Below is our recent interview with Jefferson Dafydd, Senior Advisor of Growth Sports at Team Advisory Group (TAG):
Q: Could you provide our readers with a brief introduction to your company?
A: Team Advisory Group (TAG) is a collective of experienced sports business executives dedicated to helping high-potential sports organizations build stronger, more valuable businesses.
The industry calls this segment Growth Sports. It represents one of the fastest-growing segments of the sports industry—emerging leagues, teams, governing bodies, sports technology companies, and investors building the next generation of sports enterprises. These organizations often possess tremendous momentum but lack the commercial infrastructure that allows growth to become sustainable.
That’s where TAG comes in.
Rather than operating as a traditional consulting firm, we’ve built a collective of experienced sports business operators who have collectively generated hundreds of millions of dollars in sponsorship, ticketing, premium seating, media, and commercial revenue throughout professional sports.
We’ve transformed that experience into scalable intellectual property through standardized consulting engagements, proprietary diagnostics, commercial playbooks, and Growth Sports Intelligence™. This enables organizations to access proven executive-level expertise without having to build those capabilities internally.
At the center of our platform is the Growth Sports Index™, our proprietary framework for evaluating an organization’s commercial maturity, benchmarking it against industry peers, and identifying the infrastructure required for long-term success.
Our philosophy is simple: “Infrastructure Before Growth”. Before organizations pursue more revenue, expansion, or investment, they must first build the commercial systems that allow growth to compound over time.
Ultimately, we’re not just helping sports organizations solve today’s challenges—we’re building the infrastructure that will help define the future of Growth Sports.
Q: Can you give us insights into your products?
A: Our work is centered around helping organizations strengthen the commercial side of their business.
One of our flagship offerings is our Commercial Diagnostics, which evaluates areas such as sponsorship infrastructure, ticketing operations, organizational strength, and overall commercial performance. Instead of simply identifying problems, each diagnostic produces an actionable roadmap that organizations can implement immediately.
As mentioned prior, we’re also developing the Growth Sports Index™, a proprietary intelligence framework that monitors the health and commercial maturity of emerging sports properties. Rather than measuring popularity alone, the Index evaluates the infrastructure required to build sustainable enterprise value.
In addition, TAG provides fractional executive leadership, strategic advisory services, commercial sales execution, and research services for organizations that need experienced leadership without immediately hiring full-time executives.
Q: What are some of the main objectives for TAG in the year ahead, and how do you plan to achieve them?
A: The next twelve months are focused on scaling our platform.
We’ll continue expanding our advisor collective by bringing together experienced executives from across professional sports who want to continue contributing their expertise in flexible ways.
We’re also investing heavily in Growth Sports Intelligence, expanding the Growth Sports Index™, and refining our diagnostic platforms so they become increasingly data-driven and standardized.
Another major initiative is helping displaced sports executives transition into consulting through our Outplacement Solutions program. The sports industry contains an incredible amount of institutional knowledge that often disappears during organizational restructuring. We believe that expertise should remain in the industry, helping the next generation of sports organizations grow more intelligently.
Ultimately, our goal is to remain a leading voice within Growth Sports and the valued commercial partner for our clients worldwide.
Q: Looking ahead, what excites you most about the future of sports business?
A: I believe we’re entering one of the most exciting periods the sports industry has ever experienced.
New emerging sports platforms, professional women’s leagues, creator-driven competitions, international expansion, private equity investment, AI, and data intelligence are fundamentally changing how sports businesses are built.
Historically, only the largest leagues had access to sophisticated commercial infrastructure. Today, smaller organizations have access to better technology, better data, and experienced operators than ever before.
I often describe this as the rise of the “Growth Sports” economy—a rapidly expanding segment of sports that sits between startups and the established major leagues.
Helping build the commercial infrastructure that enables those organizations to succeed is exactly why TAG exists.
Q: How is artificial intelligence changing the business of sports, and where do you see the biggest opportunities?
A: Artificial intelligence is going to fundamentally change how sports organizations make commercial decisions. For years, the industry has relied heavily on experience and intuition. While experience will always matter, AI allows organizations to augment that expertise with data at a scale that simply wasn’t possible before.
Where I see the greatest opportunity isn’t replacing people—it’s making experienced professionals dramatically more effective. AI can process sponsorship activity, market trends, fan behavior, competitive intelligence, pricing models, and research in minutes rather than weeks. That allows executives to spend less time gathering information and more time making strategic decisions.
At TAG, we view AI as an accelerator for expertise. Our advisors still provide the judgment, context, and commercial experience, but AI helps us deliver faster, more comprehensive insights that ultimately create better outcomes for clients.
Q: What technology trends do you believe will have the greatest impact on sports organizations over the next five years?
A: I think we’re entering an era where technology becomes the operating system of sports organizations rather than simply a collection of tools.
Commercial intelligence platforms will become significantly more sophisticated. Sponsorship valuation, ticket pricing, fan engagement, CRM optimization, and business forecasting will all become increasingly predictive rather than reactive.
We’re also going to see much greater integration between previously disconnected systems. Today, ticketing, sponsorship, marketing, customer data, and business intelligence often operate independently. The organizations that connect those data sources into a unified commercial strategy will have a meaningful competitive advantage.
Finally, I believe we’re only beginning to understand the value of benchmarking. Every organization wants to know how it’s performing, but the more important question is how it’s performing relative to similar organizations. That’s one of the driving ideas behind our Growth Sports Intelligence™ platform.
Q: How do data and commercial intelligence influence decision-making at TAG?
A: Everything we do begins with intelligence.
Rather than relying solely on opinions or industry anecdotes, we start by understanding the observable characteristics of an organization—its commercial infrastructure, sponsorship activity, audience growth, organizational maturity, market momentum, and broader competitive landscape.
That information becomes the foundation for our recommendations.
Our Growth Sports Intelligence™ platform was developed because we wanted clients to receive recommendations supported by evidence rather than assumptions. As our platform continues to evolve, every engagement contributes new knowledge, benchmarks, and best practices that strengthen future analyses.
The result is a consulting model that’s more consistent, more scalable, and ultimately more valuable than traditional advisory services built entirely around individual experience.
Q: What role do you see proprietary data and benchmarking playing in the future of sports consulting?
A: I believe proprietary intelligence will become one of the defining competitive advantages in consulting.
Historically, consultants delivered value primarily through experience. Tomorrow’s firms will combine experience with proprietary datasets, standardized methodologies, benchmarking frameworks, and technology that continually improves over time.
That’s exactly the direction TAG is pursuing.
Our vision is to create a commercial intelligence platform that helps organizations understand not only where they stand today, but what actions will most effectively improve their future performance.
Benchmarking transforms consulting from being largely subjective into something much more measurable. Instead of asking, “What do you think we should do?” clients can begin asking, “What does the data tell us organizations like ours are doing differently?”
I believe that’s the future of strategic advisory services—not replacing human expertise, but making it smarter through better intelligence.
