Sporting examples building connections with fans and creators

Thanks to the internet, convergence and fragmentation are changing every market and sector, and the sport industry is no different. What is distinctive about sport is how it operates across such a breadth, here are a few examples:

• seemingly endlessly bigger rights deals

• sports adjacent programming having emerged in recent years

• connectivity changing the stadium experience for fans as well as the volume of data available to clubs and leagues

• the creator sector carving out new audiences as well as giving even more to fans who can’t get enough of their chosen sport and team

• new sports being developed (as well as traditional sports reinventing themselves for a modern age).

Sport manages to be several things simultaneously: spectacle and grandeur, while also often the pure simplicity of a single individual achieving their life’s ambition (or having it dashed) in the most public way possible. For audiences, this shared experience with each other as fans - and with their own tribe of fans that are a subset of the whole - as well the the connection with the athletes themselves is what all sports companies, brands, players, media companies and creators are trying to facilitate and be part of.

And what happens with sport has a huge impact on the wider TV market. Last week, there was a fascinating observation in an episode of The Town where Matthew Belloni and Lucas Shaw discussed how much money sports rights have sucked out of the Hollywood ecosystem, thus leaving not enough money to pay for other types of content, or finance the necessary transition to a streaming operation. It was striking how there wasn’t any real solution to this challenge, beyond suggesting that the sports rights holders might consider lowering their asks in acknowledgement that it may not be in their longer term interests to see the TV networks damaged in this way.

Here, I’ve pulled together some recent examples showing how the sports market is evolving to reach new audiences. What is notable is how many sports have embraced the concept that multiple channels can co-exist at the same time, whereas previously it was much more common for there to be a single, more exclusive shared experience. This reflects similar changes in the wider TV market where previously exclusivity to prevent cannibalisation was the dominant worldview, but that too has now lessened.

All these examples are about creating authentic, fan-focussed, accessible content and experiences for different audiences, in a way that doesn’t damage and only enhances the premium coverage.