📺 An average of 750,000+ viewers tuned in to the Burnley vs Rovers match on Sky Sports Main Event last weekend.
📱 The day before over 1million users on X viewed our transfer announcement video for Todd Cantwell.
Although the viewing figures for the local derby are an average (the total viewing figures will be higher) it still highlights many recent studies on the sports fan (especially Gen Z), and how they follow players rather than teams.
Gen Z reimagines what it means to be a sports fan. Unlike past generations that typically rooted for teams passed down through family tradition or geographic loyalty, the present composition of Gen Z is increasingly team-agnostic, instead following individual players. Such a trend catalyzes a set of important factors that identify how this generation in particular consumes and interacts with sports.
Social media has been one of the high-end contributors to such change. Growing up on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok-where athletes share their personality, thoughts, and interests outside of the game. Now they follow players based on personality, values, and off-pitch activities that better match their interest or identity than any history or brand of a team would.
More so, the focus on personal branding in sports combines well with what they consider important.
Besides, Generation Z is also less likely to be pegged down by regional allegiances. The globalized world of today gives them a wide exposure to several types of sports and players across the world. Streaming services and social media make it super easy to follow your favorite players, whether they are in the same city or halfway around the world. Access to this broad sports landscape puts an emphasis on player-based fandom rather than team-based loyalty.
As Gen Z's influence only continues to grow, it highlights the importance of sports clubs ability to shift in that direction, moving further and deeper into placing the brand, story, and voice of the individual athlete at the forefront, in an effort to better appeal to the next generation of fans.
At Blackburn Rovers Football Club we're slowly transitioning to a partnership model where our partners can have more access to our player-led digital content, and match their values with our players so they can also have access to their followers. An example of this is the activation we did last season with Pets Choice Ltd and some of our first-team.
See example here - https://lnkd.in/e_xFEuu6
