Inspire and Assess

• Clarify your club’s goals and values and create shared principles for innovation.

• Analyze four areas systematically:

  1. Goals, values, and the needs of internal teams and staff.

  2. Fans and members: segments, journeys, content needs, channels, and desired experiences.

  3. Ecosystem partners: sponsors, media, leagues, service providers, and co-creation opportunities.

  4. Digital readiness: data, technology, security, skills, governance, and capacity.

• Turn these findings into capability maps and red‑yellow‑green heatmaps to reveal strengths, gaps, and opportunities.

 

Plan and Design

• Prioritize potential innovation initiatives with a simple, weighted scoring model (impact, fan demand, feasibility, cost/benefit, strategic relevance).

• Specify each priority using a “press release and frequently asked questions” package: define the value, who benefits, success metrics, risks, data, make-or-buy-or-partner decisions, and operating model.

• Build a practical roadmap with milestones, owners, dependencies, and go/no‑go gates.

• Design for three domains:

  • Fan value: segmentation, personalization, content and community, consent, monetization paths.

  • Athlete performance: data model, analytics use cases such as injury prevention, return-to-play, tactics, and scouting.

  • Organization: roles, learning, governance, and a platform mindset that enables collaboration.

 

Execute and Evolve

• Test with proofs of concept, then ship minimum loveable products to real users, measure results, and improve with short iterations and A/B tests.

• Review progress quarterly, scale winners, sunset low-impact efforts, and reinvest learnings to keep your innovation flywheel spinning.