AI Agents in Sport
| Wednesday, May 13, 2026 |
| 9:20 AM - 9:50 AM |
Details
The AI agents in sport session brings together hands-on practitioners who are already building and deploying AI agents that perform roles once seen as inherently human: a “sport psychologist in your pocket”, a real-time sentiment reader that interprets social media mood and momentum, and a tool development agency creating the next generation of sport-specific bots and machine avatars. The session will show how these agents can take on complex tasks such as athlete support, communication, analysis, triage, and decision assistance — not as gimmicks, but as working systems embedded in day-to-day sport operations. The focus is on what this shift means for performance environments, fan engagement, and organisational capability: how human–machine interfacing is advancing, where the value is being created, and what leaders need to understand as machine avatars increasingly become part of how sport is delivered, experienced, and managed.
Speaker
Brian Bull
Chief Data Scientist
Crowd Reader
Speaker
Biography
Brian is Chief Data Scientist at Crowd Reader, a New Zealand-based company specialising in sports fan engagement insights on both sides of the Tasman.
Core Crowd Reader clients over recent years have included the Australian Sports Commission, High Performance Sport New Zealand, NZ's Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, and the Australian Grand Prix Corporation.
Reid Johnson
CEO
Pokketcoach
Speaker
Biography
Daniel Lee
Digital Marketing Specialist
Sports Cloud Australia
Speaker
Biography
Digital marketing specialist leveraging AI to grow fan engagement and commercial impact in sport and entertainment.
Michelle Pain
Chief Sport Psychologist
PokketCoach
Speaker
Biography
Dr. Michelle Pain is a sport psychologist with 40 years of experience supporting Olympic and World Champion athletes across traditional sports and 19 international esports campaigns. In 2025, her expertise was digitised by PokketCoach to create Pokket, an AI penguin providing 24/7 access to elite performance psychology.
While Pokket offers affordable, scalable coaching, the platform remains deeply rooted in ethical care. The PokketCoach team integrated robust "human-in-the-loop" protocols to manage safety flags and guide the AI’s responses based on user welfare. By blending Michelle’s decades of psychological wisdom with innovative technology, PokketCoach ensures that high-level mental skills training is accessible to athletes everywhere.
