Why FinTech must become the infrastructure sport depends on

By Andrew Smith, Founder & CEO SPORTA

The global sports economy is vast. It creates close to $2.3 trillion in annual revenue and growth is forecast to rise at 10% CAGR, reaching $3.7 trillion by 2030 and as much as $8.8 trillion by 2050, all according to the World Economic Forum.

Sport no longer covers just professional leagues and grassroots participation, it is deeply embedded into the financial fabric of sectors such as tourism, apparel, media, and technology.

And yet, despite this size, impact and growth trajectory, sport remains significantly financially underserved. This in turn creates human impacts in terms of access, inclusion, activity-levels and financial security.

This is not because sport lacks economic relevance or commercial sophistication. It is because the fundamental financial infrastructure required to support today’s sporting world simply does not exist in many places in the world.

A Global Industry Running on Fragile Foundations

Sport is structurally different from the sectors financial services are built to serve. It is seasonal, fragmented, volunteer-led, and deeply unstandardised. Income fluctuates. Governance structures vary. Many clubs operate as charities, community interest companies, owner-led projects or hybrid entities that do not fit the “70/30” model banks are optimised for.

Traditional banks thrive on standardisation. It simplifies risk, lowers cost, and enables scale. Sport resists all three. While large institutions can absorb risk volatility, they struggle to design products that actually work for clubs, athletes and community organisations. Challenger banks, meanwhile, face a different constraint: they often lack the maturity in risk controls required to support complex, non-standard corporate structures at scale.

The result is a systemic blind spot. The gap between sport’s economic importance and the financial services available to it is now so large it is barely recognised as a gap at all.

Societal risks of failure

This infrastructure deficit is no longer just an operational inconvenience, it is a societal risk.

The World Economic Forum makes this risk clear. Physical inactivity, climate change and environmental degradation could, in a combined fashion, reduce sports-economy revenues by 14% ($517 billion) by 2030 and 18% ($1.6 trillion) by 2050. Layered onto this, it is a sobering reality that nearly one-third of adults globally are inactive, a figure the WEF expects to rise to 35% by 2030, which would imply up to 800 million fewer active participants.

At the same time, sport is increasingly viewed as a long-term asset class.

Women’s professional sport, for instance, has grown dramatically since 2020, while elite franchises are valued in the tens of billions, and sports tourism contributes $672 billion annually to global travel spend.

Sport is growing, but the foundations remain fragile, and activity levels globally are shrinking. For the long-term sustainability and growth of sport, you need it to be completely inclusive from the elite down to activity-levels of the average person on the street, and for that to happen financial infrastructure must be a prerequisite.

Why FinTech Hasn’t Solved This (… yet)

FinTech has been built on disruption, but most innovation has often been evolutionary rather than revolutionary. New platforms digitised existing behaviours, optimised processes that already worked for traditional customers.

This approach delivered enormous value but it rarely ventured into unfamiliar territory. FinTech founders tend to solve problems they have experienced themselves. Unless you have experience in operating a sports club, managed seasonal cashflow, or tried to change bank signatories as a volunteer treasurer, sport never appears on the opportunity map.

But when you look, it sits there, like a gaping structural hole.

The exception proves the rule. Stripe did not simply improve payments, it enabled online commerce at scale. It created infrastructure where none existed. Sport now requires a similar shift in mindset.

Why Now Matters

The timing is not accidental.

Sport is entering a period of structural change. Capital is flowing, new ownership models are emerging and regulators are setting new guardrails. Athletes are building personal brands earlier. Women’s sport is accelerating. At the same time, participation levels are under pressure and community clubs are being asked to operate with greater professionalism than ever before.

This combination – growth at the top, fragility at the base – creates a moment of inflection.

Financial services has reached a similar crossroads. Over the past decade, FinTech has proven it can reshape entire industries when it chooses to focus. Payments, foreign exchange and embedded finance have all been transformed by specialist infrastructure designed for modern realities.

Sport now sits at that same threshold.

The question is no longer whether it is commercially significant enough to deserve dedicated financial infrastructure. The scale is undeniable. The question is whether financial services is

prepared to treat sport as a system that requires purpose-built thinking rather than adaptation of existing models.

Unlocking Access

When financial infrastructure improves, opportunity expands.

We are already beginning to see examples of how financial thinking can unlock participation and progression in new ways. In sailing, we recently undertook a partnership with Performance Sailcraft and FinTech Magic that shows how better financial frameworks can support young athletes in navigating what has traditionally been an expensive and forbidding pathway into elite competition.

When the funding structures are clearer, for sailing and indeed across many sports, when support mechanisms are better aligned, and when individual financial literacy is strengthened, talent finds itself not limited purely by access to capital or connections.

Across grassroots football, cricket, athletics and beyond, countless volunteers and aspiring athletes face avoidable financial friction. Confusing processes, limited guidance and outdated systems quietly restrict inclusion. Improving financial understanding and simplifying structures does not just make administration easier, it widens the entry point into sport itself.

Financial literacy, in this context, becomes as important as liquidity.

Building the Foundations

Before sport can fully realise its long-term growth potential, it needs stable foundations.

That begins with ensuring clubs, organisations and athletes have access to modern, reliable financial tools that reflect how they actually operate, not how traditional small businesses operate.

The objective is not complexity. It is clarity.

– Clearer processes.

– More accessible systems.

– A clearer alignment between the function of sport and how finance supports it.

These are foundational things, and once in place, innovation becomes possible. Without these building blocks, even the most ambitious visions struggle to scale.

Consider FinTech as the Enabler, Not a Vertical

Sport should not be treated as just another vertical to conquer. It should be horizontal infrastructure, an enabler upon which healthier athletes, stronger communities and more sustainable ecosystems are built.

If FinTech can rise to that challenge, the prize is not just a commercial opportunity. It is the chance to underpin one of the world’s most powerful engines of economic, social and physical wellbeing.