Social Sports Consumers Ahead in Brand Interactions

Completing our week on sports engagement, today’s chart explores the sports viewership landscape further, looking at the extent to which Millennial Social Sports Consumers (aged between 21-34) are interacting with brands in the space compared to others in their generation.

As we explored in Wednesday’s chart, global sports viewership is evolving. Around 1 in 5 internet users now say a main motivation for visiting social is to follow or watch sports events, and many sports leagues are moving with this trend by turning to social as a key distribution channel to stretch over borders.

Beyond this, our data allows us to provide some insight into the activities using these consumers time on social alongside viewing. Social Sports Consumers in the Millennial cohort are highly engaged with all brand-related actions we track.

While just over a third of these digital consumers are following brands on social each month, and a similar figure are visiting brands’ social pages, many are showing deeper engagement; they’re 63% more likely than the average Millennial to be clicking on sponsored posts, and 61% more likely to be asking brands questions.

With these sporting consumers in mind, an active social presence goes a long way throughout live broadcasts, and the opportunity for these interactions will be even greater during tournaments like the World Cup, when social media will receive a lot of attention from viewers and marketers alike.

Millennial Social Sports Consumers are defined as internet users aged 21-34 who say that a main reason for social media use is to watch/follow sports events.