SBL Summit 2027: The Top Sports Business Conference For Pro Sports Executives, Innovators, and Investors

Sports Business Leaders is bringing its network together in Philadelphia for our first large-scale sports industry conference: the SBL Summit in July 2027.

Since launching SBL in 2024, we've hosted more than 80 events across 12 cities, from monthly gatherings in Philadelphia to events in New York, Washington, Boston, Detroit, South Florida, Las Vegas, and beyond.

Those rooms have included executives from professional teams and leagues, founders building sports companies, investors looking for their next opportunity, and companies trying to grow within the sports industry.

More importantly, we've seen what happens after the event ends.

Introductions have turned into sales meetings. Companies have found new clients. Founders have met investors. Executives from different parts of the industry have built relationships they likely wouldn't have developed otherwise.

Through SBL, we've helped our VIP members and business development clients generate more than $1 million in new business.

The SBL Summit is our opportunity to bring everything we've learned from those 80+ events into one room.

Why We're Building the SBL Summit

The most valuable moments at SBL events happened away from the microphone.

Someone gets introduced to the person standing next to them. A team executive starts talking about a challenge they're trying to solve. A company realizes its product could be relevant.

An investor meets a founder. Two people who have known each other online finally have a real conversation.

We've watched those interactions happen repeatedly over the last two years. We've also learned that who is in the room matters just as much as what is happening on stage.

That principle will shape the SBL Summit. We're planning to bring together 500+ sports executives and industry leaders for two days of conversations, networking, relationship building, and business development.

We want someone to be able to look around the room and consistently find people worth meeting.

Who We're Building the Room For

The Summit is centered around three groups that we believe should spend more time together:

• Professional team and league executives

• Sports investors and ownership groups

• Select companies helping sports organizations grow

We expect executives from the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, MLS, emerging leagues, international properties, venues, and other sports organizations to participate.

The company side will be intentionally curated as well.

Over the last two years, we've worked with companies trying to sell into sports, and we've seen how difficult that process can be. Getting a meeting is one challenge. Understanding who actually owns a decision, what a team cares about, when budgets are set, and how an organization evaluates a new partner can be even harder.

The Summit will give companies access to decision-makers while helping them better understand how professional sports organizations evaluate technology, services, partnerships, and new ideas.

For team and league executives, it creates an opportunity to meet peers, learn what's working elsewhere, and discover companies that could help solve real business challenges.

For investors, it provides exposure to the operators, properties, entrepreneurs, and trends shaping where sports is heading next.

What We'll Talk About

Our speakers will primarily be the people actually operating and investing in professional sports. Programming will cover areas including:

• Partnerships and sponsorship

• Revenue generation

• Fan experience

• Data and analytics

• Sports technology and AI

• Media

• Investment and ownership

• Emerging leagues and sports

We want these conversations to go beyond broad industry trends and get into how sports organizations are actually operating and making decisions.

Executives will share how they’re approaching fan engagement, partnerships, revenue growth, data, technology, and other priorities inside their organizations. Investors will provide perspective on where capital is moving across sports, while founders and operators will discuss what it takes to build and scale in the industry.

The goal is for attendees to hear practical insights from people doing the work every day and leave with ideas they can apply to their own organizations.

Who Will Be on Stage?

We're officially opening our call for speakers.

We've already received interest from executives across all five major U.S. leagues: the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, and MLS.

We're looking for leaders across partnerships, revenue, strategy, fan experience, data and analytics, technology, media, investment, and other areas shaping the business of sports.

Our approach to speakers will be similar to our approach to SBL events: curate people who will make the room better.

We want operators willing to talk about what they're actually seeing inside their organizations, investors who can explain where they're deploying capital and why, and entrepreneurs who have built businesses that can teach the rest of the industry something.

What We Want to Happen in Philadelphia

We want the impact of the Summit to extend well beyond the two days in Philadelphia. The goal is for attendees to leave with new relationships, practical ideas, and business opportunities that continue to develop long after the event.

That could mean a company beginning a relationship with a professional team, an investor discovering a new opportunity, an executive learning from a peer, or a sports property finding the right partner to help it grow. We've already seen these outcomes across the SBL community, and the Summit gives us the opportunity to create them at a much larger scale.

Bringing the SBL Network Together

Philadelphia is where SBL started, but over the last two years, the community has grown far beyond it.

Through 80+ events across 12 cities, we've built relationships with team and league executives, investors, founders, operators, and companies from across the sports industry. Each event and each market has added another layer to the network.

The SBL Summit is an opportunity to bring those relationships together in one place. People who have attended our events in Philadelphia, New York, Washington, Boston, Detroit, South Florida, Las Vegas and beyond will have the opportunity to connect with each other, alongside people experiencing SBL for the first time.

In July 2027, we're bringing 500+ leaders from across that network to Philadelphia for two days built around relationships, insights, and business opportunities.

The Summit represents the next stage of what we've been building since our first SBL event, and an opportunity to make the entire network more valuable for everyone

involved.

Interested in Speaking?

If you're a professional team or league executive, sports investor, operator, entrepreneur, or industry leader with experience the sports business community can learn from, we'd like to hear from you.

Apply to Speak

We're building the speaker lineup now and looking for people who can contribute to the conversations we want happening in Philadelphia next July.