From a one-day experiment in 2025, to a sold-out Manchester showcase, to three days at the heart of MAD//Fest London this July, Ben Phillips tells us why MAD//Sports has become the conversation the marketing industry can't afford to sit out.

When MAD//Sports launched as a one-day festival-within-a-festival at MAD//Fest London in 2025, we had a thought. Sport isn't just another vertical to bolt onto a marketing plan. It's the single most powerful emotional engine our industry has and most of the advertising ecosystem was still under-indexing on it.

We were right. The response blew past anything we'd forecast. Brands, rights holders, broadcasters, agencies and AdTech platforms turned up en force, the stage was standing room only from the first session to the last, and the feedback was unanimous: give us more of this. So, we did.

Earlier this year we took it north. MAD//Sports North in Manchester was, bluntly, one of the best days I've been involved in. The sessions were sharper, the conversations more honest, and the people in the room, the marketers actually spending the money, the broadcasters rebuilding their business models in real time, the rights holders rethinking what fandom even means.

We’re pushing each other harder than I've seen in almost any other industry setting. None of that happened by accident. North was a deliberate springboard, a pressure test for the themes, the format, and the community we're bringing to London in July 2026.

And London 2026 is a different animal. Three days. Thousands of senior decision-makers across the wider MAD//Fest audience. The MAD//Sports Clubhouse returns bigger, with more spaces to play, compete and network, all built around the MAD//Sports Stage and the MAD//Feast Restaurant. If you were there last year, forget what you remember; this is a step change.

Here's what we're really going to get into.

Live sports broadcasting is undergoing the most significant structural reset in a generation. Streaming economics, direct-to-consumer rights, addressable advertising inside live environments, we'll have the people making those calls on stage, not commentating on them from the outside.

Fan data. Every rights holder is sitting on decades of real-time behavioural signal and, candidly, most still aren't turning it into actionable marketing insight. We'll showcase the ones who are and ask the uncomfortable question of why more aren't.

And the bigger argument running through all of it: sport is now the leading driver of emotional engagement and high-value brand association in an attention economy that is otherwise fragmenting by the week. If you're a CMO still treating sport as a sponsorship line item rather than a core growth lever, MAD//Sports London is where you'll find out what you've been missing.

The timing is, I'll admit, slightly ridiculous, in the best way. We overlap with Wimbledon. The Tour de France is rolling through the french countryside. And because we can't let the summer of sport pass without marking it properly, we're celebrating the biggest show in town, the 2026 FIFA World Cup with the MAD//Sports Watch Party on Tuesday evening in the Clubhouse.

Bring your voice, bring your colleagues, pick a team.

We'll be announcing our line-up of Speakers, Headline Sponsors and On-site Activations over the coming days and weeks and some of them are going to make you sit up. I'd rather you heard them from us first, so keep an eye on this newsletter or drop me a line. 

Whether you were with us for the one-day launch, joined us in Manchester, or are coming to MAD//Sports for the first time in July we'd love to have you in the room.

This is being built for people who want to push the industry's thinking on sport forward, not simply talk about it.

Come and join us. You really don't want to be watching this one from the touchline.