EPIC Brief #7
Following sports takes real work. Games span channels and subscriptions, ticket prices change by the minute, and fantasy rosters don’t manage themselves. Meta and OpenAI are betting people will hand some of that work off. Meta’s new AI agent app, Muse, reached 5 million installs faster than ChatGPT or Claude, according to Sensor Tower, and OpenAI followed with its own agents, called Dots, for premium subscribers. Sportico’s Jacob Feldman put AI agents to work tracking New York Liberty playoff ticket prices, finding the most-praised concessions near his section at Barclays Center, and pitching a fantasy football trade. For the most part, they delivered. Other fans are using AI to build their own tools.
On a recent college football Saturday, Jordan Lyall got tired of hunting for games across streaming services and asked Claude to help him build an Apple TV app showing what sports are live across all of them. Two days later he shared the first screenshots of his app, Clutch Time, and by that Friday, 400 more people had signed up to test it. Jason Weingardt took a similar path with Mosaic, an app that lets fans watch many MLB games at once. By July, the league had hired him. App submissions to Apple’s store in the first half of 2026 were double the year before.
For brands, the AI agent story is the one to watch. Meta plans to make Muse profitable partly by taking a small cut of the purchases it completes, and it already connects to Dick’s, Fanatics, and Ticketmaster. As more fans let an assistant choose the seats or the jersey, brands will need a clear read on what fans actually care about to stay in the running. Feldman’s own takeaway is worth keeping in mind too. The parts of fandom an agent treats as chores, like arguing at the bar or planning a trip with friends, are the parts fans love most.
Inside EPIC
AI agents want to take the busywork out of being a fan, so I wanted to see how much of that work football fans are already doing. Using EPIC’s consumer insights platform, I compared football fans to the general US 18+ population to see how they watch, play, and shop.
A few things stood out:
1 Football fans are 82% more likely than US adults to have a social media affinity for fantasy sports.
2 More than 3 in 5 football fans are interested in streaming media, compared with fewer than 2 in 5 US adults.
3 Football fans are 29% more likely than US adults to have a social media affinity for NFL RedZone.
4 Football fans are 14% more likely than US adults to have a brand affinity for Dick’s Sporting Goods.
5 Football fans are 12% more likely than US adults to have a social media affinity for Fanatics.
Football fans already manage fantasy rosters, juggle streaming services, and follow every scoring drive at once. Those are exactly the jobs AI agents are lining up to take on. But Dick’s and Fanatics, two of the retailers connected to Muse, have only a modest edge with this audience. Being plugged into an agent won’t be enough on its own. Brands will still have to give fans a reason to pick them.
Consumer Corner: What I'm Into This Week
Listening: The Boss
Bruce Springsteen Radio on Spotify is my go-to soundtrack for long travel days. It got plenty of playtime on the flights to and from London last week.
Watching: Football in the UK
I got to see my Elevate client, Manchester United, last Saturday. It ended in a 1-1 draw, but the atmosphere alone was worth the trip.
Eating: Pizza
Last week I promised I’d trade pasta for pizza in London, and this past week I ate at Napoli on the Road. We got a few pies, but of course had to get the one recently voted as #1 in the world. I certainly thought it was great, but wouldn’t put it at my number 1 globally.
