CES 2026: Five Important Sports-Tech BuzzwordsThe terms highlight innovations for sports production at the showBy Daniel Frankel, SVG Contributor Tuesday, January 13, 2026 - 11:00 am
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From AR to VR to AI, buzzwords and acronyms drive the sprawling Consumer Electronics Show, permeating everything from exhibit-hall discussions to meeting-room panel presentations. Attracting more than 148,000 attendees to the Las Vegas Convention Center last week, CES 2026 was no different - particularly in the area of sports technology.
Here are five terms that buzzed around the show. They are somewhat interrelated, and each in its own way characterizes the sports-technology innovations showcased at CES.
AI FirstA popular marketing term for technology companies to show that artificial intelligence isn't just foundational to their offering, AI first is woven into the very fabric of their DNA.
Akta, for example, makes cloud-based production tools built on Google Gemini for sports-broadcaster clients, including the NFL, CBS, and FOX. When Google updates Gemini with, say, a new search feature that smooths production workflows by reducing the time producers spend searching for segments, Akta is able to tout that product upgrade right along with the technology giant. At CES 2026, Akta proudly announced itself as the AI-first video platform.
FandomIt's no longer enough just to telecast the game. Owners of rights to live-sports experiences, whether the video or at the venue itself, must maximize their substantial investments on a deeper level, connecting to viewers in a far more holistic way.
I see a shift from a single episodic engagement [for fans] to more of a persistent digital lifestyle, with 24/7 engagement with their sports team, says Alisha Pope, head of sports strategy and development, MGM Resorts.
According to Danielle Carney, director, U.S. video and live sports, Amazon Ads, her company was able forge that higher level of engagement with NASCAR fans using its Burn Bar : the onscreen graphic driven by that mother of all CES buzzwords, AI, lets viewers know approximately how much fuel a given driver has left in their tank. This gave Amazon, a rookie in serving a rabidly informed fanbase, a much better starting position.
When we launched our races, she explains, we used an AI tool. We took all the data - the teams, the tracks, the pit crews, the automakers, our data - and created an opportunity for fans to understand how much gas was in the tank. It seems so simple. But, for us to be able to invest in that technology for five simple races was important because we wanted to showcase to fans how we would show up. And fans loved it. [They were] all over [X], calling for us to get more races because of how much we understood the fandom.
Data, data, dataJust like engagement, data is, of course, a rather timeless, evergreen buzzword, used at any technology show for any market being served. It's the oxygen that tech breathes. But, as AI infiltrates sports technology, cumbersomely vast amounts of data represent the problem being solved for.
Speaking of Amazon Web Services' work with Formula 1, Samira Bekhtiar, GM, media and entertainment, games and sports, AWS, notes that her group outfits each race car with more than 300 sensors. We're working with Formula 1 to be able to ingest over 1.1 million points of data every second. If you really want to engage with fans, they crave that level of detail.
PermissibilityWith fans tapping into so much data, managing rights becomes an issue. There's an overhauling of permissibility of video that has to be evaluated, says Alexander Dao, VP, ads and sponsorships, Electronic Arts. Whether it's for fans to create their own art, whether it's structuring who owns licensing rights between teams and leagues and players, I think there's an opportunity to use AI to make that more simple.
Adds Denise Colella, VP, Global Digital Strategy Group, Adobe, When you can get the images on the field into the cloud and onto social in a matter of minutes, you need to know the rights, and you need to know what's permissible, and you need to know what the brand allows. When you're dealing with sports, you're dealing with the teams, the leagues, the advertisers, the stadiums, the broadcasters, the players. You have to think about all these layers of data.
All of this leads to what was perhaps the biggest buzzword of all at CES 2026.
Agentic AIThis term describes autonomous systems - well, agents - that can set goals, plan, reason, and take actions independently to achieve complex objectives with minimal human intervention.
Although solutions are still in their early phases of development, sports technologists see agentic AI as a way to manage the complexity involved with having so much data at their disposal.
But there's a caveat: leagues, teams, and media companies must organize data if agentic solutions are to be helpful. A sports organization is just like any other organization, says Sepi Motamedi, global head of sports and live media marketing, Nvidia. Data exists everywhere. AI, particularly agentic AI, requires context in order to do its work. Context relies on data. If you have data spread around everywhere, agents can't do their job optimally.
