In sports and entertainment licensing, a delayed product approval is not an administrative inconvenience. It moves launch dates and costs retail sell-through.
WME Group, through its licensing arm IMG, manages approval workflows for global brands whose licensed products generate more than $17 billion in annual retail sales. As that portfolio grew, the platform running those approvals could not grow with it. An aging tech stack and a rigid interface made new features slow to ship and made the one thing brand teams needed most, workflows configured per brand, effectively impossible to deliver.
Net Solutions reimagined and re-engineered the platform from the ground up. The rebuild introduced a unified workflow engine, dynamic forms, system-wide reporting, and a companion native mobile app, eApprovals, that carries full approval authority into the field. Processing time fell by 40%, internal adoption reached 70% within six months, and the same approval logic has since been packaged into standalone environments for the Rugby World Cup, CONMEBOL, MLB, and Volkswagen.
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Reduction in average approval processing time
Internal adoption reached within six months of launch
Faster report generation for operational audits
Organization-level enterprise deployments of the eApprovals mobile app
In annual licensed retail sales supported by the platform
IMG Licensing operates as the world’s leading brand licensing agency. Its License Product Management department, however, was working against a platform that had stopped keeping pace with the business it supported.
The business case was straightforward. Approvals had become the constraint on how fast licensed product could reach shelves, and no amount of process discipline was going to fix a platform that could not be extended.
We re-architected the licensing system from the ground up rather than extending what was there.
The core decision was to build the variation into configuration instead of code. A repeatable workflow engine lets each brand define its own approval stages and forms without a development cycle, which is what makes the platform usable across a portfolio as diverse as UFC, MLB, and Volkswagen. Around that engine we built a dedicated enterprise mobile app for approvals in the field, and synchronized the whole platform directly with WME Group’s central licensing databases so brand and licensee records resolve to one source of truth.
Modernizing across web and mobile together, rather than sequentially, is what allowed the platform to absorb high-volume global licensing operations without a second round of rework.
Flow: Central licensing core ──► Configurable workflow engine ──► Dynamic forms ──► Multi-tier routing ──► Web and mobile sign-off ──► Searchable archive and reporting
An enterprise workflow platform that synchronizes brand and licensee profiles directly from the central licensing core.
Approval authority does not sit at a desk, so the platform was extended into native iOS and Android apps.
The core approval logic was engineered as a repeatable framework, then used to stand up dedicated tracking environments for major global properties.
We align complex technology implementation with precise enterprise branding requirements, which is a narrower discipline than it sounds. Licensing platforms fail when the workflow model is too rigid to survive contact with real brand hierarchies, or when the mobile layer is built on syncing logic that cannot hold up against the systems of record underneath it.
Our team combines deep database integration expertise with disciplined product design, bridging legacy corporate systems, enterprise CRMs, and responsive front-end interfaces. That is what turns high-risk, high-volume approval workflows into predictable digital infrastructure, and what makes it safe to run multi-billion-dollar global portfolios on it.
If you need an engineering partner who understands the operational realities of global brand licensing and media distribution, we should talk.
Net Solutions rebuilt WME Group’s brand licensing approval platform from the ground up. The new platform combines a configurable workflow engine, dynamic approval forms, system-wide reporting, and a native iOS and Android app called eApprovals. It replaced a legacy system that could not support brand-specific workflows or multi-tier approval routing.
Average approval processing time fell by 40%. Automated routing and mobile sign-offs let licensees clear products for retail markets weeks earlier than the previous cycle allowed, which pulls forward time-to-market on licensed product.
eApprovals is the native iOS and Android app built alongside WME Group’s licensing platform. It offers full feature parity with the web dashboard, so executives and brand stewards can review asset pipelines, evaluate product designs, and execute legally binding sign-offs from a phone. It runs across more than 100 organization-level enterprise deployments.
Yes. Brand managers configure multi-tier authorization steps that mirror their own internal corporate hierarchies, and product management teams design custom approval request forms for specific projects and licensing agreements. This is handled as configuration rather than custom development, so a new brand does not require a release cycle.
The core approval framework has been used to stand up dedicated environments for the Rugby World Cup in 2015, 2019, and 2023, CONMEBOL, Major League Baseball, and Volkswagen. WME Group’s wider licensing portfolio includes UFC, WWE, MLB, Volkswagen, and ESPN.
Internal adoption reached 70% within six months of launch. Adoption at that pace is usually an interface problem rather than a feature problem, and the rollout succeeded because the approval flow was designed to be lower friction than the workaround it replaced.
The platform synchronizes brand and licensee profiles directly from WME Group’s central licensing core, so records resolve to a single source of truth rather than being maintained separately. Approved submissions, media assets, and communication history are then archived into a searchable gallery accessible to both licensors and licensees.
System-level reporting with extensive filters lets super administrators track aggregate requests by licensee, product class, or individual brand. Report generation for operational audits is 25% faster than on the previous system.
Timelines depend on how many brands, workflow variants, and downstream integrations are involved, but a phased rebuild that keeps the existing system running during migration is usually the lower-risk path. The critical early decision is whether brand-specific rules will live as configuration or as code, because that choice determines how much engineering effort every future brand onboarding costs.
We help licensing agencies, rights holders, and brand owners replace rigid approval tools with workflow platforms each brand configures for itself, across web and mobile. Whether that means rebuilding from the ground up, modernizing what you have, or automating the review steps that consume the most time, we start by mapping where your cycle time actually goes.
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