Sports Fandom Trending Up but Gen Z Fandom Lags
Next Generation Fandom Survey 2025
Fandom Matters.
Fandom occurs when people care about something in the culture. It can be sports, music, film, politicians, or even water bottles. Fandom matters because what people care about shapes our modern culture. A society that loves Taylor Swift, the NFL, Marvel movies, and Ford F150s feels different than one that loves Opera, soccer, dramas, and Vespas. Fandom matters because it has a fundamental impact on our culture.
Sports, in particular, are ingrained in American culture. The Super Bowl is the closest thing we have to a sports holiday. Major League Baseball is known as the National Pastime. The NBA has been the league best able to create and export global superstars since the 1990s (Michael, Kobe, and LeBron). Sports are especially vital because they are one of the cultural sectors connecting Americans. A local population often rallies around the home team, and Americans automatically get behind the stars and stripes in any international competition.
The traditional role of Sports as a connector makes fandom is an essential societal metric. When people care about sports, they care about the team representing the local metro area or the national team. They have “something” that connects them with others. That’s one of the primary motivations for my annual survey on fandom, the “Next Generation Fandom Survey.” Today’s post begins the reporting of the 2025 edition of the survey. More details on the Next Generation Fandom Survey are provided at the end of the post.
The Survey.
The survey encompasses a wide range of categories, celebrities, institutions, and brands. Consequently, the fandom survey aims to provide a detailed snapshot of American fandom at this moment. I pay special attention to sports for various reasons. Not only do sports serve as a natural connector for people, but they also represent the pinnacle of fandom in terms of intensity, persistence, and public displays. Sports fandom is the benchmark, making it my starting point.
Our topics for today are the current state of sports fandom, relative to the recent past, and how sports fandom varies by generation. The first figure shows sports fandom and anti-fandom rates for the post-COVID period. The data shows a continuing uptick in fandom each year since 2022, as fandom rates have climbed from 38.8% in 2022 to 44.5% in 2025. Similarly, sports anti-fandom has dropped from 23.1% in 2022 to 14.5% in 2025.
A simple explanation for the trend is that fandom likely took a significant hit in the year following the COVID disruptions (cancelled games and tournaments, restrictions on attendance, etc.) and has been slowly building back. This interpretation is based on the anti-fandom rates. Anti-fandom is interesting because expressing an active dislike for sports has more of an emotional element than a neutral rating. Multiple factors likely caused the 23.1% anti-fandom rate in 2022:
1. Frustration with policies that cancelled games and limited fan attendance.
2. Limits on non-arena community venues such as sports bars.
3. The political (social justice) messaging that became prevalent in the early post-COVID period.
I have also come to believe that understanding fandom trends requires looking beyond the sports category. Sports are such an integral part of American culture that sports fandom both drives and contributes to the general societal mood. People are happier when they are engaged in cultural sectors like sports, and a positive mood probably also leads to more engagement. Along these lines, I have computed the correlation between the sports fandom data and Gallup’s data on national mood and found a correlation of .672. The data is limited, so this finding is more speculation than conclusion.
A further motivation for the survey was answering the question of whether and how fandom is changing across generations. Marketers are always concerned about the next generation of consumers, and managers about the next generation of employees. Sports, entertainment, and other fandom-oriented categories must be especially concerned with generational differences. The passion of fandom subcultures ultimately drives the success of cultural products and organizations. If changing demographics and technological experiences are changing fandom levels with younger consumers, then the affected cultural organizations need to adapt or fade in prominence.
The second figure shows fandom and anti-fandom rates across the four major sports-consuming generations: Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, and Baby Boomers. Generation Z has the weakest sports fandom of all the generations, at 33.9%, while fandom is strongest in Gen X, at 51.2%. This represents a 34% decline in fandom in the transition from Gen X to their Gen Z children. Baby Boomer fandom is the second highest at 47.6%. This is a substantial increase year-over-year, as the 2024 Boomer fandom rate was 43.4%.
Generation Z’s lower fandom rates have been a consistent finding over each year of the survey. The standard explanation for Gen Z’s diminished interest in sports usually centers on the idea that technology has reduced attention spans and shifted attention away from traditional media channels. If Gen Z prefers 30-second videos on phone-based social media apps, then a sport like baseball with two-and-a-half-hour games on cable television will become less relevant. There are additional factors related to demographics and marketing, but this is a topic for a future article.
I also suspect that the recovery in Boomer fandom is due to a decreased emphasis on social justice themes. Adding political themes to sports is always dangerous in an evenly split society. Progressive politics are especially dangerous in sports with predominantly conservative fandoms, like baseball and hockey. The relationship between political ideology and fandom is another broader topic that will be covered in a future entry.
Summary, Commentary, and Preview
Today’s post aims to provide high-level results from the 2025 Next Generation Fandom Survey. What is the current state of sports fandom? How is sports fandom evolving? How do the different generations compare?
Key Facts and Insights
Almost 45% of Americans are sports fans, while less than 15% are anti-fans. Sports remain one of America’s core cultural industries.
Sports fandom continues its recovery, increasing from 38.8% in 2022 to 44.5% in 2025. The main factors are challenging to identify, but the fading of the COVID disruptions and an improved national mood are likely causes.
Generation Z sports fandom continues to significantly lag behind older cohorts (about 1/3 lower). This decreased fandom may be due to Gen Z’s preference for short-form social media content.
Baby Boomer sports fandom has increased substantially over the past year (+3.3% points). The de-emphasizing of political themes may be a cause.
These are quick headline-type results and simple explanations/insights. Future essays will delve into the details to paint a richer picture of how fandom works, how it is changing, and why it varies across segments and time. It is a challenging endeavor because fandom is a rich topic that merits an interdisciplinary approach that includes theory, survey data, market data, and advanced analytics. It's almost impossible to attribute cultural shifts to a single factor or establish causality, so my goal is to tell a good-faith story about American fandom based on logic, theory, and data.
I plan to publish the survey results over the next several months. The results will focus on core issues, which may be industry or population-focused. For instance, future entries will report data on fandom across entertainment sectors and explore how fandom varies by gender. Entries may also address topical issues. For example, the previous two entries used the survey data to examine how Tesla fandom varied across political ideologies and how Minecraft fandom compares across generations. I am also planning an essay later this week that analyzes political fandom in the context of Democratic politicians.
The Next Generation Fandom Survey Details
The 2025 installment is the fifth edition of the Next Generation Fandom Survey. The Next Generation Fandom survey is an annual look at the state of sports, entertainment, and cultural fandom in the United States. The survey began during my tenure as the Emory Marketing Analytics Center Director. The study aims to measure the current state of fandom across a wide range of sports and other cultural categories and to collect data on the factors that underlie fandom. The 2025 Survey includes responses from over 1600 individuals split nearly evenly across the four primary generations: Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, and Baby Boomers. The sample is also split evenly across genders and is racially representative. Data collection occurred from March 13, 2025, to April 2, 2025.
it's clear that Gen Z's shift away from traditional sports fandom is a significant cultural change. I think it’s not so much that Gen Z doesn’t enjoy sports; they’re just consuming entertainment in a completely different way. TikTok videos and Instagram posts that are short, visually engaging, and interactive seem to be what grabs their attention, rather than long-form sports events.
What stood out to me was the idea that Gen Z isn’t necessarily less interested in sports, but that their engagement looks different—more fragmented, more social, and much more digital. It made me think about how “being a fan” today might mean following athletes on Instagram or watching highlights on YouTube instead of sitting through full games.
The point about short-form, interactive content being key felt especially relevant. As fans, we’re not just consuming—we’re participating. That opens up new creative opportunities for marketers, but also raises questions about how to keep sports feeling meaningful when so much is bite-sized.
Lastly, it is interesting how the article hinted at the broader cultural context—how fandom can reflect identity, values, and even generational mood. That part made me reflect on how much fandom today is about more than the sport itself—it’s about community, relevance, and how the experience fits into everyday life.
It'll be interesting to see how these trends evolve, especially as brands experiment with new ways to bridge the gap between old and new forms of fandom.