The 2025 Sports Playbook: How Brands Win With Fandom
Fan Voices: The 2025 Sports Playbook: How Brands Win With Fandom And Streaming - the CMO network-Forbes
As football season approaches, so too does one of the greatest annual marketing opportunities in America: sports sponsorships. For brands aiming to engage loyal, high-energy audiences, there may be no better channel than sports. From packed college stadiums to prime-time NFL slots, sports offer unique moments of community, culture, and connection.
But how can brands do more than just slap their name on a scoreboard? To understand the strategic blueprint for modern sponsorships, I spoke with Mike Proulx, Research Director at Forrester and author of Maximize the Value of Your Sports Sponsorships, along with two companion reports on case studies and activation planning tools.
Proulx opened with a bold truth: “Sports fandoms are among the most loyal and active communities that exist.” Whether it’s Alabama or Ohio State, the Kansas City Chiefs or the Eagles, sports fans show up with unmatched intensity. And yet, the sports landscape is evolving. Traditional leagues like the NFL and NCAA football remain juggernauts, but emerging formats are attracting fresh and often younger demographics. Pickleball, cricket, women’s leagues, and even combat sports like UFC and WWE are expanding the fan base and offering brands new playing fields.
FORBES
How ‘KPop Demon Hunters’ Became One of Netflix’s Biggest — and Most Unexpected — Hits, ‘Fandom isn’t slowing down’
Fan Voices: FandomIQ blog -kpop-demon-hunters-success-netflix-Fandom
Directors Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans and Netflix film boss Dan Lin weigh in on how a unique concept and authenticity propelled the animated feature into long-term success.
The animated feature has officially shot to the No. 4 spot on Netflix’s most popular English-language films list with 158.8 million views, according to data released Tuesday. The project — which chronicles the adventures of Huntrix, a girl group comprised of three members who just happen to also fight monsters from the underworld — has been a surprise hit for the streamer, and its soundtrack has spent several weeks in the top 10 of the Billboard 200 chart. Demon Hunters has done surprisingly well considering the fact it is original IP, something of a rarity in successful animation in recent years. Going into the film, Netflix execs say they knew they had an audience who would tune in, but the scope of Demon Hunter’s reach has grown far past that initial target demographic.
“We knew younger female audiences and K-pop [and] anime fans would love this film, but it’s been incredibly gratifying to see it embraced by an even broader audience and become a favorite film for both adults and kids,” Dan Lin, chairman of Netflix, film tells THR. “Adults are watching the movie with their friends or other family members, kids are watching with their friends and siblings.”
The Hollywood Reporter
How movie fandom impacts buying behavior.
Fan Voices: FandomIQ blog -How movies impact fans’ buying and engagement
Movies provide fans with lifelong escapism and community that brands can leverage long after the box office closes.
Movies and entertainment foster this kind of fandom and community, which impacts consumer buying behavior. Even now, if you spot a piece of merchandise branded with your favorite movie out in the wild, you’re likely to interact with it or purchase it simply because it’s related to a special film or memory.
This relationship between consumers and brands can be leveraged across the entire lifecycle of a piece of entertainment. From pre-premiere buzz to post-credits debriefings, brands can engage with audiences using what Amazon Ads and Crowd DNA dubbed “the ripple effect.”
Marketing Brew / Amazon Ads & Crowd DNA
How the Fandom Journey builds loyalty.
Fan Voices: FandomIQ blog -How the Fandom Journey builds loyalty
When it comes to fandom, the process matter more than the payoff. In an era dominated by AI and instant access, learn how to the fandom journey builds loyalty authentically and sustainably. “Superfans” remain the headline topic for the entertainment industries, in music and beyond. They are the biggest cheerleaders amongst their peers, the most engaged on social media and streaming, and the highest spenders across the board.
There is a certain irony, then, that the other headline topic is AI; a technology that promotes passive engagement and does everything for you with utmost ease. AI and its adoption are emblematic of the flip side of this coin, but it is not alone. Much of innovation in entertainment over the last two decades has optimised ease, efficiency, and economy across the board – from making entertainment to accessing it.
Hypebot / MIDiA Research
Classifying and Characterizing Fandom Activities: A Focus on Superfans’ Posting and Commenting Behaviors in a Digital Fandom Community
As digital fandom communities expand and diversify, user engagement patterns increasingly shape the social and emotional fabric of online platforms. In the era of Industry 4.0, data-driven approaches are transforming how online communities understand and optimize user engagement. In this study, we examine how different forms of activity, specifically posting and commenting, characterize fandom engagement on Weverse, a global fan community platform. By applying a clustering approach to large-scale user data, we identify distinct subsets of heavy users, separating those who focus on creating posts (post-heavy users) from those who concentrate on leaving comments (comment-heavy users). A subsequent linguistic analysis using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) tool revealed that post-heavy users typically employ a structured, goal-oriented style with collective pronouns and formal tones, whereas comment-heavy users exhibit more spontaneous, emotionally rich expressions enhanced by personalized fandom-specific slang and extensive emoji use. Building on these findings, we propose design implications such as pinning community-driven content, offering contextual translations for fandom-specific slang, and introducing reaction matrices that address the unique needs of each group. Taken together, our results underscore the value of distinguishing multiple dimensions of engagement in digital fandoms, providing a foundation for more nuanced platform features that can enhance positive user experience, social cohesion, and sustained community growth.
Applied Sciences/ MDPI - Yeoreum Lee, Sangkeun Park
Gatekeeping the Gatekeepers: An Exploratory Study of Transformative Games Fandom & TikTok Algorithms
Within fandoms, gatekeeping practices such as delineating authentic from fake fans filter out certain identities. While the types of fans excluded vary by fandom, mainstream digital games culture–and the hegemonic, masculine groups within it–frequently leverage gatekeeping tactics like harassment to silence or churn others (i.e., women) from participating. While there has been considerable scholarship documenting gatekeeping in online digital games there has been less examination of this occurring within video game fandom. We conducted an exploratory study to investigate gatekeeping in response to TikTok videos about Call of Duty's masculine operator Ghost. We found more comments qualifying as celebratory fun than gatekeeping. We argue that social media spaces by virtue of their recommendation algorithms are productive sites for reimagining games counter to affirmational readings within relatively niche communities.
Sage Journals / Jessica E. Tompkins, Ashley ML Guajardo (née Brown)
From celebrity advocacy to fandom advocacy: Harness the power of participatory fandom culture
On February 4, 1962, internationally renowned actor and comedian Danny Thomas founded the nonprofit St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Utilizing his celebrity status and extensive connections within the entertainment industry, Danny organized fundraising events and enlisted the support of fellow celebrities to raise public awareness and financial resources for the hospital’s mission of treating pediatric cancer and other life-threatening diseases (Stjude.org, 2023). Over time, the hospital has evolved into the world’s leading pediatric cancer research facility and currently ranks as America’s third largest healthcare charity. It has maintained continuous collaboration with more than 200 celebrity partners and supporters (Looktothestars.org, 2023). Danny Thomas’s work with St. Jude stands as one of the earliest and most well-documented instances of highly successful collaborations between a celebrity and a nonprofit in the modern era.
Science Direct / PR Relations Review - Baobao Song, Minhee Choi
How do fandom types differ? A taxonomy of K-pop fandom with network embedding
Since fandom as a distinctive customer group known for their exceptional loyalty and profitability has increasingly gained influence, fandom marketing has become crucial for the success of businesses. However, there is a lack of quantitative methods to identify and classify different types of fandoms. This study proposes a network embedding-based approach to identifying different types of fandoms. The proposed approach is applied to the K-pop industry, which has experienced remarkable growth due to its fandom. A fandom of a K-pop artist is captured as a network of Twitter users based on their mention relationships
Science Direct / Entertainment Computing
The Business of Belonging: Tapping Into the Power of Fandom (video)
Cultivating a loyal fan base is every brand’s dream. So why not take a page out of the book of companies that have made fandom the foundation of their business? Hear from execs at Weverse, Crunchyroll, and Wattpad to gain an understanding of how these companies cultivate and serve their diehard fandoms.
Fast Company
Fandom getting stronger in post-COVID sports world
The head oIn a recent study by Momentum, 73% of self-identified fans said their interest in sports increased over the past five years.
Sports Business Journal
