Hear the findings of our fourth wave of sports fan sentiment study, focusing on the American fan and their anticipated behavior in consuming live sports. We do see a fog lifting with a greater sense of optimism and hope for the future around friendly yet highly competitive sporting events. Listen in and learn how it is shifting.

Chris McAdoo:

Hello everybody and welcome to Fired Up. It’s a podcast that takes you behind the gates and beyond the numbers that keep sports fans coming back for more. It’s engaging, thoughtful, in-depth conversations with sports industry leaders, inspiring you to take action and connect with your fans, and in these times it’s harder than ever, and we need to pay even more attention. So Fired Up brings you Chris Wise, the general manager of Ignite Fan Insights and Designsensory Intelligence, where we have been digging into those thoughts, those feelings, those what next and what ifs of sports fans all across the country. This is the fourth wave of interviews and data that we love to present to you. If you’d like to have it for yourself all on your own, go to ignitefaninsights.com, where you can subscribe to our newsletter, which gets you our fan sentiment surveys, as well as just insanely great data and information all throughout the year about sports, sports fans, and engagement in general.

I’m Chris McAdoo and I’m glad to be with you and I’m glad to be with Chris Wise. Hey Chris, how you doing, man?

Chris Wise:

I’m doing great. You all right?

Chris McAdoo:

Hanging out here in the home studio, ready to discuss with you the fourth wave of fan insights that we’ve been doing since March 25th. We’re tracking fans, we’re tracking fan sentiment. When are people going to be ready to come back? What are they feeling? What are their values and where are they going to feel safe? As we come out of this … Well, coming out of the lockdown, this episode is being recorded on June 3rd, 2020. So we started this information gathering a little over two months ago and we’ve seen fan sentiments go from, “Oh no,” to “Please more,” to now I think we’re seeing a lot of folks, they’ve seen live NASCAR events. We know that the PGA is resuming play soon, and people are they’re coming out of their houses, albeit carefully, particularly when it comes to when it comes to sporting events. They’re all waiting on that all clear. So Chris, why don’t we just go ahead and dig in to what are some of your findings from this fourth wave of talking to sports fans? What are people feeling right now?

Chris Wise:

What was most interesting is we start out the survey trying to get a sense of what are their emotions? Are they … And we gave them eleven different words from frustrated to hopeful, to anxious, to stuck, to depressed, grateful, optimistic, faith filled, whatever it may be. When we started, the baseline in our first study, it was almost 50/50 between negative and positive feelings. Today, as people start to get out and start to live again outside of the confines of their house, we see 65% positive emotions versus 35% negative. That’s huge. The most significant positive feelings are three words, hopeful, and that has risen significantly, statistically significantly. Optimism, they’re optimistic, and also it’s a significant increase, and they’re grateful. Those are powerful words. On the negative feelings, the top three were frustrated, anxious, stuck, and stuck was tied with depressed.

Chris Wise:

But all of those are declining emotions, except stuck had a little bit of rise. So you see even those words that we were all living and feeling, those emotions are not going away, but they are declining in the impact that they had in the fan psyche. So we’re really watching the fog lift if you will, be it cautious, but the fog is lifting and people are saying, “Okay, there is light at the end of this tunnel.” But we also know that the fans that are starving for fresh sports content and they’re optimistic because now at this point, NASCAR has had multiple races at multiple tracks, no fans present, but the viewership has been phenomenal. We’ll touch more on that in a minute. So it’s important though, that teams and venues stay in constant contact with their fans and potential fans.

Chris Wise:

Additionally, adding to the idea that people are hungry and excited for live sports, we ask how likely they would be to watch live events on TV, even if no fans were in the stands. A full 73% indicated they’d be likely to view and that’s moving upward, with 21% still undecided, and 11% of the population, they’re so hungry, they’re going to watch anything that they possibly can. They’re not even going to be picky about which sport it is. So they’re ready to be eyeballs in front of TVs and watching sports. It’s really not surprising. It’s exciting, and knowing that, as humans, we’re going to soak it up because we just love and need that. We need that in our lives.

Chris McAdoo:

So much of what we have been talking about, Chris, over the past few weeks has been around the love not just of sports, but the love of competition and the love of the community that comes with that competition. I can speak for myself. Last night was a contact free soccer practice. So my daughter’s soccer team, they were able to gather in a big park, masks, all that kind of stuff, and pass the ball and work on skill stuff. They’re still not doing any contact stuff, but even that was a return to that sense of belonging, a return to that sense of community, we’re all in this together. When you’re talking about 73% of folks being hungry for that content, speaking to, I know that the soccer club is thankful to have people back on the field because we love sports.

Chris McAdoo:

We love our kids playing sports. We love to play sports in our household, but the organizations that run them need our dollars. You know what I mean? They need kids on the field to come and participate in the same way that NASCAR and PGA and the NBA and anybody needs those dollars. So when you’re looking at this incredible thirst for live television, give me your thoughts on this. Does that open the door for revenue and how do you think people can approach that in new ways?

Chris Wise:

It definitely opens the door for revenue because TV revenue, and radio revenue flow back to those teams and to those venues. Now, that’s true on the major scale. When you come down to collegiate sports, that’ll be true as well, even the smaller schools that rely so heavily on ticket sales, but we’ll see how that’s going to play out, but there has to be revenue generation for the sports to continue. It’s imperative, that’s what feeds the flame to keep it going. So there’d just be different ways. The fun part will be what we also see in terms of e-sports, and we talked about this a little bit in the past, but most people believe that physical sports will continue on as they were before, but e-sports will grow exponentially faster than it was prior because people have turned to that as an outlet for entertainment.

Chris Wise:

With more eyeballs there and participation, that will be easily monetized, and it’s important to know that. So if someone’s not entertaining an e-sports product, they really should be. Particularly true, it was interesting, I thought that was just going to be with young people, and that’s true with young people, but those, I’m going to say middle-aged, except some of the folks that are are older, they just believe everything’s going to be just like it was before. But really those folks that are, I’m going to say, about 31 to 50 are more optimistic that e-sports are going to grow so fast, which was very, very, very telling for me. I thought it would be much younger. So we’re starting to see it move over into some older age groups. The young part of that group have been active in playing games and have been part of that slow, quiet revolution that isn’t so slow and quiet anymore. So it’s important to stay in touch with and be involved in that sort of offering along with what has been your typical offering.

Chris McAdoo:

I think that comes to, Chris, paying attention. It’s reading the room. When we had conversations with the Raiders, and they talked to us about how their new stadium was going to be super wifi enabled all that kind of stuff, because even during the physical games, people were also involving themselves in the e-sports.

Chris Wise:

Yeah, it’s not as passive as it used to be. The minds and hearts, while they’re focusing on the sport, they’re multitasking to absorb all that and be more engaged, more participatory in some way that they own it rather than just sit by and watch time go by.

Chris McAdoo:

Well, what else? What are some of the other big findings from this fourth series of interviews with fans, Chris?

Chris Wise:

Well, we asked about what’s it going to take? What must happen for people to go to a live event, be in person at a stadium, and not surprisingly, the top two things are people want to know there was a vaccine or successful treatment for the coronavirus or that the pandemic is totally ended with no new cases. Well, that’s something we can’t do anything about, at least not sports teams, but then the next five categories are totally in the control of teams and venues. Those are knowing the venue is properly cleaned and maintained, having hand wipes and hand sanitizers throughout the venue, having both employees and attendees wear masks at all times, no exception, know that social distancing is being enforced at the venue, and very tightly controlling the number of people allowed in lines.

Chris Wise:

Those are things that, if you can put the mind at ease of the fans, they’ll come back. Now, some still have to know and believe that that’s going to be the case. There can’t be an opening and venues say or teams say, “This is what we’re doing,” and then they get to the venue and it’s quite the opposite. That will destroy all confidence. So it’s imperative that actions are taken and confidence is built that will allow fans to come again. It’ll be a different experience for awhile until the top two things are really taken care of, and that, as we know, is probably likely a ways down the road. The other thing is people are going to come back to sports. Many will come back to any sport, but most likely, they’ll want to come back to the sport that’s their favorite sport.

Chris McAdoo:

There’s a thing there that we always say anyway, in the world of sports, in the world of marketing, in the world of life in general, particularly in these times when folks want to hear from and experience with voices that they trust, is what is being said there. They’re properly cleaned and maintained venues, our hand wipes, the safety measures that folks will put in place is you are making a promise that you’re going to take care of your people. When you make a promise, you keep it. What you’re saying is, now more than ever, do not break that promise.

Chris Wise:

That’s right. Yeah, yeah. You maintain full integrity in that promise, just like you would your very best friend, just anyone. It’s integrity, and if you break that you’ve lost all integrity. You’re right, now more than ever, you can’t do that. You must be sincere. That’s typically why people gravitate and are loyal to the teams and the players anyway. There’s a certain amount of emotional tie in, and there’s integrity there that, I’m going to align myself with this team because of, because it represents me, it’s an extension of me. So don’t lie to me. Do what’s right so we can have fun and love this forever and ever. Another thing I thought, we also asked, with the sports programming now being available from NASCAR and then the Last Dance and the Match, the champions for charity, and we’ve seen Korean baseball and some other things have gone live.

Chris Wise:

While 73% of the folks we talked to indicated they would likely watch sports even if no fans in the stands at this point, I’m sure it’s because of timing or when it was aired, at least 54% have done so with live NASCAR. 24% of the folks we talked to said, they’re watching live NASCAR. That’s an increased number that over what we’ve seen in the past. So that’s great for NASCAR. The Last Dance 27%, even the Match with Tom Brady and Peyton and Tiger [inaudible 00:15:49], nearly 20% of the audience said they watched that. That was something different, certainly entertaining, but it again, showed the whole premise that people are hungry and love sports and it gives them that emotional support they need. That’s really it. It’s just nice to see the, again, going back to earlier comment, the fog has lifted and people are engaging the way they said they want to be engaged.

Chris Wise:

I know there was fear when we [inaudible 00:16:26] with our baseline and talking to some teams and venues and leagues, that there was fear that the fan would ultimately not ever want to be engaged again, or that they’re going to go away, but that’s just not going to happen. So we’ll continue to track and see what happens, and we have some other great topics down the road in another couple of weeks. In fact, we’re going to have a panel of folks, trying to have representation from Major League Baseball, the NFL, Major League Soccer, NASCAR, and representation within that from general management to ticketing, to marketing, to partnerships, to try to really understand in this time. Many times when we make decisions, we’re able to draw on experience and knowledge that allows us to make informed or intelligent decisions. In this time, we’re making decisions, and teams and leagues are making decisions, around a topic that we have no experience from.

Chris Wise:

So knowing that there are lots of, I’ll say, war room strategies, many different scenarios that are looked at in the virtual boardrooms, we’re going to have this panel talk about what has been the decision making process over the course of the last few months, and what does it look like going forward? How often do you revisit those decisions and again, and what are the tools you use to make great decisions? Looking forward to that. That’ll be coming up in mid June, just a few weeks away. That’s what’s going to roll out next.

Chris McAdoo:

All right, Chris, thanks as always for doing the work that allows us to build a foundation, give us those real numbers, those real statistics, those real people that are out there gearing up to come back together in whatever form that looks like. Speaking of decision, making anybody that’s listening to this podcast, you guys are probably out there making a lot of decisions right now, decisions that you’ve never had to make before, and that no one could have necessarily been prepared for. We are offering all of this information, all of these statistics, all of these reports for free, and we would love for you to have them. So go to ignitefaninsights.com, where you will subscribe to the mailing list. It gets you these reports, but it also gets you an incredible amount of sports fan sentiment that’s going to continue throughout the year and far beyond as the situation changes.

Chris McAdoo:

As we watch day to day, week to week, month to month, as things open back up, and you’ll know what people are thinking before they do. It’s pretty cool. So anyway, again, go to ignitefaninsights.com and we look forward to sharing that information with you, Chris, thanks again. Chris Wise, general manager of Designsensory Intelligence and Ignite Fan Insights. I’m Chris McAdoo, creative director here with Designsensory Intelligence, and we are proud to bring you Fired Up. This podcast is a product of Design Sensory Intelligence, and it’s just great having these conversations with you Chris, every couple of weeks, because I feel like everybody is swimming in a world of maybes, of what ifs and how about that? For me, it feels good to have real information in front of you. It feels good to have actual, data driven information that you can use to make decisions. So I hope that everybody else appreciates that as well. Then until next time everybody, we hope you’ve enjoyed this edition of Fired Up.