The sports market may not be your business, and that's OK

By Jeff Angus — June 8, 2026

A few years ago, we had a front-row seat to something most executives in the sports industry get wrong. Springbok Analytics, a company we worked with at Three Horizons, had built a platform that used MRI scans to analyze muscle health. The technology emerged from neuromuscular disease research at the University of Virginia and was simultaneously finding application within professional sports.

The two markets looked completely different on paper. Very different buyers, timelines and sales conversations. But what we observed was the learning flowing in both directions. Research on muscle wasting in patients with FSHD (facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy) was informing how performance coaches understood their athletes. Data from those same elite environments was helping researchers better interpret muscle health in a healthcare setting.

We watched a company that understood what each market was actually for, and when. That clarity made all the difference, and many companies don't have it.

Sports is not one market

The sports market is fragmented and widely misunderstood. Treating it as a monolith is where most early mistakes begin.

Pro sports is the smallest and most competitive entry point. The number of buyers is limited, teams are selective and skeptical, and sales cycles orbit the season in ways that slow everything down. More importantly, pro sports often functions as a marketing channel disguised as a customer. Truly novel technologies break through entire leagues occasionally (Trajekt in baseball being a recent example). But those cases are the exception, not the rule.

College is bifurcated by NIL. Olympic systems are research-minded and budget conscious. Youth sports offers scale but remains fragmented with less logo value.

What sports actually gives you

Sports is valuable for most companies with a logical connection to the market.

The most important thing it gives you is validation. Competition in elite environments is unforgiving, and unnecessary technology gets exposed fast. If something works consistently with athletes and coaches who are trying to win, that credibility travels well beyond the locker room. It opens doors with customers, investors and potential hires in ways that are hard to replicate elsewhere.

There is also real logo value in sports, especially early on. A few strong names on your customer list can shorten conversations and accelerate fundraising rounds. But you cannot build a durable business on logos alone.

Working in sports also helps with recruitment. People want to work on hard problems with visible impact. That matters when you are competing for talent against more well-known companies. Used correctly, sports sharpens the product, strengthens the story and raises the ceiling for recruiting and fundraising alike.

Your next market is almost always larger and slower

For most growing, sports-focused companies, the long-term opportunity sits somewhere beyond. For many, it is healthcare. For others it is military performance, education or direct-to-consumer. No matter the destination, the pattern is consistent: The next market is larger, more complex and ultimately more rewarding than sports alone.

Healthcare is the clearest example. Patients increasingly behave like consumers. Preventive care, longevity and performance optimization have moved from niche interests to mainstream expectations. A lot of that thinking originated in sports. Elite performance environments also produce some of the strongest longitudinal data available, and for researchers and clinicians trying to understand injury, recovery and human performance, that data has enormous value.

Timing is everything

Early on, sports usually makes the most sense as the primary focus. It builds validation, credibility and storytelling momentum. The next market tends to have longer sales cycles, more complex buying processes and a higher bar for proof.

The six- to 18-month window following a major milestone (funding, launch) is when the crossover typically starts — paid pilots, research partnerships, cross-learning between markets. It is also when companies start to feel the actual cost of serving two very different markets simultaneously — different messaging, different stakeholders, different budgets. There is upside in operating across both, but founders who are not clear-eyed about the complexity tend to spread themselves thin at exactly the wrong moment.

The brand mistake many make

Here is where most founders miss something important: You do not need to build a sports brand to win in sports.

If the product works, the word will get out. Coaches talk, execs and performance staff often move between teams, and athletes share what works. You do not need to over-signal "sports" to earn adoption inside the market, and heavily sports-coded brands can limit you later. Messaging, naming and visuals that feel right in a locker room do not always translate into healthcare systems, defense procurement or enterprise settings. Rebranding once you have scale is harder than most anticipate.

Whoop is the clearest example of this. The company started as a sports recovery tracker, built credibility with elite athletes and developed a brand around broader human performance. In April 2026, Whoop was selected into the CMS Innovation Center's ACCESS program for chronic disease management. Two weeks earlier, the company raised $575 million at a $10.1 billion valuation, with Abbott and Mayo Clinic on the cap table alongside elite athletes.

Its destination happened to be healthcare. For other companies it will be somewhere else. But the logic is the same: Sports opens the door, and the next market is where the business actually scales.

Those who get this right are realistic about timing, knowledgeable about what each market actually offers and disciplined enough to build a brand from Day 1 that can carry them somewhere much larger than where they started.

Sports is a proving ground. For most companies, it is not the business. And that's OK.

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Jeff Angus is founder at Vancouver-based agency Three Horizons Group.