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Looking to Loyalty for Building Long-Term Sports Fan Engagement

Professional sports organizations are constantly working to build and maintain strong relationships that weather off seasons, losing seasons, and player trades. Leagues and individual teams are focused on creating meaningful and memorable interactions through various engagement strategies. Traditionally, campaigns, promotions, and paid membership have been the playbook, with packaged ticket holders and subscribers benefiting from special offers and rewards. However, this approach primarily benefits only those willing and able to make significant financial investments. To truly foster long-term sports fan engagement and retention, it’s essential to understand and connect with all types of fans, ensuring that every supporter feels valued and appreciated. Membership should be for all fans, not just those with the budget to support it.

To establish enduring relationships and help fans connect deeper to their fandom, teams and leagues should look to foundational loyalty principles, ensuring they cultivate deep emotional connections with every fan.

1. Collect Fan Data for Personalization

Collecting and leveraging fan data is crucial to fostering sports fan engagement and loyalty. Teams should analyze data from various sources such as ticket purchases, merchandise sales, social media interactions, and in-stadium activities to understand what resonates with fans’ unique interests and enable teams to create targeted communications and exclusive offers. Ultimately, this approach not only makes fans feel valued and understood but also adds a more engaged and loyal fan base, fostering a stronger emotional connection with the team and its players.

FC Barcelona prioritizes gathering and using data to personalize fan experiences. By creating innovative ways to capture and manage fan data, the club uses data analytics to tailors its digital content, including personalized video highlights and targeted promotions, based on individual fan preferences. This approach allows FC Barcelona to engage their global fanbase more effectively, ensuring that each fan feels connected to the team no matter where they are located.1

2. Recognition & Rewards

Fans are unique in their relationships with their favorite teams and sports, and in how they want to express their fandom. For some, watching sports is a highly social endeavor, for others, fantasy, trivia, and Pick’em games, keep them coming back for more. Regardless of how fans express their fandom, they should be recognized and rewarded by the teams and leagues they love. Loyalty principles promote recognition that delivers value across a spectrum—from monetary to social to experiential value, teams and leagues that reward fans in differentiated ways go a long way to establishing deep fan affinity.

The Boston Red Sox reward and recognize their fans through their “Red Sox Nation” community. Members receive access to exclusive content, special offers on merchandise and tickets, and opportunities to participate in unique events like meet-and-greets with players and behind-the-scenes tours of Fenway Park. Additionally, the Red Sox Nation program features a points system where fans earn rewards through their engagement activities, such as attending games or participating in team events. By highlighting and rewarding their most dedicated supporters, the Red Sox foster a deeper connection with their fan base and strengthen overall loyalty.2

3. Making the Game-Day Experience Easy

Teams that cultivate the most loyal fans are those that make it easy across the fan experience. Loyalty principles suggest that organizations should look across the fan experience at every touchpoint to drive deeper connections. From seamless ticket purchasing to intuitive mobile apps for game day information, easy stadium entry to smooth customer service, by minimizing friction sports teams can improve the overall game-day experience. This fosters a sense of community and belonging, making fans feel valued and elevating the game-day experience to be more enjoyable and memorable, ultimately leading to stronger emotional connections and long-term loyalty.

The LA Clippers’ new home is poised to deliver a fan experience like no other, because it was designed with the “real fan [the] folks who sit up high” in mind. The new Intuit Dome boasts a 40,000-square-foot double sided video board, Halo Board, to ensure fans see all the action no matter where they’re sitting. Seats aren’t just seats—they’re interactive stations where fans charge their devices at a personal USB charger, use a built-in controller to play games on the Halo, and win prizes through a sensor in their seat that monitors movement and sound. The most enthusiastic fans are rewarded through the Clippers app with discounted food and free merch. Hungry? All concessions are automated with grab-and-go kiosks that allow fans to tap their phone to swiftly pay so they never miss a play.3

As the sports industry continues to evolve, teams should prioritize fan loyalty by embracing foundational loyalty principles. This means fostering deeper connections with fans through personalized experiences, recognition, and a seamless game-day environment. By ensuring all fans feel valued, regardless of their financial commitment, teams can surpass conventional sports fan engagement methods and drive direct and indirect revenue. Teams should focus on catering to fans’ unique needs to create a loyal, emotionally invested fan base.

Explore how programmatic or non-programmatic loyalty can enhance your fan experience and drive long term engagement and retention with our loyalty services.

¹ “Fan Engagement and Big Data,” Barca Innovation Hub.

² Red Sox Nation. 

3 “Intuit Dome: Here’s everything you need to know about LA’s newest arena,” Gavin J. Quinton, LAist, August 15, 2024. 

Meg Tronquet

Principal, Loyalty Solutions

Contact Concentrix

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Blog

Looking to Loyalty for Building Long-Term Sports Fan Engagement