I recently wrote about A24’s deal with Google DeepMind, AI-produced microdramas in China, Apple Music’s big AI test, Elon Musk’s plan to remake The Odyssey and Hollywood’s engagement trap.
On the closing day of the World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing last month, a machine called Tiangong Ultra ran 100 meters in 8.64 seconds, nearly a second faster than Usain Bolt’s human record. Then it crashed into a padded barrier, along with most of the field it had just beaten. Sparks came off some of them. Staff ran over with fire extinguishers. Nearly every finisher was carried off the track on a stretcher.
That morbid end was a fair summary of the whole event. Five days, more than 2,000 robots from 16 countries, 51 disciplines and more than 1,000 competitions — soccer, table tennis, boxing, weightlifting, martial arts, plus a set of events built around household chores. Some of it was genuinely astonishing. A great deal of it involved falling over. And the overall effect was of a very expensive technology demonstration that had wandered into a brutal sports arena.
But for Hollywood, the Robot Games is also a story about rights.
The entertainment business has spent the past decade betting its future on a supply of performers it doesn’t own, can’t expand and pays more for every cycle. The NFL’s current U.S. television and streaming agreements generate roughly $10 billion a year. The NBA’s 11-year deals with Disney, NBCUniversal and Amazon are worth more than $75 billion, with Amazon’s package alone running roughly $1.8 billion annually. Globally, streaming platforms are expected to spend about $14.2 billion on sports rights in 2026 — comparable to the entire film production industry.
This focus isn’t because Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook and Ted Sarandos woke up wanting to be sports executives. They want what sports uniquely deliver: scarcity and urgency, the last reliable reason for tens of millions of people to watch the same thing at the same time. The 2026 World Cup was the most recent demonstration, drawing an audience across Fox, Tubi, Telemundo and Peacock of the kind the industry has spent years trying to manufacture by other means.
Can’t Manufacture Mahomes
The problem with buying scarcity is that it stays scarce. There are only so many Premier League matches, Formula 1 races and major tennis tournaments, and almost all of them are already spoken for. Every renewal cycle puts the same finite inventory in front of more bidders with more money.
Underneath the leagues, the constraint is tighter still. The NFL has 32 teams and fewer than 2,000 players. The NBA has 30 teams and roughly 600 players. The Premier League has a few hundred. The exact numbers move, but the economics don’t: Hollywood and the technology companies circling it have built a multibillion-dollar business on a remarkably small population of world-class athletes capable of performing at a level that makes millions of viewers care.
You can’t manufacture another Patrick Mahomes because Amazon wants more football to sell. You can’t create another LeBron James because Netflix wants live basketball. Elite athletes have to be born, found, trained and developed over years, and most of the candidates wash out.
They also have to survive. Every human sport runs on an invisible production rule — the performers can’t die — and that rule sets a hard ceiling on everything above it. Football can be violent, boxing can be brutal, racing can get dangerously fast, but mortality eventually writes the format. Hollywood works under the same limit. You can ask a stunt performer to jump from a building, flip a car or get thrown through a window, but the insurance company, the producer and the performer’s own body all get a vote.
Which brings us to the part of this that should interest entertainment companies.
Don’t stop here
Get the rest of this story — and the scoops and intelligence Hollywood reads first.
Already a subscriber?
Comments
Only Ankler All Access subscribers can comment
Already a subscriber?