Teamworks and Front Office Sports Survey Finds 15% Clear AI ROI Despite 90% Growth Expectations

The Adoption Benchmark story is not another vendor case study — it is a joint industry survey putting hard numbers on sports organizations pouring money into AI while few can prove a return.

Teamworks and Front Office Sports have published The State of AI in Sports 2026, a joint survey that maps the gap between AI ambition and measurable results across college athletic departments, North American pro teams and league offices, multi-club ownership groups, national governing bodies, and Olympic programs. The official Front Office Sports report page went live Oct. 16. More than 200 organizations answered; the published findings rest on 164 in-scope responses from organizations that operate teams, athletes, or competitions, collected Aug. 21–Sept. 16, 2026 (78% United States, 9% Europe). Teamworks CTO Reed Shaffner wrote the report’s executive summary.

The headline split is stark. 90% of respondents expect their organization’s AI use to grow over the next two to three years, and 79% increased AI investment in the last 12 months. Only 15% report clear, measurable ROI; another 37% say they see value they have not quantified. 61% say all or most of the AI pilots they have started are still in active use. Clear ROI by segment lands at 14% in college, 17% in North American pro, and 14% internationally — nearly the same wall in every market.

How organizations decide on AI matters more than how loudly they buy it. When AI is deployed against an organization-wide strategy, 37% of respondents report clear ROI; when it is rolled out silo by silo, 2% do. Among organizations spending $50,000 or more a year on AI, clear ROI runs 55% with a dedicated AI budget line and 5% without one. About 24% of respondents have a dedicated AI budget; 38% fund AI from existing software and operating budgets; and 29% do not know how AI spending is funded. Half the field has no clearly accountable AI owner. Organizations that made neither a dedicated budget decision nor named an owner show clear ROI at 4%; those that made both show 47%. On a connected athlete record, both decisions lift clear ROI to about two in three; on a fragmented record, about one in eight.

AI is already spread across the building. Current use by function: data and analytics 73%, marketing and communications 51%, operations 44%, performance 43%, content 40%, fan engagement 37%, and sponsorship 34%. Buyers rank accuracy (77%), data security (65%), and integration with existing systems (45%) far ahead of underlying-model sophistication (9%). The top planned investment for the next 12 months is integrating AI into systems already in place (58%); only 12% plan to upgrade or replace a core system. Organizations planning to build their own AI show clear ROI at 31%, and 69% of that group already have a designated AI leader.

North American pro organizations are furthest ahead on activity — more than half have AI deployed, and 87% raised AI investment in the past year — yet 23% of NA pro respondents are unsure whether AI has returned anything, versus 20% in college and 6% internationally. College athletics sits earlier: about half of programs are still exploring AI or not exploring it, 14% plan no meaningful AI investment next year, and among AI users close to athlete data, 40% need four or more systems to see one athlete. Of the 164 in-scope organizations, 106 work closely enough with athlete data to answer that systems question; 91% of those need two or more systems, and 37% need four or more.

Respondents describe the silo plainly. "We don’t really talk about it. I think everyone uses it on a siloed basis to help them get their work done more efficiently, but we have not adopted it across the board." — Director, Collegiate Athletic Department. On the other side of the gap, operators who have moved past experimentation talk about AI differently: "We use AI in a number of areas, and when we do, the output is the decision." — Owner, Multi-Club Ownership Group, U.S. Buyers who want sport-native systems put the opportunity this way: "The real opportunity is moving beyond general-purpose AI toward systems that understand how the sport actually works and can help employees make better, faster decisions within that context." — Director, U.S. Professional League.

Teamworks discloses its stake in the report: the company says it has spent 20 years building an operating system used by more than 7,000 sports, military, and public safety organizations and is embedding sport-native AI into that stack. The survey should be read as partner research, not an independent audit. Even so, the published ROI gap — 15% clear returns against 90% growth expectations, 37% under an org-wide strategy versus 2% siloed — is useful ballast against the week’s vendor claims and gives sports operators a documented three-part scorecard: a dedicated AI budget, a named owner, and a connected athlete record.