FEATURED STORY
How OpenAI Is Using Sports As Its Distribution
OpenAI is expected to IPO in late 2026 for a $1 trillion valuation.
Two months ago, Anthropic raised a $30B Series G at a $380B valuation.
Almost every news headline is centered around AI and how it’s revolutionizing humanity as we speak.
But despite how impossible to escape those two letters, their reach isn’t as potent as it seems.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman himself retweeted an interesting X post:
And despite these frontier AI labs claiming that their products are reaching record-high adoption rates, the problem is that AI is surrounded by a cloud of hesitation. People are uncertain about its capabilities, downstream real-world societal impacts, and the plausibility of superintelligence that will distort the world as we know it today.
Simply put, they have a brand issue.
In direct contrast, sports fans pass teams down like family heirlooms. Across geographies and ideologies, people still connect through sports.
AI does not get that same love. If anything, it’s the opposite.
But paradoxically, these exact differences are what make sports so valuable to these AI labs.
If AI labs want trust, societal brand affinity, and cultural relevance, they have to meet the people where they already are.
And that place is sports.
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OpenAI x Spurs playbook
Let’s take a look at last week:
OpenAI launched the San Antonio Spurs’ AI studio – an OpenAI-powered platform turning fan engagement into personalized, interactive experiences, starting with a Michelob ULTRA activation.
SeatGeek became the first ticketing platform embedded directly into ChatGPT, bringing primary and resale inventory into conversational search and turning AI into a new discovery layer for live events.
OpenAI has already owned distribution at the app level.
ChatGPT hit ~900M weekly active users in February, adding 100M+ users in just a few months.
The concern, however, isn’t reach – it’s perception.
According to Pew Research Center, 50% of American adults are more concerned than excited about AI, up from 37% just a few years ago. The top concern: AI weakening human skills and connections.
So imagine if you’re the CEO of one of these leading AI labs, and are sitting on billions in fresh capital but facing a trust deficit…
You need to:
Shift the narrative from threat → utility
Build trust at a community level
Scale that trust globally, fast
How? Use professional sports teams as distribution.
Professional sports teams are historic, cultural tentpoles. Teams span various locations across the globe and reach hundreds of millions of communities. Fans have unwavering brand loyalty towards teams. It’s exactly what these AI companies need.
The playbook is already forming: start with sponsorship → build brand association → integrate the team ops and fan experience → distribute products to fans
The San Antonio Spurs are the blueprint:
Their initial relationship with OpenAI started in May of last year, where the Spurs used ChatGPT Enterprise as a tech solution. One of the main metrics cited was AI fluency, jumping from 14% to more than 85%.
Last week, the Spurs partnered with OpenAI to bring free OpenAI Academy events to San Antonio, focused on expanding AI literacy through hands-on instruction, practical support, and real-world guidance.
Most importantly, it’s San Antonio – not a coastal tech hub. We believe AI labs get more from collaborating with communities that are less involved in the overall AI discussion.
What Will The Sports Teams Get Out of It?
Great, so sports teams seem to be an effective brand & GTM strategy for AI companies; but what would sports teams get in return?
Premium sponsorship dollars from the fastest-growing companies in the world: AI labs are raising at historic scale – and teams get to attach themselves to category-defining companies as marquee partners.
A solution to the “invisible fan” problem: As search shifts from Google to black-box AI assistants, teams risk losing visibility into how fans discover games and content.
Partnerships with AI platforms reopen that data layer – giving teams access to intent, preferences, and behavior they otherwise wouldn’t see.A faster way to ship fan-facing products: Instead of multi-year internal builds, teams can plug into AI platforms and launch experiences instantly.
SeatGeek is the clearest example, embedding directly into ChatGPT as a native app. As ChatGPT scales, it becomes a new distribution layer for ticketing.
For teams, the implication is simple: these platforms are new surfaces to engage fans, capture data, and drive transactions.
Just look how big search / query is becoming: ChatGPT users send 2.5B prompts a day, doubling every 8 months.
So in short, we think this is a corporate partnership that goes beyond just a logo placement within an arena. It’s a symbiotic relationship where AI empowers people through their fandom and where sports teams are able to work with the companies building at the edge of innovation.
We believe that this is a precedent that other teams & AI companies will use to form partnerships.
It's only a matter of time before we’re walking into the OpenAI Arena, Grok Dome, or the Claude Coliseum.