Ask someone to name the best thing they have ever bought. Many people will mention a car, watch, house or other significant purchase. Then ask another question: What was the greatest experience of your life? The answer almost always varies. People smile. Their energy changes. They start telling stories. They remember who they were with, where they were and how they felt. It could have been watching the FIFA World Cup with their dad, taking their kids to their first Olympics or celebrating a Super Bowl win with lifelong friends. The memory comes back in vivid detail because such moments become part of who we are. Very few people describe an object in this way. This difference says a lot about how we define value.
For many years, the commercial engine of major sporting events was straightforward: selling tickets, negotiating media rights and securing sponsorships. Today, an increasing share of value is created through hospitality, premium access and curated experiences that extend far beyond the stadium seat. For organizers, teams and host cities, the experience itself is increasingly becoming a product.
This evolution reflects a wider shift in luxury. For decades, luxury was measured by what people owned. Now, it is increasingly defined by what people experience. A recent McKinsey & Company the study found that consumers in all income segments overwhelmingly prioritize luxury experiences as the ultimate pleasure. More people are choosing memories over possessions because experiences satisfy something that products cannot.
This consumer preference is reshaping revenue models across sports and entertainment. Premium hospitality packages, VIP experiences, backstage access and destination travel have become some of the fastest-growing and highest-margin segments of major events. With traditional ticket inventory inherently limited, organizers are creating new value by expanding what fans can experience rather than just where they can sit.
An expensive purchase can bring excitement for a while. An unforgettable experience becomes more valuable with time. We tell the story again. We share it with others. We look back on it years later and remember not only what happened, but who we were when it happened. Memory becomes part of identity.
A championship game with customers can become the start of a relationship built on trust rather than transactions. A trip with lifelong friends becomes a story retold for decades. Taking a child to their first major sporting event becomes part of a family’s history. Years later, people rarely remember any shows. They remember the emotions, the conversations, and the feeling of being fully present together. The event provides the background. The people create the memory.
That’s why experiences have a premium. A clock tells the time. A wonderful experience becomes part of your life. Great hospitality helps make those moments happen. Premium dining, exclusive lounges, curated itineraries and personalized services create experiences that command premium prices while strengthening long-term loyalty among fans, partners and corporate customers.
It is not defined only by luxurious finishes or exclusive spaces. It is determined by how people feel. Great service removes friction, anticipates needs, and allows guests to be fully present. Food, design, and amenities matter, but they’re rarely what people remember most. People remember the warmth of a welcome, the ease of the experience and the feeling that everything just worked. The human element is still the ultimate differentiator.
Luxury itself is also becoming more personal. For years, premium experiences revolved around exclusivity. Today, they revolve around choice. Some guests want private lounges, fine dining and backstage access. Others simply want a more comfortable way to experience a great cultural or sporting moment. Both groups are looking for the same thing: a closer connection to the moment.
This change is reshaping the way experiences are created. What matters is not separating from the crowd, but immersing yourself in it.
For years, sports executives focused on monetizing media rights. The next frontier may be another equally valuable asset that can be called experiential rights: premium access, hospitality and immersive moments that cannot be broadcast, summarized or generated by AI Broadcasters can distribute each game to millions of viewers, but they cannot replicate the feeling of walking into a stadium, meeting athletes, entertaining customers or sharing a once-in-a-lifetime family moment. These experiences remain essentially few. As digital content becomes more abundant—and progressively generated, personalized, and summarized by AI—physical experiences become relatively more valuable precisely because they cannot be replicated. The more infinite digital content becomes, the more valuable the finite living moments feel.
The next wave of global events reflects this shift. The FIFA World Cup in North America and the LA28 Olympic and Paralympic Games are shared cultural moments that bring millions of people into cities and communities in ways that feel immediate and unfiltered. These events are no longer measured solely by attendance, television ratings or sponsorship revenue. Their commercial success depends on how effectively they monetize premium hospitality, travel, dining, local experiences and corporate entertainment in all host cities. The stadium is still the centerpiece, but the economic opportunity now extends far beyond it.
But the most lasting impact will be measured by how cities are transformed around the stadiums. The Super Bowl, for example, temporarily reshapes a city into something bigger than itself. Streets become rallying points. Ordinary spaces take on meaning. A city begins to feel like a shared stage where strangers connect at the same moment. The NCAA Championships create a similar effect on a more intimate scale. Whole communities come alive. Team colors appear in every showcase and conversation. For a few days, the city itself becomes part of the experience.
This expansion is important because today’s sports economy reaches far beyond the country itself. Hotels, restaurants, transportation providers, retailers and cultural institutions become part of the product that fans buy. The value created by major sporting events extends beyond the ninety minutes played on the pitch to an entire destination.
When people travel for these events, they don’t stay contained within countries. They explore. They wander without plans. They eat where the locals eat. They discover parts of a city they never intended to visit. Above all, they remember people.
This summer offered an early glimpse of what that looks like. Scottish supporters and Bostonians embraced each other with enthusiasm and curiosity, sharing stories of the kindness of strangers they met along the way. The Norwegian supporters turned Times Square into a spontaneous party, drawing passers-by into spontaneous cheers and celebrations. Across multiple cities, visitors and locals mingled in ways that felt unscripted and deeply human.
Those moments may never show up in official statistics, but they’re often the ones that stick with people the most. Not the end result, but the feeling of being welcomed. Not the event, but the feeling of belonging somewhere unknown. This may be the greatest value that the experience economy creates.
In a world where so much of life happens through screens, shared experiences remind us why we travel, celebrate and gather in the first place. They create stories that families pass on, friendships that deepen over time, and relationships that begin in moments of true connection.
The more sophisticated digital experiences become, the more valuable physical ones can be. AI can personalize highlights, generate reviews and recommend exactly what each fan wants to watch. But it can’t recreate the collective anticipation before kick-off, the atmosphere inside a packed stadium or the relationships built during the experience. those moments together. Digital abundance increases the relative scarcity of being there.
Consumers still appreciate beautiful products and luxury goods. Increasingly, however, they want these purchases to create something that can’t be put on a shelf. They want memories. Years from now, most people will struggle to remember the best thing they ever bought. They will never forget the people they were with when they experienced something extraordinary. Because at the end of the day, we don’t remember what we had. We remember what we lived.
As media becomes endlessly reproducible, direct experiences become one of the few remaining forms of scarcity. Organizations that learn to design, monetize and deliver those moments will shape the next era of value creation in sports, hospitality and entertainment.
