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”.
Josh Noble: We’re seeing a lot of movement in the media landscape: Warner Bros Discovery, Netflix and Apple have all taken big strides into sport over the past 12 months. Where do you see sport fitting into this changing world of media?
Adam Kelly: If you look at the bigger picture, I think we’re in a golden age for sport. Through 2025, and in the couple of years before that too, we’ve consistently seen audience records broken: the Euros, the Olympics, NFL games and big boxing.
That’s a great context for looking across the industry. We’re seeing metrics, across multiple markets, hit new highs. When I think about what that means for the media landscape, I try to step back and ask what the real driver is.
