Conversations Drive Sports Fandom: A New Playbook for Tapping into Sports Culture

This webinar is designed for sports leagues, teams, and sponsors looking to deepen their fan relationships, as well as consumer brands across categories that want to authentically connect with sports fans. We’ll explore how online communities are fueling always-on fandom and shaping how fans experience everything from major global tournaments to fast-growing women’s sports and niche competitions, including:

• How cultural shifts are transforming fandom and creating opportunities for both sports and non-sports brands
• Ways to harness fan communities to cut through fragmentation and build authentic, lasting connections
• Examples of how brands are delivering content and experiences fans actually want—driving engagement, loyalty, and impact

Drawing on an Attest survey of 1,500 adults in the US and UK, this session unpacks how fan conversations translate into viewing choices, purchase intent, and brand receptivity across categories. A few of the trends we found with US sports fans who use Reddit are:

• The rise of the always-on sports economy: 88% of fans engage in communities weekly, year-round—the days of seasonal peaks and valleys have been replaced by perpetual sports conversation.
• Fan expectations have evolved - to include greater opportunity for brands: They aren’t just more engaged, they want to go deeper and broader, and they expect platforms to follow suit.
• Fans demand genuine value exchange: The #1 driver? "Learning something new."
• Fragmentation is the opportunity: 72% seek community guidance on where to watch, and 50% say they watch more live sports because of these conversations.
• Sports fans are more than just sports fans: No monolithic sports diehards; today’s fans are passionate participants in a spectrum of interests. More likely than any other audience to be active across other categories like gaming, travel, beauty, music, cars, and more. And they act on those interests: 80% drink alcohol, 45% are planning vacations, and 33% are considering insurance purchases.

If sports fans are part of your audience—or if you want them to be—this is a conversation you can’t afford to miss.

Note: The information in this webinar is presented by Reddit. The research source is Reddit Custom Survey, US and UK, n=1500, A18-66, “Sports Viewership”, September 2024. It is not based on MMA research.