Ashok Namboodiri
On Sunday morning I spoke to my Gen Z nephew. We discussed the favourites on the new season of the English Premier League. He said, “I wish I could watch 30 games in 3 minutes, instead of one 90-minute match,” and that left me reeling. The roar of the crowd, the tension of a nail-biting finish, the magic of a last-minute goal.. sports have always been about moments. But in a world where attention spans are shrinking and screens are multiplying, those moments are increasingly being consumed in bytes, not broadcasts.
Welcome to the era where the future of sports might not be a 90-minute match or a five-day Test but a 15-second clip that lives on your phone. Short-form content has become the lingua franca of digital engagement. Platforms like TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts have transformed how audiences discover, engage with, and share stories. Sports, with its inherent drama and unpredictability, is perfectly suited to this format.
So what works in this world ? Micro-moments win big: A dunk, a rally, a save…sports highlights fit neatly into snackable, high-impact clips. Global reach happens in seconds: A cricket six in Mumbai can trend in New York within minutes. Finally, low commitment, high reward is the credo: Fans get the “best of the best” instantly.
The NBA has turned highlight culture into a global growth engine. Dunks, buzzer-beaters, and celebrations are clipped within minutes and pushed across platforms. With over 80 million Instagram followers and one of TikTok’s largest sports accounts, the league has mastered virality. Branded highlight segments like “Gatorade Play of the Day” turn a single play into a monetisable moment.
The UFC excels here. Instead of focusing solely on knockouts, they produce cinematic micro-stories — weigh-ins, fighter trash talk, emotional post-fight moments …that turn athletes into global icons. This personality-first approach boosts pay-per-view buys and merchandise sales, with brands embedding themselves into these short narratives.
AI-powered editing tools that auto-generate highlights seconds after live play have enabled tech solutions. The IPL has capitalised on this brilliantly. On Jio Cinema, micro-highlights of every six, wicket, and celebration appear instantly, keeping fans engaged even during work hours. Sponsors pay premium rates for branded clips, turning a single six into a marketing goldmine.
Similarly, La Liga partnered with TikTok to deliver condensed match recaps under two minutes, mixing quick-cut editing, player POVs, and stat overlays ..perfect for casual fans who don’t commit to full matches. Advertising and sponsorship deals are tied directly to these exclusives.
If the full game is the movie, short-form is the trailer, and trailers can be powerful revenue engines: Gen Z and Gen Alpha are digital-first; short-form is their default sports diet. The Olympics showcased this during Tokyo 2020, producing emotional clips — tears, hugs, national anthems that went viral globally. Many viewers who never tuned in to full events still engaged with these moments, often through sponsor-branded content from giants like Visa and Coca-Cola.
Sports that are not mainstream as per popular definition have gained the most from short from content. These include MMA, Esports, Boxing, Wrestling and Golf. Some of the biggest fandoms in the US market are in these disciplines and thanks to social media content. Fans love to see behind-the-scene content, interviews and other casual stories.
While short-form can expand reach, it risks creating “highlight-only” fans who never experience the full flow of a game. For sports to thrive, leagues must use byte-sized content as an entry point, not a replacement. The future isn’t about choosing between long-form and short-form. It’s about creating a multi-layered fan experience — live broadcasts for purists, curated highlights for the busy and micro-dramas for the social media native.
As attention spans shrink, sports will need to get sharper, snappier, and more shareable without losing the soul of the game. In the coming decade, the biggest sports stories may not break on the back page … they might drop on your feed, in under 30 seconds, and still give you goosebumps.
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