Sports broadcasters face a decline in interest of their services, with younger viewers drifting away from their products. As broadcasters and sports events battle to maintain their relevance, a new study suggests they will have to reckon with the hyper-inflation which is pricing many fans out of their respective games.

For years now, sports promoters and broadcasters have grappled with something of an emerging existential crisis. While older fans remain willing to engage in their products, younger and less affluent consumers are drifting away from the sport. Attempts to appeal to ‘young people’ so far have included the supremely unpopular Super League project, as well as patronising suggestions that they could be lured back to sport via ‘AR and VR experiences’, bundles with streaming providers, and smartphone-based statistical experiences. 

So far, none of this seems to be moving the needle much at all. Now, in a bid to help get a better handle on the situation, Altman Solon has completed a new report, asking what broadcasters and promoters can actually do to lure younger fans back to the games previous generations held so dear.

Source: GWI Core Surve

The consultancy put out an online survey of 220 senior sports executives globally, including rights owners, media distributors, and investors, and around 3,000 consumers interested in sports in the UK, the US, Germany, Saudi Arabia, and China; with supplemental consumer data provided by GWI.

Setting people aged between 16-24 as the baseline across those five economies, the survey found that no other demographic was less interested in sport. But in the UK and US, the problem was at its worst – perhaps due to the hyper-capitalised manner in which tickets and viewing fees have ramped up there.

In the UK, the oldest demographic of 55-64 year-olds (typically with the most disposable income) were 1.3x more enthusiastic about watching sports than the youngest demographic – with this rising to 1.4x in the US.

According to the researchers, this signals a risk of erosion in the relevance of sports as a media product over time – potentially influenced by younger age groups adopting “more diversified media habits, as easily accessible entertainment options increasingly compete with sports for their attention”. This included findings that younger generations are increasingly substituting watching live sport with highlights, with 44% saying being able to watch “whenever possible” was the leading cause of this (compared to 15% who said they were unwilling to pay to view sports.

Source: GWI, Altman Solon

So far, this sounds like exactly what sports promoters and broadcasters would like to hear – and would undoubtedly lead them to more ‘exciting, digital ideas’ about how to reach younger viewers. However, this particular piece of data does not separate geographies, or explore how interested those viewers actually are in sport. When the importance of sport to consumers is accounted for, the figures make for more concerning reading when it comes to pricing.

Of the 60% of consumers who said they were interested in regular sports viewing, 43% said they were not willing to pay for sports content. Around 23% of that came from casual fans, who were either unwilling or extremely unwilling – while 13% of committed fans, and 7% of die-hard supporters were in that camp. At the same time, only 8% of fans from casual to die-hard said they were “very willing” to spend on sports viewing.

Recommending how to change this, the researchers noted, “To capture this potential, we are convinced that new monetization models are required – This could include freemium, lower priced tiers, pay-per-view, and other flexible plans – Such models are especially relevant for casual fans, who represent the largest segment.”

Considering the stakes at play in sports broadcasting, and the repeated evidence that broadcasters are committed to passing costs to consumers at every opportunity, it is unclear how popular offering “lower priced tiers” will prove in the short-term. But the average consumer has been left hundreds of pounds worse off by two years of accelerated inflation outpacing wage increases, so the longer that the next big innovations fails to generate interest – from AI-generated text-commentary to guided VR tours – the more likely questions around pricing will need to be asked.