The New Era of Sports Fan Engagement

In today's fast-paced digital landscape, global sports fans' interests, expectations, and opportunities are undergoing a transformative shift. With a plethora of sports content available across various platforms, capturing and retaining fans' attention has become increasingly challenging. Fans have transitioned from mere spectators to active participants, immersing themselves in the narratives of their favourite athletes and entertainers. Social media and streaming services have revolutionised fan interaction dynamics, making community building more direct and impactful.

At the same time, traditional website engagement metrics are waning, leading to missed revenue opportunities as fans flock to social media. Notably, Forbes highlighted that 82% of websites showed inactivity out of the 1.13 billion that were indexed in 2023. Moreover, majority of Gen Z fans turn to social media to consume sports-related content, signalling a pivotal shift in fan engagement preferences.

To address these pressing issues, there is a need for innovative solutions that leverage emerging technologies to enhance the fan experience. That's why at Cheeer, we are launching the Virtual Sports Fan Report! Throughout 2024, we will be investigating the shifts in the sports fan engagement market, delving into the current state of sports fandom, and exploring how fans navigate the digital landscape. Additionally, along with our partners and through discussions with market leaders, we are analysing how the latest technological advancements, particularly in virtual reality, can reenergise fan experiences.

The Current State of Digital Fan Engagement

To create the digital fan engagement benchmark overview, we have examined the digital presence of top football and other sports clubs by analysing data from the Semrush database for the year 2023. This entails analysis of teams' official website domains and pages, as well as their Instagram pages. Specifically, we examined these metrics: Visits, Unique Visitors, Bounce Rate, Average Session Duration, Pages per Visit, Instagram Total Engagement, Device Usage, and User Demographics.

We have compiled a list of the 100 biggest clubs using financial reports. Ninety-four of these clubs were from the European "Big Five" leagues with the highest revenues, and six clubs from the United States, Argentina, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, Japan, and Qatar were selected based on their valuation in local leagues. Additionally, we have curated a list of 100 clubs from Forbes' rankings of the world's most valuable teams in 2023, including the NFL, NBA, MLB, Formula 1, and NHL teams.

Our research reveals evidence indicating a lack of interest in sports media consumption on clubs' websites:

For a detailed overview of the first part of our report, "Benchmark Analysis," and to explore the entire research project, please visit: https://www.virtualsportsfan.com/.

Next Steps

As we dive deeper into virtualisation, we're taking you along and documenting our learnings in the Virtual Sports Fan Report. With advancements like AI (Artificial Intelligence), Blockchain, VR (Virtual Reality), and AR (Augmented Reality), there are new opportunities for interaction, communication, and commercialisation. Our report aims to highlight future-oriented use cases for the sports industry and facilitate embracing these new technologies, particularly focusing on Metaverse integrations.

As we progress, we are thrilled to announce the next phase of our research: Insights and Innovation Cases, and we are opening it up for collaboration. We invite innovators from around the world to join us as we continue to explore, analyse, and innovate. Through discussions with leaders across business, technology, and sports, our report aims to showcase practical applications for the sports industry and facilitate the adoption of these new technologies.

Additionally, driven by our passion for creating virtual worlds that fans worldwide can enjoy, we are committed to helping sports brands, clubs, and organisations turn their static websites into vibrant virtual hubs known as Fanzones. These Fanzones offer exciting opportunities for fan engagement, from interactive experiences and digital wearables to gamification and live events. With our simple iFrame integration, sports brands and clubs can have their virtual Fanzones up and running in just minutes. Moreover, with our user behaviour dashboard, partners can easily track, test, and learn about fan engagement, enabling continuous improvement and optimisation.

By teaming up with us, sports clubs and organisations can embrace the future of fan engagement and deliver unparalleled immersive experiences to fans around the globe. Limited spots are available in our study, so don't miss out — visit https://www.virtualsportsfan.com/ to participate!

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