Future Fandom Project Entry 3
The Methodology - Part 1 of 2
Predicting Fandom
Predicting the future of fandom or cultural passions is a daunting task. It’s difficult to fathom an American of the 1950’s predicting that baseball would have fallen from its position as America’s most popular sport. A music lover from the 1960s or 1970s would struggle to envision the decline of rock and roll and the rise of hip-hop (imagine explaining Cardi B to a Karen Carpenter fan). A 1990s film critic would probably be distressed at the notion that comic book characters would dominate the movie industry in the 2010s. A college basketball fan in 2021 would find the prediction that the Women’s tournament final would have higher television viewership than Men’s final in 2024 to be farfetched.
Predicting the evolution of fandom and cultural passions is a complex and challenging endeavor, as multiple factors influence the state and direction of fandom. Fortunately, some factors influencing how fandom and cultural passions evolve are relatively straightforward. For instance, technology and demographic trends both influence how people consume cultural products and what products they choose. Predictions of how technology will progress in the near term can be based on assessments of recent technological developments and trends in computational power. Forecasts of a society’s demographic traits can be formulated using current demographic statistics and future birth and death rates assumptions. The relative predictability of technology and demographics are useful for our project as these factors influence fandom choices.
However, cultural passions are not solely determined by technology and demographics. For example, while massive immigration into the US of populations with histories of soccer fandom might suggest a bright future for soccer fandom, the future success of the MLS isn’t ensured. The missing element is the strategies and tactics selected by soccer and other sports leagues. Fandom is actively managed, so it's not enough to consider only societal and technological trends. We need two more elements. First, we need a deep understanding of fandom fundamentals. Second, need to consider the likely actions of the people in the “business of fandom.” An understanding of fandom fundamentals (the psychology and economics of fandom) combined with systematic evaluation of the environment and insights into how marketers think can provide a basis for forecasting how fandom will evolve.
Last year, I made a seemingly 'outlandish' prediction that Women’s college basketball title game viewership would outperform men’s college basketball in 2024. This prediction was not a shot in the dark, but rather, it was based on a careful observation of the sports ecosystem. The previous year’s women’s tournament had record-setting viewership, and the media provided extensive coverage of the Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese rivalry. In the lead-up to the 2023-2024 season, I observed significant media and marketing activity. For example, ESPN started the season with a power ranking of women’s players. There were also numerous articles about coaches like Dawn Staley and Kim Mulkey. ESPN also began supporting ESPNW's Instagram posts. This is critical because ESPN has 26.9 million IG followers compared to ESPNW, with 935 thousand. ESPN’s commitment to promoting the women’s game began before the season. My prediction was based on observations of the media’s commitment to narrative storytelling, massive hype, and a social environment eager to see growth in women’s sports.
The rise of women’s NCAA basketball is the type of story that motivates the Future Fandom project. The plan for the Future Fandom project is to publish a series of essays about how fandom will likely evolve over the next few years (entry 1 provides more details). This will include articles covering the current realities of fandom (see entry 2) and entries that predict the future of a specific sport, league, or other cultural entity. There may also be a few articles that delve into the foundations of the project, such as essays about how technology impacts consumption (e.g., the relationship between TikTok and attention spans) or how demographics are changing America.
Today’s entry discusses part 1 of the framework I use to predict fandom. This first part discusses the forces that cause fandom to evolve. The second part of the framework will be presented in the following post. It describes my system for benchmarking and categorizing fandom.
The Fandom Evolution Framework
Fandom is driven by a complex web of factors, but three primary factors stand out. These factors include technological innovations, demographic trends, and the actions of marketers and media organizations. I visualize these factors as a Venn diagram where each factor overlaps and influences the effects of one another. Figure 1 shows this conceptual framework. This is a rich framework, and each element is multi-dimensional. In the material below, I briefly discuss each element. The explanations are intended to provide a general sense of each factor rather than a detailed and comprehensive description.
Technology
The impact of technological innovation on fandom is profound and frequently cited. Smartphones and social media platforms have disrupted traditional distribution channel’s reach as younger generations have shifted away from broadcast and cable television, radio, and newspapers. For example, the Internet had a major impact on print media. The instant availability of scores, statistics, and commentary made the daily newspaper’s sports section largely obsolete. The decrease in circulation of daily papers has a more subtle effect as fans are exposed to more national and less local coverage. This may decrease the fandom for local figures while increasing the focus on a few stars.
The proliferation of smartphones has also profoundly affected the transmission of fandom within families. In particular, smartphones and tablets have decentralized sports and entertainment consumption within households. This decentralization means that families are less likely to watch sports together. This is meaningful because the decrease in communal consumption reduces the transmission of fandom within families. If Chicago children can choose content on an iPad rather than watch the Cubs with Dad, the odds of the kids becoming baseball fans drop precipitously. Technology can impact fandom through what content people are exposed to and how the content is consumed.
Demographics
Demographics are a critical input for almost any predictions of the future. Some elements of demographics are easy to evaluate. We can reasonably predict the number of Baby Boomers or Generation Z in the population next year or even ten years from now because these folks have already been born. This predictability is useful when assessing a sports league’s prospects. If MLB does well with Baby Boomers and less with Generation Z, the league’s fandom and viewership will likely decline as the boomers age and Gen Z enters adulthood.
The impacts of some aspects of demographics are more challenging to predict. For instance, America has recently experienced massive waves of immigration, and the percentage of foreign-born residents has reached new highs. Immigration significantly influences fandom as immigrants arrive with different cultural backgrounds and interests. The growth in immigrants with backgrounds in soccer fandom might point to increased fandom for MLS. However, many immigrants might arrive with already-established soccer preferences and continue to root for non-US teams. In addition, immigration trends themselves are difficult to project since changing economic and political conditions can dramatically impact future immigration. It is an obvious point, but immigration levels beyond 2024 are dependent on whether Biden or Trump is elected.
Marketing
A factor often overlooked by prognosticators of cultural trends is that fandom does not evolve naturally. We are no longer in an era where the local town’s or college’s boys form a club to play the nearby villages or universities. Fandom may have developed organically in previous eras as communities came together to support the local club. Now, fandom is often big business. Sports and entertainment are multi-billion dollar industries, and the payoffs of having the largest fandoms are immense. The NFL, Taylor Swift, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe are all multi-billion dollar businesses. With billions of dollars at play, cultural entities that inspire fandom are now aggressively marketed and promoted.
A cynic might observe that sports leagues and entertainment channels are as much advertising platforms as athletic competitions. While cynical, identifying sports and entertainment products as vehicles for advertising highlights the role of media and marketing in fandom. Michael Jordan's partnership with Nike is a classic example of the marketer's role. Jordan’s greatness clearly helped make the Air Jordan shoe popular, but the Air Jordan’s status as iconic fashion and marketing elements like the Jumpman logo also elevated Jordan’s cultural prominence. The decisions of leagues and their marketing partners are a primary driver of future fandom.
The Future Fandom Project
Technology, demographics, and marketing are factors that we can predict or at least reasonably speculate about. We know the general demographic and technology trends, and we can make educated conjectures about how leagues and brands will respond. Often, the biggest challenge is predicting marketers' decisions. We don’t know if Subway or State Farm will feature WNBA or NWSL athletes in their campaigns. Advertiser decisions might be one of the most impactful factors shaping fandom, as mainstream brands can turn stars of niche sports into household names.
Technology, demographics, and marketing all influence current and future fandom directly, but they also combine to magnify or moderate each other's effects. For example, social media platforms (technology) might allow immigrants (demographics) to follow international soccer stars more easily. Marketers might pick up on this trend and increase brand sponsorships with international stars, or cable networks might increase coverage of FIFA and other international tournaments. Interactions between the forces that drive fandom may be obvious or challenging to predict. For example, the recent interest in women’s basketball is driven by both technology and marketing. Social media allowed female athletes to develop significant national audiences that interested marketers. For example, gymnast Livvy Dunne’s sizeable audience on TikTok and Instagram made her an attractive endorser for brands like Vuori. Vuori’s decision to use Dunne as the face of their ad campaign further grew her audience.
The missing elements in any prediction are the random shocks. Random shocks can range from major societal-level traumatic events like the COVID pandemic to cheating scandals that change the tone of media coverage and fan feelings. For example, PED scandals seem to have impacted sports ranging from baseball to cycling.
The Future Fandom Project (this substack) plans to present brief analyses of where sports and other fandoms are going over the next few years. The format will be relatively short essays coupled with podcast episodes. Each essay will briefly but systematically evaluate some cultural entity’s future prospects. A challenge in this project will be balancing brevity with comprehensiveness. An evaluation of any league like MLB or the WNBA could be extended to a book-length treatment. I’m going to do it in about fifteen hundred typed words and a 30-minute podcast.
I aim to highlight the most salient factors, particularly emphasizing marketing’s role. I use salient demographic and technological trends as a baseline but then focus on how various marketing factors will come into play. The marketing aspects will be speculative based on my experiences and “what I would do” if I were the organization's CMO.
Next: The next entry will describe a framework for characterizing a cultural entity’s current fandom.