• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, February 5, 2024

Sports fans, especially Super Bowl fans, are often passionate about the teams they follow. They honor the team by purchasing brand-related shirts, blankets, seat cushions, cups and other merchandise, and they enjoy seeing their favorite athletes and teams featured in ads.

These fans are coveted by advertisers and sought after by marketers. But older, traditional sports fans are not like new, younger sports fans.

Infillion partnered with Lucid, a Cint Group company focused on measurement and metrics, to evaluate trends around the changing behavior and attitudes of sports fans. The two companies fielded the study between December 11, 2023, and December 18, 2023, yielding responses from 979 adults -- 51% female and 49% male.

The study, scheduled for release this week, shows that males are more likely to identify themselves as hardcore fans, whereas females are more likely to consider themselves enthusiastic fans.

Sports fans watch lots of other content, the data shows. Even hardcore fans spend considerable amounts of time watching non-sports content every week.

Each week, across all platforms, devices, and live settings, the data shows sports fans spend 12.6 hours per week watching sports, movies and other entertainment and news. Hardcore sports fans spend 13.9 hours per week watching the same type of content. Fifty-six percent of hardcore sports fans spend more than four hours per week watching movies and TV.

The NFL is the clear leader in interest among sports fans. When asked to name the traditional professional and college sports they are most interested in, 73% cited NFL football, with MLB baseball at 45%; NBA basketball at 43%; college football at 42%; men's college basketball at 34%; WNBA at 26%; women's softball at 26%; NHL hockey at 22%: women's soccer at 21%; and men's soccer at 20%

The data showed that Gen Z is increasingly interested in emerging sports such as boxing and mixed martial arts (MMA), which ranked as one of the top sports for younger fans, with 35% of Gen Z saying they enjoy watching the sports. They tend to follow UFC and MMA stars who have become TikTok celebrities and vice versa.

Five types of sports stood out in Infillion’s research:

• Soccer: From Lionel Messi to Megan Rapinoe, soccer stars have become household names in the U.S., and the research found both men’s and women’s soccer are even with NHL hockey in popularity.
• Women’s Volleyball: With 32% of sports fans saying they enjoy watching women’s volleyball, it was by far the most popular women’s sport in this study.
• Combat Sports: Famous fighters, often featured on TikTok, have propelled UFC and MMA to popularity among young viewers. Gen Z ranked it higher in popularity than any other sports aside from NFL football and NBA basketball.
• Cricket: Gen Z respondents were twice as likely as fans overall to say they enjoy watching cricket, making this soon-to-be Olympic sport one to follow among young viewers.
• Motorsports: Drive to Survive, a hit Netflix series about F1 racing, has made the historically Eurocentric car series a fresh sensation among Americans. Millennials and Gen-Z ranked motorsports ahead of golf and tennis in popularity in our survey.

Streaming has become the place to watch sports for many. NFL Sunday Ticket, the package that gives fans access to games outside their media market, for example, made the jump from DirecTV to YouTube. Thursday Night Football is now on Amazon Prime Video, and the NBCUniversal-owned Peacock has established itself as a destination for live and on-demand sports content, especially the Olympics and pro soccer.

Forty-six percent of sports fans participating in the study said they watch more sports on streaming than they did pre-2020. While overall fans watch sports content on a variety of streaming devices, they still prefer to watch it on a TV, with 82% saying they often watch sports on TV, compared with 77% of sports fans in general.

Sports fan prioritize certain aspects about streaming, with 88% saying that price is a major consideration. The selection of movies and shows, access to favorite sports shows, ad free options, and access to news are the top five. Access to sports commentary and analytics, and historic games and matches followed.

Only 29% of sports fans have said they have canceled a streaming subscription because of a change in the live sports provided. Broken out by demographics, 47% of Gen Z ranked No. 1 in terminating a subscription for changes.