Where did your sports allegiances come from? Your hometown? Your family? How about Netflix or TikTok? For decades, fandom was a factor of legacy and geography. People inherited team allegiances from their family, passing it down from generation to generation like a family heirloom. Or people found fandom as a result of their physical environment, as local and college teams dominated the media coverage and cultural conversation.
These two pathways of fandom have remained steadfast because sports culture had long been rooted in one word: tradition.
Traditionally, the definition of a sports fan was binary. You were either classified as an avid fan, attending games in-person, tuning into matches live, reciting stats and play from the night before, or you were a casual fan, attending a Super Bowl party, hearing the final score of a game along with the evening news or buying a T-shirt with your favorite team’s logo on it.
In recent years, social and media platforms have inexorably altered the way people engage with sports, widening the aperture of what it means to be a fan. No longer limited to the live, linear forms of TV, radio and in-person attendance, engaging with sports has broadened. In fact, according to proprietary research from R/GA, only 35% of sports viewing moments are avid, linear, sit-downs.
Fandom has diffused beyond linear viewing and into these globally connected social and media platforms, which has in turn begun to blur the lines between sports, culture, and entertainment. The fan conversation has evolved from "Did you watch the game last night?" to "Did you see Taylor and Mama Kelce in the Chiefs family box?" and "Can you believe Alex Morgan was fined for her tweet about a lack of penalty call?" and "Did you see what David Roddy wore to the arena?" This shift has presented an opportunity for more consumers to engage with sports, charting their own paths to leagues, teams, and athletes to pledge their allegiance to.
Sports fans today have the opportunity to build their own operating system of fandom, one that is personalized and tailored to their individual needs, filled with products, platforms and experiences that fuel engagement, passion and, eventually, loyalty. The truth is, bonds as intimate and personal as those forged through fandom were never ideally suited to a "one-size-fits-all" definition, but rather an expansive, evolving one; built to accommodate different levels of commitments and forms of engagement.
This all has led to a rise of a new type of fandom that connects with sports through non-traditional channels, favors moments that align with their personal values and interests and values the cultural currency that sports can provide as highly as the results of the game itself. They dictate when, where and how they want to engage with sports, and are not beholden to tradition or legacy.
We call them, On-demand Fans.
On-demand Fans are not defined by a gender, race or generation. They are a tech-savvy, culturally attuned group whose expectations have been shaped by the "on-demand" culture we live in. They have taken these norms and infused them with sports fan culture, creating a new reality for sports leagues/teams/athletes and partnering brands when it comes to fan engagement tactics.
This presents an incredible opportunity for brands to connect with a wider group of fans with a wider set of approaches.
Building around human values as the new sporting values. Investing in the game around the game. Rewriting the fan journey with co-created content. And integrating technology to enable participation.
In our latest piece of thought leadership, my team at the R/GA Ventures’ Global Sports Venture Studio partnered with the creative innovation company R/GA to explore how On-demand Fans enter sports, how they follow sports differently and how brands can engage with them through the intersection of sports, culture and technology.
About R/GA
R/GA is a Creative Innovation company specializing in global digital product, marketing & brand innovation, part of The Interpublic Group of Companies, with offices across the U.S., Europe, South America and Asia-Pacific. We offer services across communications, brand design and consulting, experience design, technology strategy and engineering, media planning and buying and relationship design. Today we work with a range of sports brands, leagues and sponsors, including Nike, XFL, Verizon, American Express, Ally Financial and more, to create experiences that deepen fans’ connection to sports.
About R/GA Ventures’ Global Sports Venture Studio
The Global Sports Venture Studio is actively reshaping the future of sports through collaborative innovation. By uniting the world’s top sports entities, including leagues, teams, federations, venue operators, retail partners, media distributors, corporate sponsors, technology suppliers and cutting-edge startups, we are pioneering the transformation of fan and athlete experiences for the modern era.
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