Fandom is about passion, enthusiasm, and interest in cultural entities like sports, entertainment, fashion, or even politics. Shared fandom unites people and creates the interwoven sub-cultures and groups that create a robust society. Dallas residents share a love of the Cowboys and opinions about Jerry Jones, Swifties bond over the music and exploits of Taylor Swift, and Harry Potter fans have watched all the movies and can discuss the rules of Quidditch.
It’s year 3 of our annual “Next Generation Fandom Survey.” The Next Generation Fandom survey examines current attitudes towards sports and other cultural entities (~the survey involves a 2400 person sample of Americans aged 13 to 75). This will be the landing page for the 2023 survey results.
It’s a big survey that will take months to review the findings. This year our approach will be to look at 1 or 2 (or maybe 3) questions at a time rather than production of larger, deeper reports. 5-minute nuggets of knowledge. If you are interested in the more detailed reports – send a note to mike.lewis@emory.edu.
Post 1: Sports Fandom and Sports Apathetics in 2023 versus 2022
The Figure shows a slight increase in overall sports fandom from 38.8% of the population in 2022 to 40.3% in 2023. The percentage of people indicating apathy or very low sports fandom also fell from 23.1% in 2022 to 21% in 2023.
Fandom is about passion, enthusiasm, and interest in cultural entities like sports, entertainment, fashion, or even politics. Shared fandom unites people and creates the interwoven sub-cultures and groups that create a robust society. Re-engagement with sports post-Covid is one indicator of re-engagement with the larger culture. It looks like sports is recovering and perhaps has reached a post-Covid equilibrium.
Overall, this is good news for the world of sports as the industry continues to evolve in the face of technological change and cultural turmoil.
However, this result prompts more questions than it answers. Is fandom evolving differently across different sports? How about across genders, generations, or political ideology?
Post 2: Fandom across Sports - The Structure of Fandom
The structure of sports fandom is changing. We seem to be evolving from a Big 3 (or 4) sports to the NFL as the sole unifying sports fandom with Basketball and Baseball in a battle for the number 2 spot (click here for the full post)
Post 3: Entertainment and Cultural Fandom
The Figure below shows the fandom rates for a selection of entertainment categories, including Movies, Television, Music, Comedy, Theater, Musicals, Social Media Content, and Fashion. The Sports category is also included as a reference. The figure shows the fandom rates in 2022 and 2023.
The full entry is HERE