01 – NFL

For stoking insatiable, year-round demand for professional football. The NFL may have the fewest games in sports, but it knows how to transform everything around its weekly games¬—and even previously mundane off-season events like the scouting combine, the pre-draft audition—into events. Its new venture fund, the first by a pro league, will invest in businesses (up to $3 million per owner a few times a year) that could help grow the league ($9 billion in annual revenue) and take fan passion to new heights. READ MORE

02 – MLB Advanced Media

For building the least likely tech powerhouse in sports. MLBAM, or BAM, continues to build on its tradition as a new media pioneer: It was the first league to broadcast live games online, the first to charge for online content, and the first to make that online video HD-quality. Like Amazon’s cloud storage business, BAM’s third-party streaming service grew out of its core business. It distributes all of ESPN’s online video, including this year’s BCS Championship game, and it serves up all the March Madness live games for Turner and CBS. BAM is also an elite app-maker. It keeps enhancing its bestselling At Bat and adding new platforms (Xbox and the Kindle Fire) to its growing roster.

03 – MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference

For elevating sports analytics. What began as a modest wonkfest six years ago, with just 60 attendees, is now a can’t-miss event for teams, researchers, media, and stats geeks of every stripe. Part academic conference, part high-level networking, part media circus, the event drew more than 2,200 people this year, including execs from 73 teams. The research explored new ways to measure the NBA’s best shooters, the benefit of experience in the playoffs and the slow acceptance of analytics in tennis.

04 – Sporting Kansas City

For enhancing the stadium experience with digital amenities. This Major League Soccer team’s new Livestrong Sporting Park sets a new standard with a reliable network for surfing, a rarity in parks and stadiums, along with individual access to replays and clever apps and features to get fans involved (predicting the action, tweeting messages to the Jumbotron). The club, the first to name its venue after a nonprofit, launched a business consulting other teams on making their venues more tech-enabled.

05 – ESPN

For breaking new ground with an old school-meets-new school sensibility. ESPN, which has been beefing up its analytics efforts, made a splash by last fall with its Total Quarterback Rating, a long overdue replacement for the conventional formula measuring a quarterback’s efficiency. The new metric is more nuanced and comprehensive and its creators leveraged the ability to evaluate tens of thousands of plays from recent years. ESPN also launched products to satisfy the different sides of a sports fan’s brain: Grantland, an elegant site devoted to long-form journalism (2.3 million monthly visitors) and WatchESPN, an app (5.6 million downloads) offering bites of live ESPN video.

06 – Dallas Mavericks

For rewriting the playbook. Winning the NBA championship last season, the Mavs’ first, was the culmination for the team that experiments more than any other. Since tech entrepreneur Mark Cuban bought the franchise more than a decade ago, he’s done everything from upgrading the players to a palatial locker room with luxury amenities that would attract high-priced free agents to grading the referees. Dallas became a perennial contender. Attendance soared. A couple of years ago, the Mavs were also the first team to hire a quantitative analyst to sit alongside its coaches during games, and last year it paid off with a winning strategy against the high-powered Miami Heat.