Sports brands juggle several challenges as they strive to stay at the forefront of their fans’ minds. Here, we examine what these are, explore potential solutions, and take a closer look at what fans actually want

Images are powerful assets for many brands with an online presence – and this is particularly true in the world of sports.

Whether they’re used to build a brand identity, help re-live iconic moments, for storytelling, selling merchandise, or something else, it’s difficult to imagine how sports brands would be able to captivate their online audiences without these at their disposal.

But image theft, and the unauthorized use of images online, remain significant issues, damaging the revenue-generating potential of these images and jeopardizing the ongoing creation of this content.

Sports brands today must navigate these challenges alongside many others, including staying on top of trends, maintaining effective communication, and even competing against other sports.

In this article, we take a closer look at these challenges and what sports brands can do to ensure they stay ahead.

The challenges faced by sports organizations today

Audience spread, expectations, and behaviors

Communicating with a broad demographic of sports fans presents several challenges. One of these is generational; audiences will tend to be spread across different platforms depending on their age.

Older audiences are likely to be informed through print media, radio, and more established social media platforms such as Facebook and X (formerly known as Twitter), while younger ones are more likely to be found on Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat.

Recognizing this division can not only guide marketing strategies and budget allocation but also inform content creation.

An additional challenge is that each audience’s expectations of brands will vary based on who they are and the platform they use.

This is particularly the case during gameplay, with evidence of younger fans being more likely than older ones to multitask.

Common secondary tasks cited by younger fans include using social media, watching another game on a separate device, looking up stats, and betting.

Brands aware of this can use this to their advantage. For example, the knowledge that younger audiences may be engaged in social media during a game could inform the creation of more immediate social communications, such as Instagram Stories and posts on X.

Another challenge when dealing with a fragmented audience regards brand image and tone of voice.

It’s easy to appreciate that different methods of communication suit different social media platforms, but a strong demographic skew on any of these should also be considered when crafting messaging and deciding content.

This necessitates a balancing act between a consistent tone of voice and what resonates with the intended audience.

Furthermore, as the majority of content encourages engagement of some sort, the kind of comments that this elicits should also be considered in advance as these will also form part of the content people see – and with it, what people associate with a brand.

Many sports also now have several fan-generated alternative sources of information and entertainment. These may not only follow a different tone of voice to official channels, but may also present the same kind of content from a different perspective – perhaps more jocular, or perhaps more sober and insightful.

The fact that they all compete for the same audience’s attention serves as a reminder that official platforms should be wary of complacency.

Monitoring health and wellness trends

The sports industry is inextricably connected to the broader health and wellness industry, and this relationship presents sports brands with many additional opportunities.

The wearables market alone, for example, which was valued at $139bn in 2023, is predicted to grow to around $540bn by 2030.

Fitness monitoring is a key focus for this audience, and further forays into the development of smart textiles – which sense and monitor a person’s activity – will mean this will no doubt continue, giving logical foundations to tie-ups.

Active involvement with health and wellness initiatives – whether they concern physical health, mental health, nutrition or some other aspect of wellbeing – can also help reinforce a sports brand’s values and expose them to fresh audiences.

Competition with other sports

The kind of loyalty that sports fans have for their team is seldom seen elsewhere. But even if the average fan may never feel tempted to switch allegiances, many are also interested in an additional sport, which also competes for their time and attention.

Whether this is an issue for sports brands depends in part on the sports themselves and geography. After all, a sports fan may be paying close attention to such a secondary sport but time differences between geolocations may mean that game clashes can easily be avoided.

A British football fan, for example, should find it relatively easy to keep an eye on NFL games played in the US, and vice-versa. Nevertheless, at a time in which the live-streaming of sports from different countries is commonplace, it is not safe to assume that a fan’s loyalty will be on home turf.

An obvious benefit of this is that it opens up clubs to global audiences, ones who may never encounter these sports in their own countries. But as they will be less likely than domestic fans to attend games, buy merchandise, and so on, their value to sports brands will be different.

Whether the growing prominence of e-sports creates the same issues described above is subject to debate, particularly as many people do not consider these to be sports as such. Even so, if they capture the attention of these same audiences, sports brands should consider this.

Balancing authenticity with objectives

Knowing your audience and how best to communicate with them so that they feel proud to be a fan is arguably the most significant piece of the sports marketing puzzle. But it can only be used to achieve so much unless it’s considered alongside a brand’s commercial objectives.

The importance of knowing what your brand stands for and striving to always communicate in an authentic way cannot be overstated.

A brand that over-promotes its merchandise, for example, is likely to erode trust and foster feelings of inauthenticity. Far better to build a relationship with the audience through a mixture of content – news, polls, images and videos, and so on – and then to monitor the interaction to understand what resonates and why.

This, of course, takes time and effort, and is complicated by the fact that a social audience should be constantly growing and changing.

But without this approach, brands risk sending out communications that would ordinarily resonate falling at the last hurdle.

A product may, for example, be promoted in the right place to the appropriate audience, but at the wrong time for it to have the desired impact.

Personalizing while respecting privacy

As regulations around data protection and privacy continue to be introduced around the world, advertisers and marketers across many industries need to keep abreast of the issues that affect the way in which they communicate with their audiences.

At the same time, user data shouldn’t be viewed as something that must be covertly scraped from online activities in order to make targeting more effective.

The failure of many brands to develop first-party data strategies means they miss out on information that many users would be happy to volunteer if they believed it would improve an online experience.

As an example, providing the option to specify which types of email communications a user actually desires can enable better email segmentation, increasing the chance that messages resonate with the audience, rather than annoy users and encourage them to unsubscribe.

The key is to consider the relationship between fan and brand as something that must be cultivated over time.

By continuously demonstrating trustworthiness and building the image of the brand, and making the brand’s values clear, sports organizations are more likely to be successful when soliciting information that can help them better understand their audience and target them effectively.

Out of season activities

Many sports are played on a seasonal basis, and some have particularly short seasons. The NFL season, for example, only lasts around 17–18 weeks – just a third of the year.

Between the potential for fans being engaged with other sports in intervening months, and going away on annual leave, the perennial challenge of how to reach audiences is compounded by the question of what to actually promote during these times.

The data shows that it’s well worth sports brands’ time to consider this. Research into the behavior of 15,000 sports fans found that 65% wanted some kind of content or information at least monthly during the off-season.

It also noted that the more that fans are engaged year-round, the greater the likelihood of them spending on tickets and merchandise during the season.

First-party data can help here too; engaged users who state a preference for a particular player, for example, may be more responsive to an email or a social media post that prioritizes merchandise or news relating to that player.

What do fans expect?

Relevant communications

If your audience has made a conscious effort to follow you on social media or receive your newsletter, the very least they expect is that you’ll make it worth their while.

Nobody wants to sift through irrelevant emails or scroll through uninteresting social media posts – and brands that don’t appreciate this will soon find these users opting to pay attention elsewhere.

So how can relevance be determined? Segmenting audiences based on their previous engagement with the brand is a good place to start, and this can be augmented with first-party data – interests, geography, and so on – for more precise targeting.

Developing multiple email automations to cater to these audiences, and analyzing the results from previous marketing campaigns and communications should also guide future activities.

Heatmap and user journey recordings can also deliver useful on-site information into user behavior, and should be considered not only in order to improve published but underperforming pages, but also when it comes to website redesigns.

Loyalty rewarded

From groceries and department stores to takeaways, coffees, and even car washes, many of us participate in a range of loyalty programs – and these are widespread in the world of sports.

Gathering valuable first-party data in exchange for occasional discounts, promotions, and prizes is a no-brainer, particularly if it encourages repeat purchases.

But with sports, there is plenty of additional opportunity to make devoted fans feel even more rewarded and included.

Access to ticket sales ahead of others, for example, or meet-and-meets, stadium tours, exclusive content, or even the opportunity to vote on the design of a piece of merchandise.

Few of us feel the same kind of passion for a grocery store or coffee shop as we do for our favorite sports team, so it’s worth examining just how much this loyalty can be mutually beneficial.

A sense of community

From the players within a team to the fans on the terraces, sports often bring people together into meaningful and long-lasting communities.

This is particularly the case with younger audiences. One report claims that 61% of Generation Z sports fans will typically be with other people when watching live sporting events at home, compared to 53% of Generation X and 48% of Baby boomer fans, although these figures would no doubt be influenced by people’s social circumstances rather than purely out of choice.

Nevertheless, being in a community of like-minded people is vital for an individual’s well-being and sense of belonging, whether that’s in person or online, or in a forum that blends both.

And this, of course, shouldn’t be overlooked when it comes to creating and curating content.

Regularly reminding people how to get involved with the organization outside of simply attending games provides another way to connect people with others and helps to solidify their bond with the brand.

Personalization and in-depth content

Sports clubs and organizations regularly feature on the lists of most-followed social media accounts, from Real Madrid CF, FC Barcelona, and Manchester United F.C. to the likes of UEFA and La Liga.

But these organizations are often bested in these tables by individual personalities such as Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi and Neymar Júnior.

If people follow individual personalities in addition to brands on social media, it’s likely they may also want a degree of personalization from brands themselves too.

Sports brands can provide this in various ways, such as by offering the option to only receive marketing emails on specific themes, or by developing websites and apps that allow some degree of content curation.

Some sports brands now dedicate sections of their online stores to star players, although brands that harness first-party data may even be able to create dynamic sections with merchandise that the user is more likely to be interested in purchasing, based on stated interests or previous purchases (or both).

Investing in the creation of meaningful content on subjects known to be popular is also a good move as it helps with engagement. And with research indicating that more personalized and in-depth content is closely associated with higher spending, brands that fail to pay attention to the above may ultimately be missing out in more ways than one.