Sports Summit opens with rights and revenue panel on NAB's first floor day

The NAB Show 2026 Sports Summit launched its four-day program on the first floor day with a 45-minute opening session titled "The State of Sports Media: Rights, Reach & Revenue." The extended slot — longer than the sponsored case-study sessions that follow it — functions as a market-context panel setting the terms for the rest of the week's programming.

Confirmed speakers include Sean Conroy, EVP North America at Genius Sports, Daniel McNeil, Digital Asset Manager at the Utah Jazz, Ron Matthews, Director of Digital Operations and Content Strategy at the Oklahoma City Thunder, and Dolby's Tim Carroll. Genius Sports handles official data distribution for the NFL and multiple global soccer leagues, making Conroy's read on data rights and streaming distribution a substantive opening signal rather than a promotional one. The presence of two NBA franchise operations representatives gives the panel an operational ground-level perspective alongside the data-rights angle.

The Sports Summit itself runs April 19–22 in the Sports Theater on the West Hall floor, expanded from prior years to a four-day format and opened to all show-floor pass holders for the first time. Lumen Technologies is the title sponsor. The structure — opening with a market overview before moving into case studies and sponsored sessions — mirrors how the Streaming Summit has organized its program, reflecting NAB's intent to position sports as a peer vertical to streaming rather than a subset of broadcast.