Does the Sports Industry Need a Creator Economy?

Professional sports in America are facing an identity crisis. Franchises worth billions of dollars have slowly perfected the art of making money and continue to see their value grow exponentially over astonishingly short timelines.

But there has been a trade-off: Most professional sports organizations today are controlled by corporate ownership groups — largely nameless and faceless — that have effectively severed, or at least compromised, teams’ connections with their fans.

The result: Many clubs are now at a loss for how best to position their brand, energize their product and interact with their audience. Modern fans are savvier, more plugged in and have more entertainment alternatives than ever. Their interest in a sport or organization is never a foregone conclusion.

One answer to the problem has been the creation and curation of team social media accounts. TikTok, Twitter, YouTube and other digital channels offer a direct conduit to an organization’s customers, and clubs spend no small amount of resources creating content they hope will draw attention and resonate with fans. What many fail to recognize is the legion of untapped content creators already operating in an organization’s backyard: the fans themselves.

More and more, it seems sports are moving away from what should be their true mission: community building and elevating the fan experience. Rather than wrangling over how to squeeze another dime out of every concession soda sold or adding interactive screens to the back of every stadium seat, franchise leaders should focus on reaching not only established fans but building meaningful and lasting connections with those fans’ daughters and sons.

Clubs need to think generationally. Understanding and learning from future fans, who are often an organization’s best social media brand ambassadors, is a smart long-term financial play.

Today, young fans are all potential creators — and ultimately storytellers. They are more digitally inclined and more integrated into a social ecosystem than the average fan, and they can help make or break the public perception around an organization. These creators know a club’s history, its storylines, its players, and through the power of authentic communication, they can breathe life into that organization’s relationship with its fans.

At the same time, there is little more dangerous than a 16-year-old with a TikTok account. Fan creators can be a franchise’s best friend or worst enemy.

That’s precisely why ignoring or antagonizing this group is a terrible idea. Punching up as a fan is acceptable. Punching down as an organization never works. Instead of working to squash public sentiment, savvy franchises channel it by giving voice to creators and amplifying that voice. Listen to that voice. Set ego aside. Make fans feel seen.

Pay attention to these creators’ digital tactics. Build a community around your team that is representative of that voice. Whether it’s fan created or fan influenced, authentic content helps humanize a corporate-run organization, leads to long-term engagement and invigorates communities.

Whether or not they choose to embrace it, sports franchises are stewards of a community. To that end, the direction a team’s ownership takes should be a reflection of the demands and desires of that community as well as the ecosystem around it.

A famous and undeniably fantastic example of this phenomenon is in Wrexham, Wales, where actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney purchased a storied soccer club that had fallen on hard times, earnestly worked to raise up the organization and its community and created a streaming series to chronicle the entire adventure.

Or just take my native city of Detroit: the NBA’s Pistons haven’t won a playoff series and have missed the postseason altogether in 10 of 12 seasons, ever since Tom Gores bought the franchise in 2011. But that hasn’t prevented the team from building a connection with Detroiters.

Big Sean, a local hip-hop artist and Pistons superfan who has helped rally the community around the club through its down years, was officially hired in 2020 to be the organization’s creative director of innovation. One of his key moves was hiring director and Detroit native Lawrence Lamont to create the “Different by Design” campaign, firming up the club’s bond to the community. And in just over a decade, Gores has seen his initial investment grow more than fivefold.

The takeaway is pretty simple: The creator economy already exists around sports franchises. Teams can ignore it or participate in it themselves, but it isn’t going away. To fully integrate with their community and optimize local engagement, franchises must take their creator cues from the fans.

We’ve seen it in practice, in many forms and across various platforms, by organizations like the Tennessee Titans, Philadelphia Phillies and Minor League sensation Savannah Bananas. The channel is almost irrelevant — the content is the thing. Instead of asking whether TikTok or Instagram is the best delivery system for a campaign, organizations should focus on building the best version of their product. What gets people excited and convinces them to share it? By focusing on authenticity and building experiences valued by the fans, teams give themselves the best opportunity to benefit from sports’ creator economy.

Matt Ferrel is vice president and head of growth at secondary ticket marketplace TickPick. Previously, he held senior marketing positions at Google and AEG, where he helped build the new digital marketing team.