It is late on Sunday afternoon when SportsPro pulls into Lausanne on a train from Geneva, which means there is only one place to aim for: the lake. Even as the sun starts to set, the waterfront remains a hub of activity. Locals are out on paddleboards, returning from tennis courts, and passing rugby balls back and forth along the shore.
They do not call this the Olympic Capital for nothing. Nearly 60 international sports organisations and federations are permanently stationed in Lausanne and the surrounding Canton of Vaud, most notably the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
Against this backdrop, leaders from across the global sports ecosystem gathered at the iconic Olympic Museum from 5th to 7th October for the landmark 20th edition of the SportAccord Forum. Rebranded this year from the traditional IF Forum to reflect a broader, more inclusive range of delegates—including host destinations and commercial service providers—the event served as a crucible for discussions on the future of sports governance, technology, and hosting models.
As the exclusive content partner of the event, SportsPro spent three intensive days sitting in on high-level sessions, conducting exclusive interviews, and capturing the pulse of an industry navigating rapid transformation. Here are the key takeaways from a productive gathering in Switzerland.
Decentralised Winter Olympics Offers Lessons for the Future
The opening panel of the Forum put winter sports front and centre, evaluating the legacy and reality of the most geographically dispersed Winter Olympics in history.
Held in February, the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Games saw competitions spread across pre-existing venue clusters throughout Northern Italy. The decentralized approach was designed primarily to minimize the financial and environmental burden of constructing new, single-use infrastructure. While the strategy successfully kept capital costs down, it fundamentally altered the experience for athletes, travelling fans, officials, and other operational stakeholders.
Reflecting on her sport’s placement in Cortina alongside alpine skiing and curling, International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation (IBSF) President Heike Größwang offered a largely positive assessment of the decentralized model. However, she emphasized that organizers must proactively ensure that participants and spectators still feel anchored to the beating heart of the Olympic experience.
That philosophy extended to practical operational advice, such as encouraging officials to walk rather than drive back from the sliding centre to fully soak up the local atmosphere.
“It didn’t matter if it was 10:30, 11 o’clock at night, we walked through Cortina and there were fans outside,” Größwang shared during the session. “So we all could feel what makes the Olympics special, which is this feeling of people coming from all over the world.”
Change Afoot for the Olympic Programme
There was not a spare seat in the house as two senior IOC officials—Christophe Dubi, Executive Director of the Olympic Games, and Sports Director Pierre Ducrey—took to the stage to unpack the organization’s sweeping “Fit for the Future” strategy. International federations (IFs) packed the room, acutely aware that the strategic pivot carries massive implications for their own operations and long-term viability.
Published in June following the 146th IOC Session, the strategy introduces a revolutionary methodology for determining the composition of the Olympic programme. This is a matter of existential importance to many IFs, which rely heavily on the IOC’s revenue distributions from the Games to fund grassroots development and global operations. Speaking on the opening day of the Forum, IOC President Kirsty Coventry noted that the new framework provides “a much more precise and evidence-based way to look at the programme.”
Beginning with the Brisbane 2032 Olympic Games, the core sports programme will be formally locked in seven years out from each edition. Under the new guidelines, individual disciplines—rather than entire sports—will be rigorously assessed against criteria including global appeal, operational complexity, cost efficiency, and robust athlete representation.
Crucially, sports that cycle off the programme will retain a defined pathway to fight for reinstatement in subsequent cycles. Accompanying financial measures are also being designed to soften the economic blow for affected federations during transitional periods.
While certain fine details remain under development, Coventry’s previous statements indicating that Brisbane will host fewer than the 36 sports featured in Los Angeles made it abundantly clear to delegates that significant change is coming down the pipeline.
AI Is the Car, But Data Is the Fuel
Ahead of the Lausanne gathering, the IOC published its comprehensive Trustworthy AI Framework for the Olympic Movement. The document establishes foundational principles and practical tools for sports organizations navigating artificial intelligence, with specific guardrails for data protection, reliability, and safeguarding.
Unsurprisingly, the framework set the tone for three days of discussions surrounding technological innovation. It was widely acknowledged that AI is no longer an emerging novelty that federations can safely ignore, prompting a dedicated technology session designed to offer IFs pragmatic, actionable advice on digital adoption.
While individual sports leaders are increasingly embracing AI tools in their personal workflows, the pace of organization-wide adoption varies wildly across different federations. According to Sanjit Atwal, co-founder of sports data agency Halfspace, many organizations make the mistake of putting the technological cart before the horse.
“If AI is the car, data is the fuel,” Atwal argued during his presentation. “AI doesn’t work without data. There is nothing for it to generate. There is nothing for it to reference against. So AI is not your strategy. It is an output of your strategy towards a defined outcome.”
Drawing on his extensive background in ecommerce, Atwal did not mince words when evaluating how effectively the sports industry has managed its data assets in the past. He bluntly asserted that the sector has historically done “an atrocious job,” lagging significantly behind other commercial industries.
Atwal advised federations that they will never reap the rewards of AI without first establishing a robust, foundational data strategy. Once those structural data pipelines are in place, however, AI can effortlessly handle complex analytical workloads that would otherwise consume vast human resources.
“Data collection now shouldn’t be a scary thing to any IF, whatever size,” Atwal said. “It’s cheaper than ever to collect data. We have fantastic frameworks on which to do this. Then, what AI is fantastic at is educating you in how you can use that, and how you can start to drive up your organisation.”
Participation Is the Prize
Shifting the focus from digital infrastructure to human engagement, SportsPro Chief Executive Nick Meacham opened the second day of the Forum by delivering a series of sharp observations, outlining nine major challenges and six distinct opportunities facing international sport.
He saved what he considered the single biggest opportunity for last.
Pointing to staggering mass-participation metrics across the endurance and mass-event landscape, Meacham highlighted that more than 1.3 million people applied for the 2027 London Marathon ballot alone, with the iconic race expanding to a two-day format featuring 100,000 runners next year. Similarly, Gothenburg’s half marathon recently sold out 48,000 places in just 48 hours, while alternative fitness phenomenon Hyrox recorded approximately 1.5 million race entries in a single season.
For Meacham, these numbers serve as undeniable proof that grassroots sports participation is experiencing a massive global resurgence.
“People want community,” Meacham told delegates. “People want a goal. They want a reason to come back.”
Consumers are increasingly willing to spend heavily on authentic, meaningful physical experiences. Yet, much of this unprecedented growth is currently materializing entirely outside of traditional sports governing bodies and federation structures. Citing research from Two Circles indicating that nearly half of all sports fans are formed by the age of 14, Meacham issued a stark reminder to the room: “The people taking part today are your audience ten years from now.”
The End of Transactional Hosting
The SportAccord Forum concluded with a historic milestone: the inaugural City Forum, an initiative designed to foster open, collaborative dialogue between international federations, event rights-holders, and the municipal destinations that bid to host them.
A dominant theme throughout the afternoon was the death of the traditional, purely transactional hosting model. Gone are the days when an international federation could simply package a finished event product and shop it around to cities based solely on a rights fee.
Modern cities now enter negotiations by asking fundamental questions about what an incoming event will tangibly do for their local communities and who will be better off as a result. Consequently, the release of public funding is increasingly tied to a host destination’s broader socio-political priorities, ranging from public health and social inclusion to gender equality and environmental sustainability.
The most resilient and successful hosting partnerships now begin with a shared strategic vision. Panellists suggested that the initial phase of any negotiation should involve mutually defining what success looks like for both the federation and the host city, allowing the contract, event delivery model, and long-term legacy to be built backward from those shared goals rather than driven purely by short-term financials.
As the Forum drew to a close in the heart of the Olympic Capital, the overarching consensus was clear: modern sports hosting partnerships must be anchored in collaborative, long-term purpose rather than isolated transactions—a structural evolution that promises a healthier future for the entire Olympic Movement.
The SportAccord Forum was held under the Chatham House Rule. Quotes used in this article have been approved or published elsewhere.
