so drag this into your primary inbox to stay up to date on the latest technologies that can be applied to the sports industry.
Sports Loft Summit 2026 - 13th May, London
Returning for its fifth year on 13th May, the Sports Loft Summit has become THE event for senior sports & media executives to discover the best startup/scaleup companies that can be applied to the industry.
For this year's event, out of the hundreds of tech companies that we see throughout the year, we have selected 10 new companies that we think the industry needs to know about. These companies can't pay to be on the stage, they are selected by us.
The companies we select are focused on 1) Building and engaging audiences - so content creation and distribution, social, fan engagement, digital experiences, etc., and 2) Commercial partnerships - so what tech can be used to create new assets for commercial partners or deliver new activation ideas.
There are only 150 tickets available, and attendance is restricted to senior execs from teams, leagues, brands, broadcasters, governing bodies, event owners and investors.
If you want to learn about the latest technologies, get your tickets below - approval required.
Podcasts
We recently caught up with two of last year’s Sports Loft Summit presenters: Eric Senn, CEO of Badge, and Scott Keeney, CEO of The Realest. We hear about how the companies have developed since they presented and their latest thinking.
Badge: “Every company now has a TikTok strategy… yet more people now use mobile wallets than TikTok, so why don’t you have a wallet strategy?”
Fans are constantly bombarded with requests to download yet another app. They suffer from ‘app fatigue’. The mobile wallet, by contrast, is on every phone, only requires one click for consumers to adopt, and has more users than TikTok.
Badge has built the infrastructure layer across Apple, Google, and Samsung Wallet, enabling teams to move far beyond basic ticketing. CEO Eric Senn joined us on the Sports Loft Podcast to explain how wallets have evolved into one of the most powerful fan engagement channels.
Three Key Takeaways from our conversation with Eric
1. Mobile wallets meet fans where they already are
The wallet comes pre-downloaded on every smartphone and only requires one click to adopt a pass. Adoption has been driven through contactless payments, airline boarding passes and ticketing, training consumers to use the wallet in everyday life.
2. Badge enables the wallet to do much more than just store tickets
Teams can send push notifications directly to a fan’s lock screen (without fans having to download an app), define geo-fences so that a fan walking towards the stadium on matchday automatically receives a relevant offer, and the wallet can integrate with stadium POS systems, allowing teams to track the full lifecycle of an offer from issuance to the exact amount spent during redemption.
3. It complements your app, it doesn’t replace it
Don't think of it as "wallet" or "app" - they complement each other. The wallet is best at handling quick, contextual touchpoints with an emphasis on ease-of-access and flexibility while deep-linking fans into the app for more immersive experiences.
The Realest: “In an AI-dominated world, the value of physical, authentic items has never been higher.”
The memorabilia industry is booming, with game-worn jerseys fetching record sums. Yet, historically, rightsholders have not shared in the profits, and the market has been riddled with fraud.
To solve this, Scott Keeney (Skee) built The Realest - combining the most rigorous authentication technology in the market and a secure marketplace to service both teams and fans. He joins Charlie on the podcast to talk about how The Realest gives fans a trusted platform to get closer than ever to their favourite clubs, while unlocking new revenue streams for teams and leagues.
Three Key Takeaways from our conversation with Skee
1. If you don’t control your memorabilia market, someone else will
Memorabilia often leaves through informal channels like kit managers or venue staff, and is then sold, unauthenticated, on the secondary market. This means that teams not only miss out on significant revenue but also leave their fans vulnerable to exploitation by bad actors. The Realest provides sports organisations with an end-to-end solution, from authentication to shipping, enabling them to own their memorabilia market.
2. On-site authentication eliminates fraud
The Realest has trained authenticators, many with law enforcement backgrounds, present at every match, collecting items directly. Each item receives a combination of covert and overt markings that creates a unique identifier, enabling validation of that exact item in perpetuity.
3. Enabling a secondary market in memorabilia
On average, items get resold every 5 years. As The Realest originally authenticated the product, they can then verify that it is real when it comes up for resale. This enables sports organisations to facilitate the resale in their marketplace and to receive a cut every time, with no extra effort.
From London to New York - connecting the most forward-thinking sports execs with the most innovative technologies
During the last month, we hosted two invite-only events that brought together carefully selected groups of senior sports executives, investors and relevant tech founders. No presentations - just substantive conversations between the people driving innovation across sports, media and entertainment.
Sports Loft Innovation Dinner: NYC Edition
With New York being the commercial home of US sport and having an ever-growing tech startup scene, where could be better to host our first US Innovation dinner? We were joined by a curated group of leading rightsholders, including execs from the NBA, NFL, MLS, MLB, as well as leading investors and some of the most exciting startup and scale-up tech companies across sports, media and entertainment.
Sports Loft Commercial Breakfast
In London, we then hosted the latest edition of the Sports Loft Breakfast Club, for an invite-only group of senior Commercial Strategy executives from the likes of Formula E, RFU, Sail GP, Premier League clubs, British Cycling and more, connecting them with a curated group of tech startups working in commercial intelligence and partner activation. The discussions focused on how sports organisations can better leverage fan data - using insights and tools to create more valuable, targeted commercial opportunities for partners, while also establishing clearer ways to quantify the financial value of fan relationships.
We’ll be hosting many more events in both the UK and the US, so if you want to be in the room, drop us a line here.
What we do
We leverage our extensive network to find the most innovative technology companies that can be applied to the sports industry. Through our advisory services and invite-only events, we connect teams, leagues, brands and broadcasters with the best new tech and ideas.
