We went to CAA SBJ's World Congress of Sports in Los Angeles, and we brought back five signals that every brand builder should be paying attention to.

If your sports marketing strategy is still treating female fans as an afterthought (a pink jersey here, a celebrity cameo there) we need to talk. Actually, we need to hand you this Female Fan-First Playbook and back slowly away while you rethink everything.

Sport is no longer competing against the rival team. It's competing against everything: The bar for "worth it" has never been higher — and a lot of what's getting labeled as such isn't clearing it. There's a name for that. It's called innovation theater. And NSF made clear it's everywhere.