News on Earl | AI partner for elite sports and stadia

AI Visibility For Stadia

Sun, 03 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Buyers are already moving from Google to AI search. That changes how people discover hospitality, tours, events, filming locations and venue experiences.

The first Earl engagement is usually an AI visibility diagnostic: a four-to-six week audit of how you appear across major AI platforms, how competitors appear, and which fixes are most likely to translate into revenue.

The point is not vanity visibility. The point is making sure fresh and correct answers come back when the next commercial buyer asks an AI where to host, book, sponsor or experience something.

The economics of an AI Visibility Diagnostic: £75k in, £3.6m year-1 value

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A four-to-six week AI Visibility Diagnostic is fixed at £75k. The standard Earl engagement that follows - retainer plus targeted projects - runs at roughly £350k for year one.

The numbers we see across engagements: a 22% lift in non-matchday revenue, a 10× return on investment, and £3.6m of value tied directly to the year-one relationship. None of those are projections. They are observed averages from venues we have run the work with.

Why ChatGPT is now driving venue discovery - and what to do about it

Wed, 22 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The shift to AI search is not a future thing. Across the engagements we run, we now see a meaningful share of pre-event hospitality and tour enquiries originating from ChatGPT and similar assistants - and almost none of those venues had visibility into it before we measured.

This piece explains how the AI search surface differs from organic Google, why a venue’s website is no longer the first answer a buyer sees, and the three immediate fixes most stadia can ship inside a single quarter.

How elite venues are reframing ‘off the field’ for AI-native commerce

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Broadcast revenue has plateaued. Matchday capacity is what it is. The pressure has moved to non-matchdays - conferences, tours, retail, corporate events, partnerships - and the commercial teams running those programmes are now competing for the same audience inside AI assistants.

We look at how a sample of elite venues are restructuring their commercial operating model around AI search, AI-native discovery, and direct relationships with the AI platforms themselves.

Earl welcomes Neil Kent as Co-founder, Chief Marketing & Commercial Officer

Wed, 08 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Neil Kent has joined Earl as Co-founder and Chief Marketing & Commercial Officer.

Neil brings two decades of work in the commercial operations of elite sport rightsholders, including Chelsea FC and the NFL, and consulting to the global commercial partners of Formula 1, UEFA, and Manchester United. He is also co-founder of the leading communications and marketing strategy partner for the events sector.

His remit at Earl spans positioning, brand and the commercial relationships that translate AI work into measurable revenue for our partner venues.

Premier League off-field commercial benchmark: Q1 2026

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The first quarter of the calendar year is when most elite venues set their off-field targets for the season ahead. The benchmark we publish here aggregates anonymised findings from engagements we have run with Premier League and equivalent stadia over the last 90 days.

Headline movements: AI-search visibility gaps as wide as 9× between similarly-sized venues; conference revenue up 14% on average where AI tools are now embedded in the commercial pipeline; and retail / partnership revenue lines accelerating fastest where venue-specific data feeds have been brokered to the major AI platforms.