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How time spent online influences a fan’s love of team

Does today’s dominance of the internet and growing time spent online suggest online sports fan activity will dominate the overall sports landscape as a whole? Will sports be better off in the future by investing in the most immersive online fan experiences instead of traditional fan behaviors such as playing, attending, watching, listening to and following sports? Has online following of sports overtaken the power and importance of the social engagement fans share with family and friends, or a fan’s sense of committed
belonging to a team?

As is the case with many things, there are no easy answers to these questions.

The era of online dominance of sports information is here, and no new medium is on the horizon to overtake it. In 1995, 67 percent of Americans used the newspaper as their first source for sports information. By 2000, television had taken over, but with only 50 percent of Americans, and the internet was still ascending. By 2010, the internet was the first source for sports news for 62 percent of Americans (from Luker on Trends – ESPN Sports Poll 1995-2015). But online dominance goes beyond sports information. The 2015 Digital Future Report on the importance of various media to entertainment showed that in 2014, for the first time, the internet tied with TV in percentage of respondents identifying it as an “important or very important” source of entertainment (see chart below). However, that does not mean time online is a high priority — nor does it mean the internet is the only, or best, place for sports organizations to invest to secure the future of their fan bases.

More than 30 years ago, as an academic researcher, I developed, tested and validated a classification system for grouping types of free time activities that tend to go together. From our research over the decades I could say, with confidence, that anything a person does in his or her free time fits well into one of the categories. The system allows us to test importance, priority, amount of time, desire for more time and value of time spent for each category. Of the measures, priority is the most predictive of the overall value of time spent in a category. The arrival of the internet didn’t force a change to the classification system until now. Before 2014, people saw the internet as a tool but not a destination. Americans now are aware of the amount of time they are spending online and they generally know it is taking time from other things in ways that affect the priority of other choices.

The chart below provides the mean priority scores (on a 0-10 scale where 10 is the highest priority) for each of the 10 free time contexts from Luker on Trends research done in 2016. For 30 years, time with family and time with friends have been the top priorities by a considerable margin. It is essential to note that the priority is being with family and friends, not what they do together. Among the other categories, “productive” and “personal” are far more about accomplishing things than having fun; “outdoor” has consistently been the top primary fun context and is the context that maintains the most consistent priority throughout life; “play and exercise” is an even mix between attending to health and having fun; and “non-sports TV” has only recently overtaken “going out,” which has been considerably challenged by the shift of free time toward being online, primarily because going out is a high priority among the biggest online users: young adults.


The two contexts marketers invest in most for reaching Americans (“non-sports TV” and “fan”) have, for years, been consistently at the bottom of this list. You can reach them doing those things, but keep in mind, there are other things they would rather be doing. The key is finding ways to use the ease of reaching people watching TV and following sports to connect to their highest priority of being with family and friends.

SCOTT  REIFERT


SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT
CHICAGO WHITE SOX

What are the implications from this latest research for how the Sox think about using the internet to engage your fans going forward?

It may be tempting to think of time online as a potential threat to sports, but we view it as possibly the greatest asset. … If what we do is function simply as an information source, I don’t think that really will hurt our relationship with our fans, but the work we are doing using online and other newer communication tools to truly engage with our fans has already been enlightening and rewarding. This is where we see great opportunity for sports franchises. We are seeing how much fans really want to be engaged — telling us their stories of treasured memories, or the value of new technology, as in this example from one of our fans:

“I do like how the Internet personally connects you to the team. For example, yesterday was my niece’s 1st white sox game and I asked the White Sox Twitter page if they could re-tweet a photo of me and her together enjoying our 1st game experience together, they gladly retweeted the photo within minutes and it made me extremely happy to have our great experience be showcased to other fans.”

The average priority for spending time online is 4.94. Spending time online and time as a sports fan (3.89) are the only categories that average below 5 in free time priority. That indicates the behavior all by itself is not attractive, or the end-value is something other than the behavior. For example, millions of non-NFL fans watch the Super Bowl as part of a special time with family or friends.

Since 2012, Luker on Trends has done several studies on the dynamics that lead to greater fan engagement for Chicago White Sox fans. We did a survey with more than 3,000 of the best Sox fans — those who attended an average of six games a year over the last three years. We have known for some time that the more important it is for a fan to feel they are a real part of the team, the more engaged they are. This is likely the largest driver of consistent, committed fan behavior. But in this study, we tested “belonging” against fan behaviors that would lean heavily on online behavior — checking results, playing fantasy, following teams, players and histories.

The more important it was for a fan to belong, the more games they attended annually (very important: 7.2; somewhat: 5.5; a little bit: 5.1; not at all 4.1). As for the value of time online — without regard to sports or following the Sox — the more they enjoy their online time, the fewer games they attended (enjoy time online: 5.8 games; don’t mind: 6.2; don’t enjoy time online: 6.3). However, if they are spending more time online for the purpose of following the Sox, the number of games attended goes up (more time following the Sox: 7.1; no more or less: 5.5; less time following the Sox: 3.7). Time online is utility to most people. Focusing it on belonging and following turns it into a valuable free time context. But the internet activities need to be focused on increasing belonging to the team. The more the fans enjoy the Sox because of time online, the more they attend.

A cautionary note: We cannot assume even our best fans are immersed in online fan experience at this point. Only half are “occasionally” online while they watch games, and 62 percent say less than half of the online activity during a game, at this point, is about the Sox.

Fans are online, but it is not a priority for free time, nor is fan activity by itself. The biggest key is belonging, which is most often shared with family and friends. It can be enhanced when we use the internet to help fans do more to connect with other fans and to feel like they are a more valued part of the team. Unattended, time online will eat up time following sports in the same way one might go online to check the weather and two hours later end up watching cat videos.

Rich Luker (rich@lukerco.com) is the founder of Luker on Trends and the ESPN Sports Poll.

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