NRL Media Rights Pressure, Google’s Football AI Deals & Custom Merch

Job Cuts at Seven Signal a Weakened Sports Rights Market? – Always Be Watching *

Seven's cuts raise big questions for NRL rights.

AU, NRL, Media Rights, Broadcast, Commercial Strategy

Amazon now lets you design custom merch using AI – TechCrunch *

On-demand AI merch hints at new club retail models.

Global, AI, Fan Engagement, Merchandising, Revenue

Perplexity Deep Research – Perplexity

Automated research that could transform sponsorship prep work.

Global, AI, Data & Insights, Sponsorship, Sports Marketing

Why AI Hasn't Replaced Software Engineers, And Won't – Normal Computing

Useful framing for AI as leverage, not staff replacement.

Global, AI, Sports Marketing, Data Strategy, Sponsorship

Elon Musk's SpaceX kicks off mega IPO wave with $75 billion haul – Reuters

SpaceX's IPO is really about connectivity and streaming.

Global, AI, Media Rights, Digital Infrastructure, Broadcasting

The three hard-tech moonshots fueling SpaceX's unbelievable IPO – TechCrunch

How future compute and satellites reshape sports distribution.

Global, AI, Media Rights, Infrastructure, Sponsorship

Meta's Edits app is getting an AI assistant and a desktop version – TechCrunch

AI-assisted creative could supercharge lean club content teams.

Global, AI, Content Strategy, Social Media, Fan Engagement

Pinterest signs a $4 billion AI deal with AWS – Retail Dive

Visual search at Pinterest is a blueprint for highlights.

US, AI, Visual Search, Digital Marketing, Sponsorship

Xiaomi's new open source, agentic AI coding harness MiMo Code beats Claude Code at ultra-long, 200+ step tasks – VentureBeat

Open-source agentic coding could boost small sports tech teams.

Global, AI, Engineering, Data, SportsTech

DoorDash's new AI chatbot lets you order with prompts and photos – TechCrunch *

Conversational ordering offers a blueprint for ticketing UX.

US, AI, Fan Engagement, Ticketing, Commercial

Anthropic's Claude Fable 5 is a version of Mythos the public can access today – TechCrunch

Raises questions about elite versus everyday AI access.

Global, AI, Data Strategy, Governance, Competitive Advantage

Anthropic Halts Access to Top AI Models After U.S. Ban on Foreign Use – WSJ *

Export controls force Anthropic to shut off Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for all users.

US, AI, Policy, Export Controls, Security

OpenAI acquired Ona for long-running agents – OpenAI *

Persistent agents could automate season-long club workflows.

Global, AI, Marketing, Data, Operations

Mythos-class models will diffuse throughout the world by 2029 – Spate Der

Near-frontier models running locally reshapes data strategies.

Global, AI, Strategy, Data, Privacy

Building a Good Vertical Agent – Normal Computing

How to structure data so agents actually deliver value.

Global, AI, Data Infrastructure, Sponsorship, Sports Marketing

Anthropic's AI jobs paper – Vincentschmalbach.com

Three-stage roadmap for managing AI-driven job disruption.

Global, AI, Workforce, Sports Tech, Governance