ReviewFrontiers in sports and active living2025
Platform power, athlete branding, generative AI, and the future of sport governance-a systematic review.
Review in Frontiers in sports and active living, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Systematic review of different approaches for performance enhancement in elite sport.Frontiers in artificial intelligence · 2026Pooled it
- Value creation in sport business in the age of AI: a multidimensional framework.Frontiers in sports and active living · 2026Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
This systematic review examines how elite athletes are leveraging digital platforms, generative artificial intelligence (AI), and blockchain to build autonomous brands, bypass traditional sport gatekeepers, and develop athlete-owned business models. Drawing on 47 peer-reviewed studies (2016-2025), we synthesise evidence across five domains: athlete branding and self-production, disintermediation, platform-enabled empowerment, AI-driven content innovation, and emerging commercial structures. The findings reveal a decisive shift in sport's power balance, with athletes acting as media producers, cultural influencers, and entrepreneurial actors. Digital platforms enable direct-to-fan engagement, while AI tools lower content production costs whilst personalising interactions and extend global reach. Blockchain facilitates decentralised monetisation and data sovereignty, supporting ventures such as athlete-owned leagues and non-fungible tokens. However, these developments embed new dependencies on platform algorithms and volatile digital markets. From a platform capitalism perspective, athlete autonomy is constrained by corporate-controlled infrastructures; from a value co-creation lens, fan relationships become participatory spaces for shared cultural and commercial value creation. The review highlights governance challenges, including ethical implications of synthetic media, data ownership, and the regulation of AI-enabled branding ecosystems. We argue that sport governance must evolve from a control-oriented model to one that positions athletes as co-creators of value and strategic partners in decision-making. Future research should address equity in digital visibility and sustainable athlete-led business ecosystems. Governance mechanisms that reconcile technological opportunity with autonomy protection should be explored as well. Athletes are no longer peripheral actors in sport's commercial order, they are emerging as its architects, with significant implications for the future of sport governance.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What Socratic holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.