Adobe Summit 2026 – NFL, PGA Tour and the 49ers show how to win in the game of AI

In the Artificial Intelligence (AI) era, the world of sports is now also a data business. Sports organizations are collecting huge amounts of information, which they’re able to employ to offer a better fan experience, whatever the size of the event. But with that comes the need to apply new controls to protect this valuable user data.

As a broadcaster of huge sporting events, from the World Series and Super Bowl to the Indy 500 and World Cup, one of the biggest opportunities Fox sees for AI comes from being able to offer the same experience for fans of smaller events as those watching the flagship tournaments. Phil Martin, SVP of Product at Fox Corporation, says:

Nobody does tentpole events bigger than us. Being able to do tentpole events at scale is something that I'm very excited about. Take Nebraska Big Ten Women's Volleyball, someone's a fan of that, we know people come along, we see the viewership numbers that represent it, we see the search queries around that. Being able to do that at scale from how we plan, research, coordinate logistically, also how we promote and produce those events.

Even though a volleyball tournament is never going to reach the supporter numbers of something like Major League Baseball or the NFL championship, with more than 1,000 people going along to many of these smaller events, that adds up to a lot of viewers overall. Martin adds:

We talk about being a fan service. Giving that tentpole treatment to every event, regardless of what it is, is what we can do with the scope of AI.

Data consent

Personalization is an area for which many sports businesses are turning to AI, something being put into practise by PGA Tour. With 120 players participating, golf fans probably aren’t going to want to follow all those players and will want to narrow down the tour.

PGA Tour wants to be able to personalize that experience, letting fans choose to follow just two or three golfers. But sports organizations are becoming increasingly aware of the need for unified, opt-in data to offer this kind of personalization at scale. Eric Hanson, VP of Digital at PGA Tour, says:

Once you follow those two or three, now we want to give you news, video highlights. We've brought in Instagram-type videos into our scorecard so you can tap on a player's headshot and get that video. It's really personalized to you based on the player you care about. After a round, we gave people a personalized recap of that player's round as well. So basically that fan has opted in and consented to allow us to deliver that information to them. And now we're stepping up even more where we're going to deliver personalized push notifications.

These personalization-at-scale efforts add extra challenges around trust and privacy. With so many different sports teams and data points, that means a lot of information coming through that needs to be used to create the proper experience and meet the consumer with their expectations, while still applying the correct data protection controls. Thomas Cioce, Chief Privacy Officer, VP Privacy & Legal Affairs at NFL, explains:

We want you to remain in the ecosystem as a fan. We want you to interact across platforms. We don't want to be doing the creepy but legal activations. We want to make sure we are reviewing and keeping on top of these things. So it's been very important to make sure we scale the controls along with all the growth that's happening in sports.

Team player

This growth is being spurred on by a new generation of fans, who follow sports in a different way to the traditional team supporter. Cioce notes:

Fandom is changing. They're going from a TV-based product where you watch a game and then moving to generations who don't necessarily follow a favorite team. They follow players, they want to watch highlights. You might have multiple teams that you then follow. It's really changing the ecosystem. So how can you build for this?

For NFL, the focus is on creating opportunities for fans to express how they want to engage as well as the privacy elements they want. Cioce explains:

You give them the opportunity to express preferences and do customization and all these other things, but on the control side of that, making sure that we put the options in front of the fan in a way that's really clear. We've been able to optimize and really open up the funnel at the top end for marketing and other applications by providing more detailed controls for fans downstream.

The other side of this, is that if fans give their details, businesses should make good use of them for their benefit rather than just sitting on the data. Jen Zick, DSG Principal, Sports at Adobe, says that conversations around trust often focus on not being too intrusive with customers and fans, which is very important. She notes:

You don't want to be creepy. I'm anti-creepy. But I do like to talk about the other side of the coin, and that's if fans or customers give you information about themselves or their preferences, they expect you to use that information and deliver a very personalized experience to them. It's all about making the fan or customer experience more relevant. You don't want a fan to say, ‘Hey, I told you who my favorite golf player was, why am I never hearing about their results in the tournament, only about everybody else?’. That's something that we have a responsibility to do.

Keep fans at the forefront 

In this data-driven world, it’s vital for sports businesses to not get so caught up in information, they lose sight of the fans. Stephanie Rogers, Chief Marketing Officer at the San Francisco 49ers, says:

Let's not let the personal relationship with our fans diminish. It's easy to get lost in data. We've all done that already with all the different inputs that are coming in. It's going to be easy to get lost in the AI conversation if you're not already.

Firms need to be genuinely listening to fans about what they want, as well as still trusting their gut. Rogers adds:

We know our fans. And fandom is very resilient, but it's also something that you have to protect. You can't take it for granted. A lot of our sports organizations have all experienced a moment in time where they've taken that fandom for granted and learned the hard way.

To avoid this, firms should be using to AI to not only continue to grow the breadth and depth of the fan experience, but also to provide context. Rogers explains:

That was my talking point when I worked in the NHL. I was like, I don't know anything about hockey, but if I know that these guys are skating 22 miles an hour, that gives me some sort of context. That's pretty fast, right? But let's not take for granted that personal relationship with the fans, because that's really going to drive your how and why, your strategy.

To take advantage of AI and the opportunities it brings in areas like personalization, sports organizations are having to make changes in how they operate. At PGA Tour, this has led to different departments working much more closely together. Hanson says:

We had to take our marketing team, our product teams that I run, our legal teams, our privacy teams, and all work together on that to really make sure that what we're developing is the right thing for our fans and our users, but also safe for our brand, also from the legal perspective.

From an AI governance standpoint, the golf tournament has established a cross-functional team of people who all need to review AI tools and products. Hanson explains:

It's not necessarily a gatekeep or a way to slow things down. It's a way for all of us to make sure we're all agreeing that these are the models that we want to take into consideration and this is what we're going to do to empower our workforce, and provide more features and functionality.

From gatekeeper to enabler

Sitting on the privacy and legal side, Cioce agrees about the need to avoid the gatekeeper label. With so many new AI features and tools hitting the market, and such a fast pace of development, it’s about enabling these things and not becoming the party of no. He notes:

As soon as you're in a control function and you become the person that just kills good ideas, you're not going to get any partnership from the business, and people are going to find ways to work around you and you're going to not be effective. [It’s] trying to position AI governance or privacy or data governance as a business enabler. How can we get to a proper solution that enables you to do what you want to do and sprint to the solution without tripping any wires.

It’s important there’s acknowledgement that AI isn’t some kind of magic solution. Martin cited the example of the Sports AI agent on the Fox Sports app, which lets users talk to an AI version of radio host Colin Cowherd. This proprietary conversation agent was very hard to build, according to Martin. He adds:

Business users or anybody out there, they’re going to use AI tools, and they think it's magic, but it's not magical. There's a lot of hard work that goes into it. It's the unsexy part. Models are only as good as the data that you show it. We had to evaluate over one million responses to determine what good looks like. That's just one use case, one consumer feature that we unlocked.

Rather than focusing on whether AI can solve a problem or offer a feature, there needs to be an educational element added in that considers the work needed to go the full way.  Martin says:

It's very easy to get that initial 80%, it's that 20% that's really hard. You have to have a lot of conviction, [make sure] the traditional software development practices don't go out the window. You build, you iterate. You build, you iterate.