AI Registry Launches to Protect Athletes' Digital IP and Likeness

As AI continues to reshape the entertainment and sports industries, a newly launched sports-tech firm is making the case that athletes have become contributors to the AI economy — and that no standardized system exists to compensate them for it.

Callandor Group has unveiled what it describes as the first dedicated registry for sports intellectual property in the AI era: a platform designed to give athletes and sports organizations the tools to manage, protect and profit from their digital identities, which the company says are increasingly being absorbed into AI systems without compensation or consent.

“Right now, the IP of a star like [Lionel] Messi or LeBron [James] is a legal Wild West,” said Michael Fisk, Callandor’s CEO. “Their movements, voice and biometric data are being fed into AI models with zero transparency and no standardized royalty system. Athletes are no longer just players — they are the training data for the next generation of digital entertainment.”

Fisk, a veteran entertainment executive with credits at Sony, MGM and Amazon Studios, leads the company alongside co-CEO David Cassidy and CTO An Vu. Vu, a former engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory who worked on the Perseverance Mars rover, is developing what the company calls the “Event Horizon API,” aimed at securing AI queries and safeguarding athlete data. Cassidy, who served as an executive producer on Michael Mann’s “Ferrari” and brings ties to Europe’s Big 5 soccer leagues, is focused on onboarding elite clubs and players to the platform.

At its core, Callandor’s offering allows athletes to license their digital identities and collect royalties when AI systems draw on their likeness or performance data. For clubs and content studios, it provides a route to commercialize video libraries as training material for AI developers, while remaining compliant with the European Union’s AI Act and California’s transparency legislation.

“As the sports world evolves into a software-driven entertainment business, Callandor is the infrastructure that ensures the stars actually own the future they’re building,” Fisk said. “For the industry overall, it provides a clear, compliant path to move from broadcast rights to training rights.”

The company has named Phil McKenzie as a strategic adviser. McKenzie co-founded Goldfinch, a financing firm that has deployed over £300 million ($397 million) across more than 300 projects, and myco.io, a platform boasting 40 million users and distribution partnerships with the English Premier League and the International Cricket Council.

“Sports IP licensing is where entertainment credit financing was 15 years ago — massive underlying asset value, no standardized infrastructure to unlock it,” McKenzie said. “Callandor is building that infrastructure layer.”

European soccer is the company’s primary target market, with Callandor pointing to the global audiences commanded by the Big 5 leagues and the regulatory tailwinds created by the EU AI Act as conditions that favor its compliant approach. The company’s team also includes Guglielmo Cardente, who the company says brings access to European soccer’s top clubs through ties to Roberto Mancini’s legacy and Formula One. Callandor additionally says it has working relationships with FC Barcelona’s digital arms — Barça Media, Barça One and Barça Digital Assets — and has been involved in facilitating the theatrical release of the FIFA Club World Cup.

“By tracking and licensing AI queries involving sports IP, we create a scalable, durable revenue model,” Fisk said. “Athletes are the new code. If athletes are the software, we’re creating the app store.”

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