Mondo Metrics says its new trend tracker is “what CrowdTangle would have become”–and it’s launching with major sports leagues

The content competition is fiercer than ever: Digital platforms like YouTube and Netflix, which have spent years steadily sapping traffic from legacy entertainment like TV and radio, are now at war with each other over who can generate the most watch time.

And to lock down that watch time, platforms are brokering exclusive deals with creators, teaming up for first-of-their-kind bundle deals, and–more and more often these days–bidding for the rights to live sports.

Live sports is perhaps the mainstay of modern entertainment. TV and radio engagement may have slipped, but live sports are still going strong on both. And on the internet, leagues, teams, and tournaments have found even deeper connections with their fanbases.

Platforms have recognized this: YouTube paid billions for seven years of NFL Sunday Ticket, and just spent weeks bringing creators pitchside at the World Cup as an official FIFA partner.

Netflix, meanwhile, is paying $5 billion for 10 years of WWE Raw, is exclusively airing a handful of NFL 2026-27 games, and continues investing in one-off live events like last year’s Jake Paul x Mike Tyson boxing match. It says it expects live sports (and other) events to be “a small percentage of our total view hours and content expense,” but that because of their cultural caché, will “result in outsized value to both our members and our business.”

And, speaking of creators, they are increasingly an athletic presence in sports like golf and pickleball. At the same time, sports celebrities are crossing into our realm and building their own digital channels (whattup, Ronaldo?).

All this is to say that the digital world is a major and growing center for sports–and audience intelligence company Mondo Metrics is looking to capitalize.

Nick Cicero, whose former measurement company Delmondo was acquired by Conviva, founded Mondo Metrics because he was working in our space with people like David Dobrik, and realized “there were a lot of creators that were creating more episodic content, more series, and podcasts were a big part of that, but there wasn’t a good benchmarking solution.”

Some of these creators crossed into the sports arena via collabs with athletes, and Cicero saw the episodic and cross-platform nature of creators’ content mirrored sports leagues airing multiple matches per week, plus dozens or even hundreds of social posts, across an entire season. Sports and entertainment, he adds, have become “more fragmented–influence now moves across teams, leagues, athletes, creators, podcasts, YouTube channels, publishers, fan communities and international formats, often faster than legacy tools can measure it.”

He says Meta’s CrowdTangle provided a potential solution, but it shut down in 2024, “leaving a big gap in the industry for being able to have this Bloomberg Terminal kind of view of what’s holding people’s attention today.”

“There really wasn’t that open benchmarking solution, especially in the world of sports and podcasts and the overlap of those creators and athlete-driven media,” he says.

So, he launched Mondo Metrics, and now Mondo Metrics is launching MondoTrends, a market intelligence product Cicero says has already been adopted by the Arizona Cardinals, United Football League, Underdog Sports, Los Angeles Chargers, and LOVB Volleyball.

MondoTrends operates by “identifying where audience momentum is building,” Mondo Metrics says. Its dashboard allows member sports teams and leagues to “search, filter and sort every post across the market by platform, keyword, account, format and performance, not just within your own channels, to view what’s over and under-performing.”

Users can also look at content performance by format, video length, and platform; surface emerging trends; see leaderboards and rankings for social performance of individual teams, leagues, athletes, creators, publishers, shows, and content categories; get audience momentum tracking; and get “competitive benchmarking” aimed at helping brands, agencies, sponsorship teams, and media sellers better position themselves in the market.

“MondoTrends gives us a clearer view into how fans are engaging with the Arizona Cardinals across platforms, formats and moments,” Surf Melendez, the Arizona Cardinals’ VP of Content, Creative, and Brand, said in a statement. “The value is not just seeing what performed well after the fact. It is understanding what is gaining momentum, how our content stacks up in the broader sports market and where we can make smarter decisions across content, partnerships and fan engagement.”

Matt Wickline, VP of Media & Content Business Development at LOVB, added that MondoTrends “has given us clarity and perspective on what content is breaking through for our teams and athletes.”

“[W]e’ve been able to quickly identify how we stack up to competitors and how our athletes stack up against each other,” he said. “At the end of the day, those are the insights we need to grow our brand and tap into volleyball culture worldwide.”

Mondo Metrics says MondoTrends is rolling out initially through things like customer pilots, public leaderboards, and category-specific intelligence products. Its initial focus areas include women’s sports (Mondo Metrics is also behind the Women’s Sports Index), athlete-led media, and sports creator networks.