David Jarvis, Paul Lee, Pete Giogio, Kevin Westcott, Live sports: The next arena for the streaming wars, Deloitte Insights, November 30, 2022. View in Article The challenge for sports marketers is to create innovative and engaging marketing strategies to reflect these trends, which includes finding ways to deliver personalized content that speaks to the new crowd of fans while maximizing long-term revenue for the club. Selecting “10” equated to “I spend a significant amount of time and/or money actively following and supporting athletes, teams, leagues, and/or sports.” View in Article

I would have considered myself a 'Lifer' up until recently and now I find myself falling under the 'Game Changer' category. Football is here for everyone's enjoyment, I always say it's important to be 'a part of' something not 'apart from' and that's what this is about, the celebration of all fans being a part of the wider football community." As we try to make sense of the emerging world of digital sports fan engagement, here are five tips that can help craft a well-rounded marketing strategy that best connects sports clubs to their shifting target audiences. 5 ways to take sports marketing to the next level 1. Get to (really) know your fanbase by defining persona People have these setups to do this, to have these relationships with sports teams, but you could be perfectly satisfied with your personal relationships. You could have other passions that you find rewarding. People get significant rewards from sports. It just makes you feel good. You get dopamine from feeling happy about it, but that doesn’t have to be what makes you feel good.

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They meet up with their mates in the same place near the stadium, nod to people they have known for years and head to the ground in good time to get ready for 90 minutes of singing their heart out. We Are Social Sport are a team of sport obsessed digital researchers, strategists, creatives and producers launched to answer some of the most pressing challenges facing the sports marketing world. We understand how culture, technology and consumer behaviour interlink around your sport to produce award winning creative solutions, and call this Game Changing Sports Marketing.

Social media has helped bring clubs closer to their fans since its inception, but the new era of fan engagement will require marketers to step up their social media game . Rather than limiting expression as we saw the FIA do when it implemented a ban on jewellery that appeared to directly target Lewis Hamilton, the influence of wider culture should be embraced. Athlete personalities are one of the strongest assets the industry has when it comes to game changing sports marketing. This isn’t about reflecting culture, it’s about being there to create it. It’s about baking it into all your creative solutions to make your ideas as relevant as possible. GET CLOSER TO THE ACTION: EXPLORE BURGEONING PLATFORMS WHERE TODAY’S AUDIENCES LIVE Shifts in technology and consumer behavior are seemingly redefining the way fans enjoy sports, both at home and in person. Fans play a significant role in driving the enormous popularity and unique role of professional sports in our society. That’s why it’s important for sports leagues, teams, organizations, and media and entertainment companies to truly understand these shifts and fans’ complex passions and proclivities. From this, you should be able to build a user story that will help you tailor marketing campaigns for this demographic. Building different personas, too, is important: whether it be a mom taking her kids to the game, or a club superfan who spends most of their free time on their passion, it is important to understand the variety of fans that your campaign should prioritize in its messaging.

Fan demographics change depending on the sport, but there are trends that are universal . We know the importance of marketing to female sports fans because of the increasing number of women and girls watching (especially in some sports), and we know that fans want to consume more online content than ever before. And despite being at an inflection point, sport itself is becoming a broader church. From purpose, to culture, to activism and creativity, sport today is all encompassing. Whether it be Naomi Osaka advocating for more conversation and action around mental health, or Marcus Rashford fighting against child food poverty, more and more athletes are using their platform to promote their values and interests beyond performance. Sports has always been a crucible for our values, but today it shapes our lives in a multitude of ways, through both expected and unexpected avenues, be it fashion, music, film or technology. All this ladders up to sport’s cultural impact being bigger than ever.