SVG Sit-Down: Inside the Sports Rights Landscape (and the new IMG) with Andrew Demsey, IMG SVP, North America RightsBy Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director Monday, November 3, 2025 - 3:02 am
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The U.S. sports rights market is undergoing a bit of a transformation and, more importantly, so are the financial ties between sports leagues and media partners. Also undergoing a transformation? IMG, which has expanded its remit to include a wider breadth of services which ultimately benefit its clients as well as its business foundation. SVG had a chance to catch up with Andrew Demsey, IMG SVP, North America, Rights, at Sportel to discuss the changes not only within IMG but the broader sports rights landscape.
What have been some of the key highlights for the IMG U.S. team in 2025?
Under IMG President Adam Kelly and the new leadership team we've really gone away from just being specific functions of media to having core pillars to support services, sponsorship or brand partnerships, and we also now have a digital group. So, there are a lot of functions that weren't there before and are now in the U.S. and it's been nice to introduce clients on our rights side to our head of partnerships or our head of production. And while we're certainly leading the charge on the media front, there's a lot of good reason to bring us to the table for those other things. Looking at it from a competitive landscape, we now have a full deck with all those different core capabilities around us.
Andrew Demsey, IMG SVP, North America Rights, says IMG's expanded services offering better meets the needs of clients.
Walk me through those pillars and what they are.
Well, you know us on the media rights side and that is a core pillar people are very familiar with, like our media rights advisory consulting. But we now have a brand partnerships group that is rolled into the TKO brand partnerships group. And that gives us expertise of TKO across UFC and WWE as well as really seasoned sponsorship and partnership executives that are selling individual events.
And then we have a big production facility in Stamford and WWE where Stephen Cook, EVP of IMG Studios, is now running things and that facility is amazing.
Lastly, there is our digital function which helps with social media, social content, social growth strategy, and all of that is very relevant. And then we still have the news archive rights division and channels, and all of those different functions are sitting there and offer us the ability to go to our clients' partners and help out.
What are some key recent accomplishments for IMG in the U.S.?
The last year has been our year of tennis as we were supporting the USTA and getting their new ESPN deal done. And then we also had a Roland Garros deal and WTA so from an IMG standpoint we value our tennis relationships a lot and it was nice to get those done after also coming off a big Wimbledon deal. And then there was a whirlwind of things from college as well as IndyCar and helping IndyCar and Penske Entertainment CEO Mark Miles and the Penske team.
From a rights standpoint we definitely celebrate those deals as well as new functions like our advisory consulting which helps with scheduling governance, media expansion, and team expansion like with the NWSL. We've also helped the NWSL a lot with other different functions.
So, we've just really developed into a very formidable option for people working in the sports market.
There have been some interesting deals this year with the NFL taking a stake in ESPN and then Fox taking a stake in Indy Racing. What do you think those mean to the broader industry?
I think they're really interesting. I'm commenting from the outside because even on the Indy deal, where we advised on the Fox media rights deal, the Penske and Indy ownership group and the Fox Group negotiated that separately. And what's interesting about that is it shows that Fox is a motivated partner and wants to help grow Indy; it's not just a lease on the property. And ESPN has done something similar with the Premier Lacross League where they acquired a stake in a rapidly growing sport.
And the on the other side, the NFL investing in ESPN is about ESPN being a key partner for the NFL as NFL is now year-round not just on however many Sundays a year. So, it's probably a really good place for the NFL to make sure that they're in the mix with ESPN long term.
Right now, getting equity is a really hot item and it will be interesting to see what the next equity deal will be or if they keep getting bigger and bigger.
What's your take on the health of the rights market in the U.S? It does seem to be that rights packages are fracturing and being split more ways so are rights deals getting harder to do?
Rights deals were never not hard to do but there was a day when it would be a few people sitting at the table and you would ask what do you want, is this a fair deal, agree and then go to lunch.
But now as the market shifts and packaging changes everyone is under more pressure to make money and not have sports rights as a loss leader even though there are some of those deals still being made. But [the need to have deals that make money] puts pressures that we haven't seen before and then that makes the go-to-market process very different.
What I think is really interesting is we are now in a world where if you're a rights holder you're no longer thinking about just one deal. You're thinking about different layers of packages and you're thinking about growing beyond your primary rights deal in terms of attracting new audience, new subscribers, and new fans. It's no longer just about the primary rights transaction: we have to think about everything. And again, where we are now with al
