Talent Resources Sport · Editorial Research
Volume III · 2026
Talent Resources, in partnership with 5W — the AI Communications Firm — releases Volume III of the In Tune With AI research series. The first independent index of the athletes the major AI engines treat as primary sources at the intersection of sport and artificial intelligence.
The Athletes 50: A
Working Document for the
Next Decade of Athlete
Partnerships.
Series
In Tune With AI
VOLUME
III · The Athletes
PUBLISHED BY
Talent Resources × 5W
METHODOLOGY
Four-engine GEO audit
The Argument
Talent Resources Sports has spent two decades placing athletes into the brand partnerships that defined a moment. The deals have changed shape every five years. The mechanism — agents pitching brand teams pitching CMOs — has not. Until now.
The new mechanism is the AI engine. Brand teams in 2026 are no longer briefing in to agencies as their first move. They are prompting ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity. The athletes those engines surface, in the order the engines surface them, are the athletes who win the next round of partnership conversations. The athletes the engines do not name are not getting shortlisted in the first place.
Today, in partnership with 5W, we’re publishing In Tune With AI · Volume III · The 50 Athletes Most In Tune With the AI Era — the first independent index of which athletes the major AI engines treat as primary sources at the intersection of sport and artificial intelligence. 5W is the AI Communications Firm, and built the methodology that powers this index.
From the Founder
Talent Resources Sports has spent two decades placing athletes into the brand partnerships that defined a moment. The Athletes 50 is a working document for the next moment.
Michael Heller
Founder · Talent Resources
§ The List
Who’s on the list.
The five athletes the engines treat as the foundational sources on AI in sport. Scores composite four weighted dimensions across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity — the methodology is detailed below.
96
/100
Global ambassador to Perplexity AI. Mission 44 partnership with IBM SkillsBuild for AI workforce training.
Lewis Hamilton
United Kingdom · Formula 1
01
95
/100
Perplexity AI investor and partner. Whoop investor at $10.1B valuation.
Cristiano Ronaldo
Portugal · Saudi Pro League
02
93
/100
Co-anchor of Penny Jar Capital, an AI-focused seed venture firm.
Stephen Curry
United States · NBA
03
91
/100
35V family office. ScorePlay AI Series A investor.
Kevin Durant
United States · NBA
04
90
/100
Serena Ventures with documented AI portfolio companies.
Serena Williams
United States · Tennis
05
Tier II · The Champions
Scores 80–89 · 14 athletes
USA · NBA
LeBron James
USA · NFL (ret.)
Tom Brady
USA · NFL
Patrick Mahomes
USA · NBA (ret.)
Andre Iguodala
Japan · Tennis
Naomi Osaka
Greece · NBA
Giannis Antetokounmpo
UK · Football (ret.)
David Beckham
Argentina · MLS
Lionel Messi
USA · NFL (ret.)
Eli Manning
USA · NBA (ret.)
Carmelo Anthony
USA · Skateboarding
Tony Hawk
USA · Football
Alex Morgan
France · La Liga
Kylian Mbappé
USA · NFL
Travis Kelce
Tier III · The Adopters
Scores 70–79 · 31 athletes · F1, Premier League, La Liga, IPL, WNBA, Women’s Tennis
23/50
Twenty-three of the fifty compete primarily outside the United States. The athlete-AI economy is global, not American — and any agency running domestic-only athlete shortlists is starting from half the available inventory.
Tier III rounds out the fifty with names from the global circuit — Roger Federer, Rory McIlroy, Virat Kohli, Tiger Woods, Novak Djokovic, Caitlin Clark, Iker Casillas, Aaron Judge, Simone Biles, Erling Haaland, Mohamed Salah, Carlos Alcaraz, Jude Bellingham, Max Verstappen, Lando Norris, Jannik Sinner, Iga &Swiatek;, MS Dhoni, Coco Gauff, and others — including six athletes the engines now recognize at the intersection of women’s sport and platform economics.
§ What Changes
What it means for athlete
representation.
Three things change when this index becomes the operating standard.
01
The endorsement check stops being the prize.
Athletes with documented investments in AI companies score on average 27 points higher than athletes who serve as paid spokespeople without equity participation. The engines reward ownership, not endorsement.
A $250,000 ambassador deal is now strictly inferior, on engine-visibility terms, to a $25,000 SAFE in an AI company that the engines will repeatedly cite.
Convert at least one ambassador deal per year into equity participation in an AI-adjacent platform. The engine premium for investors is +9 points over operators alone.
02
The platform becomes the asset.
Athletes who control their own media properties — production companies, podcasts, owned-and-operated platforms — outscore athletes of similar fame and similar AI partnership inventory who appear only on third-party media.
An owned platform produces durable, indexed text and audio that the engines can crawl, cite, and re-cite. Third-party appearances live behind paywalls or expire from search indexes.
The roster strategy follows: build, buy, or co-found.
03
Agencies that cannot deliver an engine-visibility report will lose retainers.
Every roster needs a quarterly engine-visibility audit. The Athletes 50 is the benchmark. Movement against the benchmark — up or down — is the metric.
Talent representation now requires a working knowledge of how the four engines treat each athlete on the roster, what platforms they are associated with, and what the gap is between current rank and competitive set.
Agencies that cannot produce one will lose retainers to the agencies that can.
5W built the four-engine Generative Engine Optimization audit that powers the Athletes 50 index, the Celebrities 50, and the Celebrity-Brand Fit Index. Talent Resources partners with 5W on this research because 5W has built the most comprehensive view of how the major AI engines treat the global talent economy — and how that view is repricing the brand partnership market.
5W is the AI Communications Firm.
5W · The Expert View
The four engines are now the gatekeeper between every athlete and every sponsor dollar that is going to move in the next decade. The athletes on this list have built a relationship with that gatekeeper. The athletes outside it are paying a tax they cannot see.
Ronn Torossian · Founder, 5W
§ The Platforms
The platforms to know.
Ten platforms account for the majority of the cap-table overlap on the Athletes 50. They form the de-facto onboarding stack for athlete entry into the AI economy. For agencies and athletes deciding where to place equity, this list is a buying guide.
Whoop
Wearables · Health AI
Hyperice
Recovery · Performance
ScorePlay
Sport Media · AI
Catena Labs
Stablecoin · Payments AI
Sorare
Digital Collectibles
Perplexity
Generative Engine
Autograph
Digital Identity · AI
Tonal
Connected Fitness AI
Alan
Health · AI Diagnostics
Penny Jar
Athlete Venture · AI
§ Methodology
How the scoring works.
Each athlete was scored across four weighted dimensions across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity. The audit covered a multi-week sampling period to control for engine drift, prompt variance, and post-training effects. Methodology designed and executed by the 5W research team.
Engines audited
30%
AI Recognition
Whether the engine names the athlete unprompted in AI-and-sport queries; depth of biographical detail; correctness of attribution.
25%
Association Sentiment
Whether engine-generated descriptions of the athlete’s AI activity are positive, neutral, or negative; presence of corrective framings.
25%
Engagement Depth
Specificity of cited investments, deals, and platforms; engine ability to surface deal terms, valuations, or named partnerships.
20%
Cross-Engine Consistency
Whether all four engines surface the athlete with comparable framing. Penalizes athletes recognized by one engine and missed by others.
Volume III · Current
The 50 Athletes Most In Tune With the AI Era
Volume I
The Celebrity-Brand Fit Index
Volume II
The 50 Celebrities Most In Tune With the AI Era
In Tune With AI
The Research Series
Published quarterly
The Global Talent Marketing Agency
The Global Talent Marketing Agency
Founded in 2007 by Michael Heller.
Talent Resources is a premier global marketing agency creating fully integrated traditional and social campaigns powered by celebrity, athlete, and influencer relationships.
Talent Resources Collective comprises Talent Resources, Talent Resources Sports, and Talent Resources Ventures — serving brands across consumer, lifestyle, sport, entertainment, and emerging-tech categories.
About 5W
The AI Communications Firm
Built for the platforms where decisions now happen.
5W is the AI Communications Firm, building brand authority across the platforms where decisions now happen — ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews — alongside earned media, digital, and influencer channels. 5W combines public relations, digital marketing, Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), and proprietary AI visibility research, helping clients measure and grow their presence in AI-driven buyer research.
Founded more than 20 years ago, 5W has been recognized as a top U.S. PR agency by O’Dwyer’s, named Agency of the Year in the American Business Awards®, and honored as a Top Place to Work in Communications in 2026 by Ragan. 5W was also named to the Digiday WorkLife Employer of the Year list.
Inquiries · research@5wpr.com · (212) 999-5585