SEG3 LA 2026

Registration & Networking Breakfast

Opening Remarks

Hosting the World's Biggest Show

The World Cup may be over, but the countdown to LA28 is only just beginning. How do you build excitement, attract partners and keep the world engaged years before the Opening Ceremony?

This session explores the commercial, marketing and partnership strategies shaping the road to LA28.

Speakers: Julia Kang (Senior Vice President, Partnership Marketing, United States Olympic & Paralympic Properties); Alex Merchan (Chief Marketing Officer, LA28)

The Architecture of Fandom

Fandom is one of the strongest forces for entertainment, sport, gaming and lifestyle brands - yet it is arguably one of the least rigorously understood.

This session treats fandom as a structure rather than a feeling - uncovering how communities form, organise, commercialise, fracture and endure - and why fandom does its work through identity before it ever does it through spend.

Drawing on real case studies, it sets out the patterns that are identifiable across every fanbase in this room, and what they mean for anyone trying to design and grow one.

Speakers: Brett Schneider (Head of Partnership Activations, Block / Fandomism)

Networking Break

One Fan, Many Front Doors

Most fans discover through platforms now. That is where the reach is, and there is no replicating it in-house.

This session follows what happens next. How you move someone from a scroll to a first action, what turns that into an account or a habit, and the leaks that can be plugged to stop losing fans as they work their way down the funnel.

Speakers: Jessica Jacobi (Chief Marketing Officer, LA Galaxy); Yves Saada (Head of Strategic Partnerships, Spin Master)

The Superfan Conundrum

The strongest fan communities don't just consume what you make, they change it.

This session looks at how organisations turn fan engagement into something their product and content teams can actually use, how you serve a fanbase spanning three generations at once, and what to do when the people who care most want different things.

Speakers: Ebo Quansah (Head of Artist-Fan Experiences & Fandom, YouTube)

Lunch

The Deal Behind the Deal

Licensing still does a lot of heavy lifting, but more partnerships are being built with both sides holding something on the other side of the deal - revenue shares, co-development, co-owned IP, equity, first look arrangements, joint ventures.

This session gets into how those deals actually come together. What each structure unlocks, what it costs you in control and speed, and the typical hurdles you'll need to avoid to get something over the finish line.

Speakers: Eva Feder (Executive Vice President, Business & Legal Affairs, Lionsgate)

IP in the Real World

Location-based experiences are the most expensive bet an IP owner can make, and perhaps the hardest to reverse.

This session explores what goes into the decision, how IP owners choose between building, touring and partnering, and what it really takes to make people build a trip around you.

Speakers: Karim Farghaly (SVP - Business Innovation & Licensing, Bandai Namco Entertainment America)

A License to Generate

Your IP is already being generated with at scale, whether you agreed to it or not. So what's the next move? Shut it down, license it and take a cut, or use the technology to build experiences that weren't possible before?

Every option costs something. Enforcement is expensive and rarely complete. Licensing turns infringement into revenue, but hands over some control. Building takes dedicated resource and real appetite for innovation and risk.

This session discusses how IP owners are making that call, where the market is heading, and how you keep control of the story being told with your IP.

Speakers: Bertie Thomson (CEO, Sixth Wall, Hasbro)

Thirty Years, One Universe

How do you keep a franchise feeling fresh for new fans without alienating the people who've loved it for decades? A look inside the marketing and storytelling decisions that keep the world's biggest IP alive across generations.

Speakers: Monica Austin (Chief Marketing Officer, Blizzard Entertainment)

Closing Remarks

Happy Hour

Doors Open & Networking Breakfast

The Attention Recession

Every hour of attention won is an hour taken from something else - but most media plans still behave as though the pool is growing infinitely.

This session sets out what a zero-sum attention market looks like for an advertiser: who's gaining, who has lost and hasn't noticed, where the money has followed, and where the opportunity lies as it lags behind the audience.

The Last Bastion of Live

Live sport is one of the few things people still watch together, in real time.

As traditional ad breaks lose impact, what does great advertising actually look like during live experiences?

Networking Break

The New Media Moguls: Creators x Brands

Feeds are full of AI-generated content, and audiences are tuning it out. The people they still listen to are creators, and the biggest of them now run media businesses that are pulling in bigger and bigger budgets.

So how do you scale creator partnerships and hit your numbers, while letting creators make the content their audience actually wants?

Brands, agencies and creators share what's working now, and what it takes to build creator programmes that last.

The World Fans Built

In UGC gaming, two models are emerging. Some brands hand their IP to the creator community and take a share of whatever gets built. Others build their own worlds to pull players into their own ecosystems. One trades control for reach, the other trades budget for a direct relationship.

This session gets into how those relationships actually work between platform, creator and brand, which model fits which objective, and who owns the audience at the end of it.

Brands as Entertainment Companies

Some consumer brands have stopped borrowing culture and started building it, with entertainment and licensing teams that mimic the IP owners they used to buy from and partner with.

What does it take to make that work, and can a brand really own fandom rather than rent it?

Lunch

Measuring What Matters

Most organisations are measuring plenty. Far fewer can say what a fan is actually worth to them, or which signals tell them someone is going to stick around.

This session discusses what the people building measurement across a portfolio and the people running a fanbase each pay attention to, where those two views disagree, and how you turn fan data into decisions about content, partnerships, advertising and more.

Cut Through or Get Cut: Designing a Winning Launch Strategy

Most people have decided whether a film or a game is worth their time before it goes on sale, and paid media is rarely what got them there.

So what is doing the work? Is it creator partnerships? In game activations? Media coverage? Talent involvement? Physical experiences?

This session gets into the mechanics of a launch. What goes into building anticipation, which channels actually move the needle, how long the runway needs to be, and what separates a release that lands from one that doesn't.

Speakers: Bryce Sherman (Senior Director of Global Digital Marketing, Universal Pictures)

The Last Word

We close by zooming out.

Sports, entertainment, gaming and consumer brands have spent two days describing the same problem from different seats. So where does this actually go?

A conversation about what the next few years look like for anyone building on fandom, which parts of the current model are already coming apart, and where the value ends up.

Closing Remarks