PlayHQ's Head of Partnerships: International unpacks the SportsPro London agenda for governing bodies.
SportsPro London has always been an indicator of where the sports industry is heading.
The signals are clear this year. AI is accelerating decision-making, data is reshaping engagement, and organisations are under increasing pressure to diversify revenue and prove impact. But what stands out most in 2026 is a shift in tone.
Instead of chasing the next big thing, the agenda zeroes in on the most pressing challenges facing today's sports ecosystem, offering genuinely actionable insight and real solutions to help organisations succeed right now.
For national governing bodies, that focus couldn't be timelier.
Participation is no longer a side agenda
For years, participation sat alongside performance and commercial priorities. Now it underpins both.
National governing bodies are being asked to reverse declining participation in key segments, evidence impact to secure funding, strengthen pathways from grassroots to elite, and deliver more inclusive formats of the game. At the same time.
And the expectations of the people they're trying to reach have fundamentally shifted. Particularly younger audiences. They expect sport to work like everything else in their lives: on-demand, personalised, frictionless.
That's not a small thing. It's the entire basis on which participation is won or lost.
The cost of bad data infrastructure
Data in participation sport has been retrospective too often, used for reporting rather than decision-making. Organisations collect numbers at the end of a season to satisfy a funding requirement. They don't use them to change what happens next.
The result is predictable. Drop-off goes undetected until it's a trend. Interventions come too late. Investment gets directed at symptoms rather than causes.
The organisations that change this are the ones building a case for sustained funding and sustainable growth. With the right digital infrastructure, national governing bodies can start asking different questions: where are we losing participants, and why? Which formats are driving retention? Where should we invest to have the most impact?
At PlayHQ, we're seeing this shift at scale, supporting millions of participants globally and powering tens of thousands of competitions each year.
That volume gives governing bodies a level of visibility and control over their participation ecosystems that simply wasn't possible before. This is where AI becomes meaningful as an enabler of better governance and smarter investment.
Participation as a commercial asset
Revenue diversification is a major theme this year. But for many national governing bodies, the most scalable commercial opportunity isn't at the elite level. It sits within participation.
Digitisation is unlocking more efficient and transparent fee collection, stronger data to attract and retain sponsors, and new partnership models rooted in community reach.
More than $700 million in payments has been collected, split and dispersed through PlayHQ. That scale reflects something important: the organisations that get the commercial side of participation right don't treat it as separate from the sport itself.
It's part of the same infrastructure, the same data, the same story they're telling funders and commercial partners alike.
For governing bodies, this matters- not just to generate revenue, but to demonstrate the true economic and social value of their sport.
Fragmentation is killing participation before the season begins
One of the biggest structural challenges facing national governing bodies is fragmentation. Multiple systems. Inconsistent processes. Heavy reliance on volunteers. All of which creates friction for administrators and participants alike.
A registration form that takes too long. A payment process that's unclear. A family trying to sign up two children, who must start from scratch for each child. These aren't minor inconveniences; they're reasons to close the tab and reconsider. Drop-off before a season even begins is a real and measurable problem, and much of it is self-inflicted.
Simplifying registration and competition setup, reducing admin time for leagues and clubs, creating consistent experiences across regions, and enabling volunteers rather than overwhelming them. These are the fundamentals. At scale, small reductions in friction translate into meaningful gains in participation, retention, and satisfaction.
Governance alone isn't enough anymore
Perhaps the most important shift echoed across this year's agenda is the move toward experience design. For national governing bodies, this requires a genuine mindset change.
It's no longer just about regulating and organising sport. It's about designing experiences that people choose to come back to. Formats that reflect how people want to play today. Communication that is timely, relevant, and digital-first. Journeys that are intuitive from first interaction to season completion.
The downstream effect of getting this right is significant. Whether participants renew. Whether they refer someone. Whether they trust the sport enough to take on a volunteer role. That's what's at stake in the experience.
Let's talk in London
SportsPro London is at its best when it connects big ideas to real-world applications. This year's agenda makes that connection explicit.
If you're attending and looking to turn data into actionable participation insight, reduce operational complexity across your sport, or build commercial models around grassroots reach - it’d be great to connect.
The industry often looks upwards. But the organisations that succeed in the years ahead will be those that get the foundations right. That starts with participation.
Sam Grimley | Head of Partnerships, PlayHQ
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