Could you elaborate on what you meant about the sports team applying only to key people?
Is it about a difference between operational work and strategic work?
By key people I mean that there should be a small group of select employees, somewhere between 6-10 people and these people should be carefully selected so they would be compatible with each other. There would be a mix of Lead artists, engineers, etc.
The benefit is that because the group is small, they can collaborate more effectively with each other and ultimately, this group would be the main force behind the innovations of the org.
If the sports team idea applies to this small group, I think it would result in everyone bringing out the best of themselves but also other organization members could potentially get motivated by them.
I've seen Valve (the company) do a similar thing with a lot of success. They call it the cabal process[1]. They don't treat it exactly like a "sports team" but there are lots of parallels.
[1] https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Valve_in_the_press#...
I think ideally, the "sports team" idea should only apply to key people in the organization.