Ahead of next week’s full agenda release, here is a small glimpse of what we have planned for the Opta Forum’s main stage.
There are now less than three weeks to go until Opta Forum 2026 kicks off at the British Museum, where experts from across the sports industry will discuss their experiences around applying data, AI, video and content to successfully execute key strategies and campaigns.
The full agenda will be shared next week. In the meantime, we wanted to provide a sneak peek into a few of our speakers and the insights they will be sharing.
DAY ONE
Earlier this year, Xbox launched a global social campaign: xJ (Expected Jinx). The campaign was devised by Edelman, who, working in partnership with Stats Perform utilised Opta’s Live Win Probability data to create a new metric designed to make superstitious fans question if they were the real reason why their team kept losing.
James is a Senior Director within the Brand Practice at Edelman, who has worked on campaigns for Xbox for over a decade. He will share insight into how the campaign was initially devised, its purpose and how it has successfully engaged with fans since its launch.
DAY ONE
Jack leads communications for Lenovo’s groundbreaking partnership with FIFA. As the first Official Technology Partner of FIFA, Lenovo will be delivering end-to-end technology solutions for this summer’s men’s World Cup.
At Opta Forum, Jack will share insight into the activations that Lenovo has planned for the competition, to utilise the tournament’s profile to position Lenovo as a leader in AI.
DAY ONE
Tomislav is the Product Lead at Sofascore, where he oversees the platform’s product direction and leads the Sports Analytics team.
Through bridging product development and sports insight, he is heavily involved in shaping Sofascore’s global strategy ahead of the 2026 World Cup. He will expand on the role of data in shaping this strategy during his session at Opta Forum, helping Sofascore drive initiatives aimed at expanding the platform’s global footprint and amplifying its presence during the world’s biggest sporting event.
DAY ONE
Content creators are evolving to become content engines: producing more content, more quickly, optimised for specific video and social channels.
Marcin is COO at Ekstraklasa Live Park, the in-house broadcast production operation within Poland’s top-flight Ekstraklasa league. He will discuss the league’s content strategies and approaches to creating multi-platform content, as well as sharing some of their success stories, which has resulted in the league having the ninth largest social media following of all European leagues.
DAY ONE & TWO
Patrick is the Chief Scientist at Stats Perform, where he leads AI innovation built on the world’s largest archive of sports data.
With AI now firmly in the mainstream, ChatBots and other prompt tools are fundamentally changing day-to-day working processes across sport. At Opta Forum, Patrick will consider the implications of these changing behaviours for performance analysis and recruitment departments working in elite professional football.
DAY TWO
Julia is a performance analysis leader with nearly 30 years’ experience across high performance sport. Since joining the English Institute of Sport (now the UK Sports Institute) in 2004, Julia has worked across multiple Olympic and Paralympic sports and played a central role in establishing lasting performance analysis people and systems — most notably during a defining chapter with GB Canoeing (now Paddle UK).
During her Forum talk Julia will reveal how fast changing data, technology and AI are reshaping high performance sport — and demonstrate why bridging the gap between people, systems and insight is essential to achieving meaningful performance where it matters most.
DAY TWO
Bence is the Head of Data and Digital Strategy at the Hungarian FA, where his team is responsible for preparing analyses for all senior national teams and managing the FA’s comprehensive data strategy.
Bence will use his session at the Forum to share insight into the key learnings from the implementation of a centralised, country wide, data collection initiative which has seen detailed performance data being captured across all international teams and domestic competitions, covering both senior and youth football.
If you would like to register your interest in attending on Day 1, please visit our official Opta Forum 2026 event page.
