How AI is changing the global fan experienceAdobe is giving sports fans access to themed templates that can be adapted and shared to celebrate favourite teams, players and moments.MARISSA DACAYGift this article3 min read3 hours agoWhen the San Francisco 49ers and Los Angeles Rams meet at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in September, the occasion will represent far more than the NFL’s first regular-season game in Australia. It will be a reminder of how quickly sport has become global, digital and deeply personal. A league once experienced by Australian supporters mainly through television highlights and delayed broadcasts now arrives in Melbourne with mobile apps, social content, live updates and digital communities.The NFL Melbourne game on September 11 is part of the league’s wider international push, but reaching a new market takes more than putting two teams on a plane. The challenge is to build meaningful relationships with supporters discovering the sport for the first time, while still serving established fans across the globe with strong loyalties to teams and players.Technology is becoming central to that task. Adobe and the NFL have expanded their global partnership to combine artificial intelligence, creativity and marketing technology across the fan experience. Adobe CX Enterprise, Adobe Express and Adobe Firefly are being used to help the league and its 32 clubs understand fan interests, produce content and deliver more relevant experiences across NFL.com, the NFL App, NFL OnePass, social channels, and live events.For supporters, the technology itself should be largely invisible. What matters is receiving the right content at the right time, whether that is an update about a favourite player, information about an event, behind-the-scenes footage, or a highlight from a game that has just finished.This is particularly import-ant as sporting competitions pursue international growth. A lifelong 49ers fan in San Fran-cisco Bay Area, a new Rams fan in Melbourne and a casual viewer encountering the NFL through social media will not necessarily want the same experience. Treating fans as a single audience risks making communication generic and less valuable. A connected view of fan preferences and behaviour allows sporting organisations to recognise these differences. It can help determine which teams, players and moments interest a supporter, how they prefer to engage and which channels they use most often. Content and communications can then be adjusted accordingly, with appropriate attention to consent and privacy.The same principle is shaping Adobe’s partnership with another football code, the Premier League, which has 1.8 billion followers across 189 countries and nearly 12 million people playing Fantasy Premier League worldwide.Premier League fandom takes many forms. Some supporters follow one club across generations. Others are drawn to an individual player, spend hours refining a fantasy team, or consume tactical analysis from the other side of the world. Adobe CX Enterprise helps the league bring together information from its website, app and Fantasy Premier League to better understand those different journeys.The objective is not personalisation for its own sake. It is to make an enormous global competition feel more relevant to each person following it. The modern fan also expects to participate, not simply consume. Supporters now react to sporting moments through memes, graphics, videos, fantasy competitions, and social posts. Their own content has become part of the spectacle, extending the conversation well beyond the match itself.Adobe is giving NFL fans access to themed templates that can be adapted and shared to celebrate favourite teams, players and moments. Premier League supporters can do the same, creating personalised Fantasy Premier League badges and other content without needing professional design skills. This shift matters because fan creativity strengthens the connection between a competition and its audience. A supporter who creates and shares something is doing more than receiving a marketing message. They are expressing identity, joining a community and contributing to the culture around the sport.For marketing teams, the challenge is creating professional content at a much greater scale. Fans expect images and video almost immediately after a major play, often tailored for different platforms, audiences and markets. More than 140 NFL Live Content Correspondents use Adobe Creative Cloud applications including Photoshop, Lightroom, Premiere Pro and Adobe Express to capture, edit and distribute material from games. Their work includes real-time video and photography, creator content and more personal player moments away from the field. AI can help these teams produce, adapt and localise material more efficiently while maintaining brand standards. That capability becomes increasingly important when a league is communicating with millions of people across different countries, languages and channels.These examples point to a broader change in sports marketing. The fan journey no longer begins at kick-off and ends with the final whistle. It can stretch across an entire week or season, moving between live attendance, streaming, fantasy competitions, social platforms, email, mobile applications and fan-created content. Managing that journey requires sporting organisations to connect data, creative production and delivery. It also requires restraint. Relevance depends on understanding what a supporter has chosen to share and using that information responsibly. More communication does not automatically produce a stronger relationship. The most effective experiences are those that feel useful, timely and natural. A well-timed match alert, a piece of content about a favourite player or a creative tool that helps a supporter celebrate a win can deepen engagement without overwhelming the fan.As the NFL lands in Melbourne, Australians will see a global league bring its game and fan experiences to a new market. The MCG will host the main event, but lasting fan connections will be built well beyond the game. Marissa Dacay is the global vice-president of enterprise marketing at Adobe.IN PARTNERSHIP WITHRead related topics:Artificial IntelligenceJoin the conversationAdd your comment to this storyTo join the conversation, please log in. Don't have an account? RegisterJoin the conversation, you are commenting as Logout