To mark 50 years of Athletic Business, we polled hundreds of readers from each of our main vertical markets — college athletics, college recreation, community recreation, high school athletics, health and fitness, aquatics and architecture — to gauge the current state of the industry. What follows is a comprehensive analysis of our readers’ perspectives on the verticals they serve. To begin, we asked each of these groups about their operating budgets and deferred maintenance. Despite finding consensus on several topics, the budgetary changes across these verticals varied greatly. Respondents found far greater common ground when describing their deferred maintenance status, with a clear majority reporting less than $2 million of maintenance to be completed at their facilities.
Find your industry segment in the following pages — or get the lay of the land from your colleagues across other industries — to compare your experiences to those of other loyal AB readers. From fan behavior and emerging sports to renovations and staffing challenges, there is no shortage of topics to dive into.
College athletics is in an era of immense change, reflected by the results of the 2026 State of the Industry survey. Respondents identified several key challenges in today’s athletics landscape: recruiting and retaining specialized staff, such as athletic trainers and strength coaches, managing transfer portal turnover, and department budgeting. Respondents also reveal complex budgets, with 83% of survey takers stating that they receive less than 25% of department revenue from “non-traditional sources,” including digital media, corporate partnerships and special events. Despite challenging budgets, 45% of survey respondents still indicate that a facilities project is either underway or will break ground this year.
Chris Barrow
Senior Product Manager, Biamp
How has the role of a sound system in an athletics facility changed over the years?
The biggest shift is that audio has moved from “infrastructure” to “experience.” Not long ago, the bar was pretty low — people could hear the announcer and the buzzer worked. Today, athletics directors are thinking about atmosphere. When the home crowd is energized and the sound system is feeding that energy, that’s a competitive advantage — and administrators at every level know it. Our job at Biamp is to help facilities deliver that experience without handing them something so complicated it takes a specialist just to run a gameday.
What’s the most common mistake facilities make when investing in a new audio system?
Underestimating flexibility. A lot of facilities invest in a system built for gamedays, then call us when the graduation ceremony sounds like an echo chamber. Your gym might host basketball on Tuesday, a fundraiser on Thursday and a commencement ceremony on Saturday — each event needs something a little different. When flexibility is designed in from the start, adjusting for different uses is simple. That’s one of the things we’re most deliberate about at Biamp, because it saves real headaches down the road.
Athletics venues are notoriously tough acoustic environments. What makes them so challenging, and how do you address that?
Every venue fights you differently. Gymnasiums have hard, reflective surfaces that bounce sound in every direction. Natatoriums are even more extreme. Outdoor stadiums deal with wind and open space. The common thread is getting sound precisely where people are and keeping it away from surfaces that turn it into noise. That’s the core philosophy behind our Community loudspeaker line — controlled coverage so the person in the last row gets the same clear experience as someone courtside. Good design from the start eliminates most of the frustration later.
Life safety keeps coming up in facility planning conversations. Where does audio fit into that picture?
This is one topic I love talking about because it completely reframes the investment. Codes such as NFPA 72 require venues to be capable of emergency mass notification — clear, intelligible announcements that reach every person in the building, under any conditions. When you design for that from day one, your gameday PA and your life safety system become one investment, not two. Administrators who make that connection walk into budget conversations with a much stronger case than those who treat them separately.
What are you most excited about when you look at where athletics venue audio is heading?
The gap between “great audio” and “accessible audio” keeps closing — and that’s genuinely exciting for high school and college programs. Technology that used to be exclusive to NFL stadiums is now within reach for everyone. We’re also seeing more ADs gain real independence with their systems: checking status and making adjustments from a tablet without calling a technician. That kind of simplicity has always been the goal. It’s finally becoming the standard, and I think it changes what administrators expect — in a really good way.
