Look across a dozen creative departments in sports and you’ll find a dozen different organizational structures — no two teams or college programs approach it quite the same way.
There are varied levels of investment (and internal buy-in), some collaborate more or less frequently with external agencies and freelancers, and others boast massive teams of specialists. The creative talent in the sports world is more impressive than ever, rivaling any other industry. Even as the creative field gets disrupted by generative AI, the appreciation for the value of strong graphics, video production, social media branding, and digital experiences is stronger than ever.
Bob McKamey can remember a time when the digital presence for major sports organizations and athletes were relative afterthoughts. When he co-founded digital studio UnCommon Thinking, having a dynamic, polished website was a burgeoning opportunity to engage and develop fans online. Then came social media, and multimedia social media — it was mainly just text in the earliest days, kids, so the onslaught of photos and then video and all of the derivative formats and form factor-driven creativity brought us to the current day where creative execution is a key concern for any sports team or college program. In a recent interview, McKamey reflected on the evolution of internal creative teams and what he saw as some leaned into studios like UnCommon Thinking, while others built up in-house capabilities.
“As social media grew, all of a sudden we started seeing the teams that we worked with started hiring their own designers, their own photographers, their own video people,” said McKamey, who co-founded UnCommon Thinking in 2003. “In some cases, you’re exactly right, it completely pushed us out 100%. In other cases, it was maybe 50-50, and to be honest with you, right now, a lot of our clients and a lot of the work we do is behind-the-scenes recruiting work [such as recruiting in college athletics]…
“So, now it’s really more like just a straight partnership. A lot of times they’ll do the front end stuff, game day as an example, and they’ll farm out all of the extra recruiting stuff to us on the back end.”
It’s hard for the public to comprehend how much creative output some of these massive sports teams, and especially college programs produce. It’s that often unseen volume of work, still just as necessary in the NIL and transfer portal era, that separates the big budget programs from their smaller counterparts. It’s not uncommon to see incredible work from the smallest schools, creative talent is thriving all over. The difference is the bigger programs can produce more of it, whether that means availing themselves of a resource like UnCommon Thinking or from beefed-up in-house teams. McKamey described what he sees, as he has worked with college programs up and down the spectrum in terms of budgets ad resources.
“The big difference is,” he explained, “I think if you gave the lead designer at a big school and the lead designer at a small school, and you said, ‘Hey, you got two hours to come up with a great idea’, I think in today’s marketplace, the quality would actually look pretty close.
“The problem is when you need to come up with designs for 50 recruits, [you] need game day content, NIL content — that person that’s only got 1 or 2 people and no access to someone like me to help them out, they really can’t play in the same type of field. So the quality of the quantity of graphics doesn’t really match up to the bigger programs now.”
There’s an infinite demand for creative output in sports, even when time, resources, and budget are finite and often insufficient. The ability to activate and attract corporate partners (and the sponsorship revenue) has been one driver in recent years of increased buy-in and budgets. But especially in college athletics, the biggest needle movers remain the CEO of the college programs (aka head coach) and the student-athletes with their continually increased bargaining power. With creative leaders frequently seeking ways to get more buy-in and budget, McKamey said it’s those two parties that hold the cards more than any other factors.
“I think it has to be coach-driven, number one, they have to understand the value of it, the creative that they get and how it affects recruiting, how it affects the brand impression people have,” said McKamey whose studio has worked with major college athletics program for years. “If they get it, then I think the money comes.”
He continued: “And it’ll be interesting, the whole thing with NIL, one of the things we’re seeing now is, more than ever, the individual recruits are wanting more and more of a say in their own graphics. It’s like the graphics are no longer sent back to the program for approval, they’re sent to them and then sent to the kid and his parents for approval. [It’s like] they’re directing us on creative. You’re seeing more and more of that now.”
No matter who’s making the asks and giving the approvals, all creative teams are reckoning, for better or for worse, with the arrival of generative AI. Veterans will recognize that generative AI isn’t that new (content-aware fill has been around), but no one can deny the ever-improving capabilities of generative AI to produce and edit images, graphics, objects, and even video will transform the industry. McKamey is not running away from these new tools, which some perhaps naively see as a threat to livelihoods, instead recognizing what they can do to empower others, enhance communication, and allow creatives to work better. For McKamey, who concedes that actually producing the creative is not his area of expertise, he noted how tools like Midjourney helps him work better with clients and his team of creative producers.
“A lot of times what I try to do with our team — this is more on how our process works — like, if we get a new project, I’ll try to give the designers as much information as possible about what it is. So as many samples, as many ideas, as many adjectives and things that they can handle,” said McKamey, who commented that savvy gen AI prompters seem to be able to get good enough to pass as legit creators. “So for me, it’s helped; like, I’ll go in and I’ll do samples through Midjourney and then as part of the creative brief include that for the actual designers themselves to go off of.”
Even as these generative AI tools continue to get better and better, there is little for existential crises within the creative field. But the field is changing. Whether one is starting with a blank canvas in an Adobe application or a blank text field on Open AI’s platform — there remains a need for creativity, originality, and the ability to go from something in your head to speaking and producing it into reality. For those who don’t consider themselves professional creatives (this author included), generative AI tools force us to appreciate the details that go into creative production, the minuscule but meaningful elements that the pros hone over several years and projects. McKamey has produced creative briefs for years and he’s continuing to educate himself by practicing and watching the words that can lead to the foundations of creative masterpieces.
“A lot of times I’ll just sit there in Midjourney and I’ll watch all the other prompts that are coming through, and I’ll pick up ideas just based on that to see what they’re doing,” he said. “A lot of times it has nothing to do with sports, but it’s like you said, the right angle, the sizing, the lighting, whether you want it to be an illustration type of thing, a cartoon type of thing, a portrait. It’s opening a lot of windows, but I think if you just learn how to control it and use it in the proper way, it can really help out what you’re doing on the end result.”
The creative landscape in sports continues to evolve, presenting both challenges and opportunities for creative leaders. The pressure to serve multiple masters – from coaches and athletes to sponsors and fans – while maintaining creative excellence requires adaptability and strategic thinking.
Successful creative leaders in sports will be those who can navigate this complex terrain, leveraging both internal talent and external resources to produce innovative, impactful content that drives engagement and supports organizational goals. As the industry moves forward, the ability to blend creativity with strategic vision and embrace new technologies will be crucial for those at the helm of sports creative teams.
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