Beyond the stream: Navigating the attention crisis
In the new competitive landscape of sports and entertainment, winners will be those who can turn passive viewers into active contributors. While the opportunities for convergence have never been greater, fragmented technology foundations are becoming a "hidden tax" on innovation.
We help the world’s leading sports and entertainment organizations move beyond rigid architectures to high-velocity experience engines and intelligent engagement ecosystems. These systems scale with your ambition and respond to your fans in real-time, protecting revenue and enabling the next generation of fan participation.
Are you able to capitalize on every fan interaction? Or do complex, inflexible systems slow you down, leaving potential revenue on the table?
What if you could evolve your technology, culture, and strategy to execute at speed? That’s what Thoughtworks has been doing with one of the world’s largest sports data and technology companies, building a strategic platform for innovation and growth. We’ve distilled all the lessons from this ambitious initiative into a practical playbook showing how you can:
Unlock new revenue streams powered by data-driven insights on a flexible, scalable platform.
Deliver next-generation fan experiences that boost customer acquisition, loyalty and lifetime value.
Drive operational agility to accelerate time-to-market and respond quickly to new market trends and opportunities.
Driving innovation by building a foundation for sustained growth
The challenge
A global leader in sports data and technology recognized that relentless product innovation was crucial to its future success. However, the technological complexity from years of rapid growth and acquisitions had become a major bottleneck, constraining its ambitions.
The Thoughtworks solution
We understood that a prolonged, multi-year approach was not a viable option given the pace of the market. The company’s existing systems containing two decades of accumulated business value needed to remain stable and performant during any transition.
Our 'Build, Operate, Transition' strategy provided the blueprint for a rapid yet secure evolution, bypassing operational friction by engineering the new foundation in parallel with daily business.
The outcome
The company now has a scalable and future-ready platform, the foundations of which were built in nine months, allowing accelerated time-to-market, revenue protection and growth, and increased profitability.
The three big questions podcast with AWS
Parvinder Kalra and Vishnu Nair, authors and Thoughtworks experts, joined Christopher Bell, Global Media & Entertainment Strategy & Business Development Leader at AWS, on the Three Big Questions podcast. They discussed the significant shifts, opportunities, and the work Thoughtworks is undertaking across the media, entertainment, and sports industries.
Watch this video podcast to gain insights into:
The attention crisis: Why "watching" is no longer enough to sustain margins.
Active participation: Architecting for fans who want to influence the game, not just view it.
- AI as a core enabler: Moving beyond automation to hyper-personalized fan experiences and intelligent engagement ecosystems.
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