Brad Koepenick, Founder and President of SparkRise, has highlighted storytelling, ingenious content material and neighborhood engagement as key drivers of sustainable sports activities and leisure companies.
Talking at the panel From Skill to Undertaking — Turning African Game into Sustainable Media & Trade on the YORA Summit 2026, Koepenick defined how content material introduction can draw in audiences, support connections with athletes and create industrial alternatives.
He cited his involvement with the Arizona Bowl, now referred to as the Snoop Dogg Bowl, the place younger folks create content material and increase tales round athletes to construct pastime within the tournament.
Koepenick additionally mentioned an academic initiative that brings roughly 200 highschool scholars to revel in the development whilst exploring science, generation, engineering, arithmetic and the humanities.
He stated the initiative demonstrates how sports activities can also be hooked up with training, creativity and neighborhood construction.
Reflecting on his paintings with SparkRise, which specializes in social-impact leisure, Koepenick highlighted alternatives to glue rising creators with wider networks.
He stated a contemporary talk over with to Kenya and interactions with native documentary filmmakers had broadened his standpoint and opened alternatives for collaboration between African ingenious skill and world networks.
Koepenick wired that growing Africa’s sports activities business calls for funding past athletes, together with toughen for content material creators, more potent industrial partnerships and academic tasks that attach recreation with wider financial alternatives.
Because the continent continues to increase its wearing skill, Koepenick’s message identified the wish to make investments no longer most effective in athletes but in addition within the media, ingenious industries and neighborhood partnerships that may flip wearing luck into sustainable trade alternatives.