Sports has a Gen Z problem.

The pandemic may

accelerate it.
By Rick Maese
November 24, 2020 at 7:00 a.m. EST

On any given night, in living rooms across America, the television could be tuned
to the big game, mom and dad glued to the action, children nearby. But as most any
parent can attest, those children are likely to be virtually somewhere else — an app, a
game, a social media feed, perhaps, lost in a smartphone where the scrolling never ends.
The big game serves as background noise, if that.
The bulky and bankable U.S. sports industry, built on towers of cash and
lucrative television contracts, is confronting a Generation Z problem. The nation’s
youngest cohort is fundamentally different from the generations that preceded it.
Having grown up with smartphones in their pockets, its members eschew traditional
television viewing and subscribe to digital habits that make grooming a new generation
of sports fans a challenge.
That challenge is being met with a sense of urgency in some corners of the sports
world and a sense of alarm in others, according to team and league officials, social
scientists, research analysts and marketing specialists who focus on Generation Z.
Failing to hook young people might not devastate today’s bottom line, but it threatens to
muddle the future of every league, every team and every sport.
“If you lose a generation, it destroys value and the connective tissue,” said Ted
Leonsis, principal owner of Washington-based teams that compete in the NBA, NHL
and WNBA. “It’s what some of the big sports leagues are nervous about. Could we lose a
generation because we didn’t give them access and the products and services they
want?”
While many have embraced digital platforms, leagues and teams were slow to tailor
their offerings to the youngest generation, even as research made clear that Gen Z
members — loosely defined as those born after 1996 — interact with the world much
differently than millennials, Gen Xers and baby boomers. And these habits have taken a
toll on the way they engage in sports, research shows. According to ESPN’s internal
data, some 96 percent of 12- to 17-year-olds still identify as sports fans, a consistent
figure over the past decade. But the share of fans who call themselves “avid” has
dropped, from 42 percent a decade ago to 34 percent last year.
Rich Luker is a social psychologist and founder of Luker on Trends, a sports
polling outfit that has measured fandom and consulted with pro leagues for more than a
quarter-century. He has watched fandom drop among young people for the past decade
and sounded alarms.
“I’ve been screaming for 15 years now,” he said. “I would get pushback. Owners,
executives, senior-level people say, ‘They will come back at 35.’ Why would they come
back at 35 when they were never there in the first place? That’s like saying all of a
sudden, they’ll all start knitting at 35 or watching cricket at 35. Why would they do
that?”
Tim Ellis, the NFL’s chief marketing officer, said the league’s own data bears that
out. “There’s no strategy for bringing in a 35-year-old fan for the first time. You have to
make them a fan by the time they’re 18, or you’ll lose them forever,” he said.
That’s why the NFL has been so worried in recent years. When Ellis joined the
league two years ago from Activision Blizzard, a popular video game maker, the league
had seen its young audience trend downward for six straight years. He stressed to team
owners that finding a solution was urgent.
“Gaining and retaining young people is key to future-proofing the NFL,” he said
in a recent interview. “So when we look at that generation, I personally look at it as the
lifeblood and health of the brand and our business.”
The issue has only been exacerbated by the pandemic as youth sports suffer and
young people spend more time than ever online.
Sports executives “haven’t paid enough attention yet to this generation, and they
have to,” said Mark Beal, an assistant professor at the Rutgers University School of
Communication and Information who has written two books on Gen Z. “They need to
prioritize them because these are the sports fans of the future that over the next 10 to 15
years can make or break a sports team, league or manufacturer. This is your most
important consumer, and they’ll determine your future success.”

Future fans sidelined

 Last month, Beal gave an online presentation to executives from Major League
Baseball and its 30 teams. To explain how this younger audience is growing up innately
different, he borrowed a quote from Jacqueline Parkes, then the chief marketing officer
for MTV: “This is a generation that grew up swiping before they wiped.”
Over the course of 60 PowerPoint slides, Beal painted a stark portrait of how
technology shapes the way Gen Zers navigate the world. They’re globally conscious and
care about diversity, equality and inclusion. They get their news from Instagram and
YouTube, not a newspaper or cable news network. And they want unique, authentic
experiences — even better if it’s something they can then share on their social networks.
They do enjoy sports, Beal said, though other, digitally friendly pastimes compete for
their attention. He surveys Gen Zers a handful of times each year and finds that sports
consistently rank behind entertainment (music, movies and TV) and pop culture
(celebrity news and trends).
This was not all new information to the Zoom-assembled baseball executives.
Officials from MLB, the NBA, the NFL and the NHL say they have been diligently
studying Generation Z. They have ramped up their efforts to connect, they say, and are
pleased with the early returns.
But many acknowledge this is a tenuous time. Leagues’ research shows a strong
correlation between young people playing a sport and developing fan loyalty. But youth
sports participation has steadily slipped in recent years. There were promising
signs more recently — and then the pandemic struck. One emerging fear, though it’s
probably too early to quantify, is that the hit to youth sports will do permanent damage,
with young people gravitating in other directions or getting further engrossed in their
digital worlds.
There are other defining Gen Z characteristics that encourage sports executives.
Members are highly engaged, devour content and crave connection.
“The draw for sports historically has been this idea of connecting with others and
creating interactions and connection points, whether at the ballpark or the water cooler
at the office,” said Chris Marinak, MLB’s chief operations and strategy officer. “... We see
the younger generation has that same desire, probably even more so in terms of
connecting with friends.”