The entire world of sports has been disrupted, and the role it plays is different for younger generations than it is for the older generations.
Why it matters: With new technology, increased choice, and higher standards of what constitutes a good experience, the approach sports brands must take to grab people’s attention must change. Sports brands must find new ways to tell stories in order to stay ahead of these trends. Not to mention, they must also find new ways to differentiate themselves from other teams, the league, and sports outlets.
What they are saying: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella declared sport to be “one of the most disrupted of all industries.” (2015)
The big picture:
More choice. In the last ten years, we’ve seen an explosion of entertainment options to choose from. People used to follow a “signature window of the week” and watched more of their local team’s games because there was less other stuff to do — you didn’t have Netflix, Instagram, or Amazon this and that. These days there are so many different things going on in people’s lives.
Short-attention spans. If there isn’t a moment that is going on that they can talk to their friends about, or getting them off the seat, and it feels like just another play in the game — the odds are they might be on Instagram, Snapchat, or doing something else. This is just one of the great realities around how people consume sports content, when commercials come on, or when something boring is going on, people are most likely on their phone
Moments-obsessed. Watching the full, very commercialized, 3-hour game is not necessarily what a young person cares about. Nor do they have the patience to handle it. Today, you can now be connected to sports without necessarily giving a damn about or wins or losses. You can see a really cool video of something athletic — it could be a professional sports highlight, or it could be 13-year-old Japanese skateboarder doing something amazing.
Quick to move-on. Younger viewers will substitute toward other things a lot more quickly than their parents will. If you burn them through crappy user-experiences and too many commercials, or too much dead time during games, or just frankly half-time shows that are targeted towards their parents, they are going to substitute to something else.
Bottom line: The playing field has been flattened and sports brands are now competing for attention across all categories and across all channels.
