Premier League Scores Big with Adobe AI: A Game-Changer for Fan Engagement and Creativity

How the Premier League hopes to score with soccer fans getting creative with Adobe AI tech

English football's Premier League is one of the biggest sports leagues in the world, with annual revenues of around $8 billion, and 1.8 billion followers across 189 countries. As well as all those people supporting one of England's 20 top-tier clubs, more than 11.5 million people across the globe play Fantasy Premier League (FPL), which lets fans build and manage their own football team. In a bid to offer these millions of football fans around the world a more personalized experience and encourage them to get creative, the Premier League has been working on a major Adobe technology project behind the scenes. The main objective for the partnership is to offer a meaningful and relevant experience to its growing fan base around the world, according to Alexandra Willis, Director of Digital Media and Audience Development at the Premier League. She says: We are very privileged that the Premier League continues to grow in its appeal, but fans are increasingly different and varied in what they want from the Premier League, especially internationally. They're following multiple players and multiple clubs. Their own relationships with the league are rooted in where they live and their communities. Among its 1.8 billion followers, the Premier League has more than 250 million fans in its digital ecosystem, who engage in different channels, different languages and different ways. Willis says: We are seeking to give those fans a proper home in the new Premier League app and website, and the ability to really shape their experience and have this destination that they can return to day after day, week after week. For that destination to also help them discover more, help them to learn where to watch live, learn more from our clubs and learn more from our partners. To achieve these aims, the Premier League began a search for a partner that would provide it with technology including a customer data platform and marketing orchestration tools to be able to serve those millions of fans, but on an individual level. The strategy has been in the making for around two years, and during that timeframe, the Premier League has rebuilt its entire technology stack root to branch. Within that technology stack are a series of new tools the organization didn't have before, including Adobe CDP and the overall Adobe Experience Platform. Willis adds: We've been working on integration into the backend, whether that be data warehouse, data lake, and then also into the front end for the web and app and the CMS and the Adobe CDP in particular. Then Adobe Journey Optimizer, the marketing orchestration layer, is playing a vital role right in the middle of that delivery between backend and front end. The Premier League took the wraps off its Adobe partnership in July, alongside launching new versions of its app and website. The next significant milestone will be the launch of FPL within the new app and website, which will be the week of 21 July; this will be followed by another release for the start of the 2025/26 season, which starts on 15 August. Underpinning the new website and app is a wide range of Adobe technology, including Adobe Experience Platform, Adobe Real-Time Customer Data Platform and Adobe Journey Optimizer. For a project of this broad scope, the Premier League was very focused on doing things well rather than trying to do things too quickly, as Willis explains: If you think about the potential of the Adobe tools being from one to 100, we're hoping to start sensibly around the 50 mark. Over time, as we work together, we want to be able to use them to their full potential. That takes time, upskilling, additional resources and real practical application. The company had an existing data warehouse infrastructure, which it was able to migrate into the CDP, and it has already set up an initial set of journeys and the analytics platform. Willis adds: As it relates to GenStudio, we're only going to be testing and learning with that to begin with. We want to then work out how we can do more with it as we go. The Premier League is hoping that fans will share what they're interested in and how they want to engage, whether that's around players or clubs, their location or their community, via the new app and website. Willis notes: We then want to be able to suggest new things to them based on their behavior and the things that they engage with. We want to be able to use our analytics to understand that underneath. The creativity element is a core part of the tech project, letting fans create assets and share them based on what they love and care about in the Premier League. For FPL players, Adobe Express has been integrated into the new website and app for the 2025/26 season. This will let FPL managers quickly and easily design unique badges and kits for their teams using simple text prompts. Willis explains: They could say, I would like my team badge to include an eagle and a lion and a zebra crossing, and they would then be able to receive an asset and use that to hero their fantasy Premier League team. The images that fans create within FPL will be commercially safe, as it's using Adobe Firefly generative AI, which is trained on a dataset of licensed content with permission. The Premier League will also be offering fans a series of templates they can use to create their own football-related content and share it on socials. This will allow anyone to create a series of assets related to the Premier League, but not using Premier League IP. Willis adds: Then through the partnership, we'll release a series of assets where fans can actually use Premier League imagery and be able to remix that and put their own personal spin on that content. Adobe's AI technology underpins many of the new features the Premier League is able to offer its fans, including more efficient video processing, creating personalized clips of highlights, and being able to better mine all the different content sources, information and data. Fans will get a much more personalized experience, based on their own preferences, and powered by data gathered in Adobe's Real-Time Customer Data Platform and Adobe Journey Optimizer. News stories about transfers involving their club or match day incidents involving their followed players will be instantly served to individual fans via web and app push notifications. Geo-location data will also see fans getting location-based notifications when they enter a stadium, for example. All this data will offer marketing teams in the Premier League a wealth of insights into their fans, so they can understand what content works best for fan loyalty, engagement and conversion. This might entail providing video content on their favourite player, rather than the whole team, with Adobe GenStudio for Performance Marketing using AI models to speed up the delivery of personalized marketing campaigns. While the Premier League is experiencing growing popularity, with fans engaging in all sorts of different ways, they weren't necessarily making it as far as engaging with broadcast partners and football clubs, as Willis notes: There was a role for the Premier League to play in acting almost as a promotional and marketing vehicle further up the fan funnel, to attract them and provide them with a meaningful introduction to the Premier League and then ultimately convert them into engaging with our broadcasters live on a match day, engaging and forming a relationship with our clubs. It is absolutely intended to integrate and sit as part of the overall media ecosystem around the Premier League, and to seek to address broader fragmentation and create more connectivity for fans in that ecosystem. To serve fans with more personalized content focused on their favorite player or club requires a combination of fans setting their preferences - team, player, location and so on - and then over time, the system gaining an understanding of how someone behaves. Willis explains:

The Premier League just teamed up with Adobe, and it's a big win for all creatives

Football just became the world's biggest creative playground. Adobe has officially become the Creativity Partner of the Premier League, and it might just be the most practical use of AI I've seen all year. The mix of Firefly AI and Adobe Express, coupled with the Premier League and its hugely popular Fantasy Football league, means fans can create custom kits, badges, and team branding in deeper ways. It's a little weird to think this summer's biggest Adobe news isn't a new Photoshop update or Firefly feature but the Premier League, yet here we are. As someone who plays Premier League Fantasy Football each season, I'm keen to finally make Dean's Dons look like league winners (even if they're not). Unveiled at Adobe Summit London, the partnership is more than co-branded fanfare. It's a signal that generative AI, creative software, and fan culture are converging in a meaningful way. For the 1.8 billion football fans around the world, this is an invitation to go beyond watching the game; it's about remixing, designing, and sharing new kit designs and branding. Adobe Express, powered by Firefly AI - a safe-for-commercial-use generative model - is being baked directly into the Premier League's new site and app for the 2025/26 Fantasy season. That means fans can use pre-made templates and Firefly AI in Adobe Express to create custom kits, badges, and even social posts that look like they came from a design studio. Want to immortalise your Fantasy team's shock win with a slick AI-edited reel or design a crest worthy of the Champions League? Now you can. What's interesting here isn't just that football fans are getting new creative tools, it's the shift in who gets to create. When AI emerged, many said it was to open up creativity to everyone, and many raised an eyebrow, but this does feel like Adobe is democratising creativity at scale with this Premier League partnership. With AI-powered features in Adobe Express, like generate video, clip maker (create images and videos from a simple prompt), and object removal, you don't need to be an expert designer to express yourself. Now, every football fan can be a matchday storyteller to go alongside their armchair manager fantasy. It feels like there's a bigger picture, or pitch, if you will, to focus on. This isn't just a football or licensing agreement; it's a proof of concept for AI as a tool to open up and amplify creativity. While other industries wrestle with what AI might replace, Adobe and the Premier League are showing what it can unlock. And behind the scenes, Adobe's Experience Platform is powering personalised experiences with real-time data, from push notifications that know your favourite player, to emails that react to your Fantasy picks. It all feels quietly clever (if a little overwhelming - does it know that much about me?). "This isn't just about the beautiful game," said Rachel Thornton, CMO at Adobe, at the announcement. "It's about giving every fan the tools to create something of their own. That's where the real magic happens." So, whether you're in it for the football, the fandom, or the fonts, Adobe just made matchday a whole lot more creative for everyone.

Adobe and the Premier League Kick Off A Creative Revolution for Global Fanbase

Adobe and the Premier League announced a multi-year partnership to bring new AI-powered personalised digital experiences to fans around the world and provide new opportunities for fans to express their creativity. Adobe's creativity, marketing and AI technology is central to the Premier League's digital transformation and is unlocking new ways for fans to create and share Premier League content, engage with their Fantasy Premier League teams and enjoy more personalised digital experiences. Adobe's partnership with the Premier League will bring the League's 1.8 billion fans around the world closer to their favourite clubs, players and moments through personalised experiences based on their unique interests. As part of the Premier League's digital transformation, Adobe Express - the quick and easy content creation app powering fan engagement - and Firefly generative AI, will give fans new ways to create and share Premier Leaguecontent and enhance their digital and Fantasy Premier League experience. Adobe Express will be seamlessly integrated into the Premier League's new website and app for the 2025/26 Fantasy Premier League season. Designed to be commercially safe, Firefly is only trained on a dataset of licensed content with permission, such as Adobe Stock, and public domain content where copyright has expired. Firefly features, powering Adobe Express, enable fans to easily design unique badges and kits for their favourite Fantasy Premier League teams and share their passion with the world. Fantasy Premier League managers and Premier League fans will be able to showcase their passion beyond the game to create and share standout social content with exclusive Premier League templates in Adobe Express. Adobe Express takes fan-created content to the next level; easy-to-use AI-powered features, such as Generate Video andip Maker, let fans create images and videos from a simple prompt, including long-form videos which they can automatically cut them down into short, attention-grabbing clips made for social. Fans can also edit their own images with AI, using Insert or Remove Object to add new elements to photos or to remove clutter. As the most followed football league in the world, the Premier League is watched in 900 million homes across 189 countries. Each fan has their own unique connection to clubs and players - and their own preferred way of following the action on the pitch, on matchdays and throughout the season. With Adobe Experience Platform, AI Agents and applications including Adobe Real-Time Customer Data Platform, Adobe Journey Optimizer, Adobe Customer Journey Analytics and Adobe GenStudio for Performance Marketing, the Premier League will bring together a fan's preferences from across its entire digital ecosystem. This will enable a richer, more connected understanding of every fan's needs, giving the Premier League the ability to create and optimise the experience across every interaction. As part of the partnership, Adobe's partnership with the Premier league will bring new AI-powered ways to engage and experience the moments that matter, and the creative capabilities to express their love of the game.