The world of sports fandom has been globalizing lately, with U.S. fans enjoying soccer and Formula One racing; and fans overseas turning up for NFL, NBA and Major League Baseball games abroad. But sports fans are still tribes at heart; even as the media to reach them has also atomized and globalized, the message has to resonate with the crowd that lives and bleeds for their team, says Robert Gottlieb.
“Being a Packers fan allows you to wear a cheesehead and a jersey and you are part of a tribe. You have a shared language, a shared history, shared goals, shared jokes,” said Gottlieb, president, marketing at FOX Sports. “The nature of fandom, I don’t think has really changed at all. It’s more the places and the way that people are showing their fandom are evolving. But the root thing that draws people to sports, remains that ultimately, it’s a tribal experience that people want to be part of.”
The rise of the internet and social media in particular, have served to transform fandom, said Gottlieb. International fans are now “well-versed in the story lines, the highlights—who’s doing what—through social media” and conversely, U.S. fans are now familiar with sports and players beyond the marquee names like Patrick Mahomes and Lionel Messi. Younger fans now follow leagues and teams very closely, especially through social media, he said.
These changes mean marketers and media have to adapt, but not in the ways you’d expect. Sports fans have always multitasked during games, checking the newspaper or talking to friends on the phone, so the “second screen experience” is not new to them. Younger fans, however, also consume sports across platforms. Gottlieb singled out “this whole generation of younger fans are only consuming the product in snippets and never as a whole.” What will happen as those young fans mature and start households is an important issue for broadcasters and marketers.
“Will they transition into a more traditional sports fan who buys tickets to the games and actually sits down and watches games, not just engage on social?” Gottlieb asked, “We don’t really know yet if that’s going to bear out.”
Still, this fragmentation of attention and platforms means broadcasting can become a more important channel for reaching sports fans with live events. These changes mean marketers have to adapt to the many ways available to reach fans and the skillset and tools marketing departments need to deploy to do it, said Gottlieb. While many tried-and-true traditional media channels remain strong, the touchpoints have evolved and require new skills from marketing departments.
“Now, there’s a million ways to reach fans—through podcasts, through influencers, through social media, along with all the traditional media of out-of-home billboards, TV, radio, sponsorships, etc. You have to be a lot more nimble in going to a lot of different places to reach fans,” said Gottlieb. “But what’s driving the fans to this sport, and back to you as a marketer, I think remains the same. It’s that passion to be part of a group, and a club, and a tribe that still drives the whole engine.”
To execute on that passion requires a team of specialists working in concert, both internally and among the agency partners, said Gottlieb. “You need to be part data scientist, you need to be part social media expert, you need to be part traditional media expert. There’s a lot to grasp,” he said. But in the end, they all need to deliver on that passion, he said.
“You can have all the pipes figured out left and right, but if you’re sending stuff that’s not great through those pipes, you’re DOA, it’s not going to work,” said Gottlieb “There’s still the very root of understanding who you’re talking to and what’s going to be relevant and impactful to them and being able to deliver that.”
For example, he noted FOX Sport’s recent efforts to promote the NTT IndyCar Series, part of a new multiyear deal to air the entire series live. The new ads feature prominently the stars of the racing circuit in humorous but heroic messages, and in at least one, FOX NFL’s lead analyst Tom Brady appears looking envious.
IndyCar is a great example of a sports tribe, said Gottlieb; those ads were made for them. “They live and breathe this,” he said. The fans want their partners, whether it is broadcasters or advertisers, to reflect their passion and fan it, he said.
“That’s a really important thing for us here at FOX Sports. Everything we do is built for the core, for the tribe, the person who lives and dies for that product,” he said. “Other people will come if we treat it right, but if we act as a tourist, it doesn’t work.”
While supporting the tribe is important, growing the audience is also part of the work, but it is a balancing act for marketers, said Gottlieb.
“The next level of what you’re trying to do is: Can you be honest and true to that and still make it broad enough that people who aren’t avid look at it and go: ‘Wow, that looks interesting. That looks cool,’” he said. “I think that’s the trick, to nail the core and then still make it attractive enough for people who don’t live and breathe it to go: ‘Wow, that’s cool. I want to know more about this.’”
Paradoxically, the more fragmented the media environment, the stronger “the notion that there’s a place that reaches virtually everyone, no matter what platforms they have, and that the biggest events in sports, in the big moments, still resonate,” said Gottlieb. “And live sports is really the moment on broadcast television.”
FOX has the biggest moment of the year coming up, airing Super Bowl LIX on Feb. 9. And the network has also announced it will air the game free in its Tubi streaming platform.
“If you’re an advertiser and you want to reach people and eyeballs, live sports really remains king,” said Gottlieb. “The more platforms there are with more content, the more valuable that ability to amass a bunch of eyeballs is, and live sports and television really deliver it.”
