I've read decks from sports with nothing in common. Cover the logo and I couldn't tell you which was which. That's not a coincidence.

Here’s something I see that most people in sport don't. Because I work across multiple sports, teams, and leagues, I read sales decks from worlds that have almost nothing in common. And the thing I can't unsee is that they're nearly all the exact same deck.

Same slides. Same order. Reach, then demographics, then the broadcast map, then a couple of activation ideas near the end. Cover the logo on the front and you genuinely could not tell one sport from another. Different colours. Same everything else.

I once read decks from two completely different sports, both pitching to the same kind of brand. For one of them, that category made total sense. It was a real part of how their event actually works. For the other, there was no real reason for it to be there at all. And yet about 85% of what they pitched was the same. One had a genuine reason to be in that sport and the other didn't, but the deck came out nearly identical either way.

Why it happens

It's not laziness. It's that the moment a deal needs to get done, everyone reaches for the same thing. The numbers. It's the safe move, it's what the last deck did, it's what the room expects. So every deck opens the same way, and when everyone opens the same way, everyone ends up selling the same thing.

And I want to be clear here, because this comes up every time. This isn't me saying data is bad. It isn't. Sport data has actually got incredibly good, far more specific and useful than it was even a few years ago. That's a real gain. The point is narrower than "data bad." It's that however specific the data gets, it still doesn't translate into a sales deck that feels like you. It proves the opportunity. It was never going to be the thing that sets you apart.

Now, some of you are thinking the data is so detailed these days that anyone could tell it's a tennis crowd or a boxing crowd from the numbers alone. Fair. The data can be that specific. But specific and different are not the same thing. Knowing exactly who your crowd is still doesn't tell a brand why your world is worth being part of. It tells them the size and make-up of the room. It doesn't tell them what it feels like to be in it.

What actually sets you apart

Here's the part almost nobody puts in the deck. What your sport is actually like. Why your fans love it the way they do. What your athletes put themselves through. What the whole thing means to the people inside it. That's the part that's genuinely different from one sport to the next, and it's the part that gets left out, because it takes real work to know and the numbers are right there and feel like enough.

That's the whole gap. Everyone leads with the thing that makes them look the same, and skips the thing that would set them apart. The story is the only part a competitor can't copy, because it only exists in your world.

So here's the test. If you could lift your best idea out of your deck, drop it into a completely different sport, and it would still make sense, it was never yours. It was a template with your logo on it. Your activations should look nothing like the sport down the road, because your fans and your athletes are nothing like theirs.

None of this needs a full rebuild of how you work. Targets are real, and not every deal has the time. But even a few of them, given room to be specific, would stop sounding like everyone else. And right now that's a low bar, because almost nobody is clearing it.

Because here's what the brand across the table is really doing. They're not comparing your numbers to the last deck's numbers. They're waiting to feel something, and nobody's giving them a reason to.

If being the biggest doesn't set you apart, and data can't do it for you, what is a brand actually buying when they sign?

That's the next one.