Toby Clark is a Planning Director at sport and entertainment marketing agency Sport UNLIMITED.
The next generation of sports fans look very different to us.
When I say “us”, I mean millennials. When I say; “next gen” I mean the 18-24 Gen Z fan that rights-holders are chasing to keep their fan pipeline alive. And when I say; “look different”, I mean they turn to sport for their own unique reasons. To satisfy different needs to the ones that you or I do.
Last year’s EY report that compared levels of engagement in over 150 sports highlighted how some more ‘traditional’ sports like rugby or athletics have fallen off a cliff in engaging the Gen Z audience.
We know the younger audience wants to engage differently. We know participation plays more of a role. We know they live in a more fragmented media landscape.
These are all important considerations. But looking more broadly than purely sport consumption, we can’t forget that younger people, regardless of the era in which they grew up in, generally have different needs to adults. And there is some universality in which needs are more important at a young age. And how these evolve as we enter adolescence, and critically how these needs are met by sport fandom.
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According to Sport UNLIMITED’s proprietary Human Needs Model – developed by our Human Understanding Lab – ‘Play’ and ‘Belonging’ are most important for 8–11-year-olds. They just want to have fun and be part of things.
Enter: the teenage years. Teens seek the more hedonistic feeling of ‘Pleasure’ rather than fun – signalled by dopamine, rather than adrenaline. As well as caring what our peers think i.e. ‘Social Approval’.
Then, just before adulthood, one need stands out. ‘Autonomy’ is the desire to be independent, and to be good at something.
But needs are not, of course, one-size-fits-all. The ‘blueprints’ above are only the foundations – upon which millions of individual personalities exist.
Young peoples’ needs are exaggerated, or reduced, depending on their surrounds. They are easily moulded in this period of ‘neuroplasticity’ (when our brains are more impressionable); and young people start to define who they are. They break out of the young person’s template for what motivates, and start to be shaped by their family, peers, and indeed culture more broadly.
(And that concludes the science lesson.)
What does this all mean for sport? Well, the next generation of people, and therefore fans, have (and are) being exposed to a different cultural context. Therefore, the next wave of sports fans will have different motivations for engaging with sport.
The big three ways in which Gen Z fans differ to Millennial fans:
The sensation of winning is key. The vicarious feeling of success they get is dramatically more important for Gen Z than it is for Millennials. Maybe because life feels tougher, and the path to success looks far less straightforward for Gen Z, they look to sport to patch that void.
Creativity matters. Far more so than Millennials, Gen Z are drawn to the self-expression and sheer demonstration of skill that sport offers. They enjoy watching people who are very, very good at what they do. Perhaps unsurprising amongst a generation that rewards people for being their authentic selves.
A sense of fairness and inclusivity is missing. For Millennials, sport can offer a sense of respect, and can demonstrate good in the world. However, for Gen Z, what they get from sport in this area falls well short of their needs.
What does this mean for you, as a sports marketeer? Nuance is everything. We have pulled some big, aggregated numbers from the data to demonstrate how needs around sport differ at a generational level, which can provide some context to the current landscape of sporting fandom.
But to understand the needs of a particular age group (we’ve barely touched on Gen Alpha!), of a particular gender, responding to a particular sport and how you engage them to play grassroots sport or engage with your content… you’ll need to speak to us.
