US and UK Sports Fans Reaching Digital Natives
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The 20,000 Foot View: Sports as a product is feeling the squeeze of the peak attention economy. Sports fans in the traditional sense are ageing, and appealing to a younger digitally-native audience is a fundamental issue that rights holders can no longer ignore. Sports rights holders have realised the importance of their virtual (gaming) counterparts, acknowledging that they are taking much of the attention of a large proportion of their fanbases, but also nurturing expected future fans who do not interact with the real-life version of sports. Key to this dynamic is the current spread of distribution deals—which makes viewing fragmented and expensive for fans, due to rights holders’ legacy approach to award rights to the highest bidder regardless of reach. Sports are rapidly losing future fans to e-sports and gaming in general – now is the time for traditional sports to fight back.
Key Insights
US sports franchises lead the way in addressing reach over revenue, with the NFL acknowledging in September 2018 that models should target reach over revenue in this digitally-transformed landscape. Opening up rights distribution to social and digital platforms domestically is fundamental in targeting younger audiences, who do not engage with pay-TV offerings – something UK rights holders will need to adhere to going forward.
UK
- UK sports are ageing: only of viewers the English Premier League (EPL) aged while are over
- Just of olds watch live sports on
- Games franchises not always drive engagement: FIFA are less likely than overall to watch live sports on by percentage points
- Sports games drive streaming: of FIFA players Amazon Prime Video weekly average (WAUs), compared to of EPL
- Soccer fans relatively young: the EPL has younger average audience compared to and rugby viewers in 2019, years old relative to and
- Digital footprint in addressing digital natives: wrestling an average audience of years down largely to digital pioneer
US
- Football and fans are maturing: only of football and of baseball viewers aged while and respectively are
- Just of olds watch live sports on
- Basketball has digital natives’ attention: of basketball are aged with over illustrating benefits of basketball’s diverse distribution strategy
- Gaming helps engagement: Madden NFL and NBA are and five percentage points likely than overall consumers to live sports on TV
- Basketball fans evenly split across age demographic: has the youngest average audience the US in 2019 at old, compared with for both football and baseball, and for hockey
Companies and brands mentioned in this report: ABC, Amazon, Amazon Prime Video, Coupe de la Ligue, DAZN, Disney, Disney+, English Premier League, ESPN, ESPN+, FIFA, FIFA, Hulu, La Liga, Madden NFL, Major League Baseball, National Basketball Association, National Football League, National Hockey League, NBA NBA League, Pro Evolution Soccer, Take Two Interactive, Tencent, Thursday Night Football, TNT, Twitch, WWE, YouTube