Despite the NBA signing a massive 11-year, $76 billion media rights deal in 2024, and franchise valuations across the NFL, NBA, MLB, and NHL increasing double digits seemingly every year, sports media rights are still severely undervalued.
My theory is simple: high-income workers will leverage AI to gain back leisure time → rather than spending that time consuming content on streaming services or social media, AI’s ability to reduce production costs to near zero will flood the internet with synthetic content → sports will become one of the last remaining scarce, authentic, and communal experiences that need to be seen live and can’t be replicated by AI → more bidders for the same rights will drive prices higher.
This is a simple vision. The entire promise of AI is that it will make people more productive. Some people will use that extra time to work more, while others will take vacations, hang out with friends, or attend events. We are already seeing this play out — Marriott says weekend bookings now start on Thursday, and GPS tracking firms say the traditional 9-5 commute has shifted to a 10-4 schedule. But if AI also reduces the cost of producing a piece of content to near zero across both social media and streaming, the internet will become flooded with cheap, fake content. That will push people to seek human connection through live sports.
But that’s only part of the story. The sports media rights market has changed dramatically over the last decade, and those changes help explain why today’s multibillion-dollar team valuations could look like a bargain in the future.
Here’s why…