This is the fifth in a series from TheWrap exploring how sports is transforming the entertainment business. Read our previous story here.
It’s Tuesday morning, say. Last night’s Monday Night Football win by the Los Angeles Chargers finished the week’s worth of football games, but the rush for sports fans is far from over.
Your dad texted you to gloat over his fantasy football win over the weekend thanks to a stellar performance by Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson. Your buddy sent you a Venmo request for the bet you lost after Georgia’s overtime win over Tennessee in college football. And a new podcast episode of “New Heights” with the Kelce brothers drops on Wednesday, just in time for you to rejigger your fantasy roster for the week ahead.
Sports viewership is no longer just appointment television. It is a 24/7 entertainment ecosystem and, for many, a full-time commitment. Whether you tune in for the game at kickoff or catch the social clips on House of Highlights, watching sports has extended far beyond posting up on the couch for a weekend afternoon viewing.
In a world where attention spans are shrinking and entertainment alternatives are everywhere, leagues, teams and networks have had to adapt their strategies to cater to fans’ changing needs and embrace technology in an unprecedented way. Fans follow athletes on social media to get a daily dose of their favorite stars. XR — or mixed reality — immersive experiences allow fans to experience the game like never before. And gambling and gamification of the fan experience taps into the already addictive second-screen behavior of chronically online fans.
“If you look at the trends with Gen Alpha and probably younger Gen Z, these people are still fans of sports, but they’re less and less watching full long form content,” QualComm’s chief marketing officer Don McGuire told TheWrap. “But they’re going in for highlights.”
These features show that even as sports has emerged as a $29 billion entertainment juggernaut, it’s not standing still. These innovations are designed to cater to diehard fans and casual bandwagon watchers alike, but are ultimately designed to keep audiences locked into their game or team of choice.
Sports betting, meanwhile, has emerged from the dark alleys and into the spotlight as leagues and networks lean into the addictive and lucrative market. Chris Jason, executive director of ESPN Sports Product, told TheWrap that sports gamblers and Fantasy Football players are the most engaged fan base with the network’s content, and catering to their needs has proven to be vital.
Executives from YouTube, ESPN and Peacock told TheWrap that personalization of the sports themselves increases engagement from fans. These adaptations have become necessary tools in maintaining viewership and reaching the next generation of sports fans.
“We know all of our fans want to ‘fan’ in different ways,” Brian Marshall, vice president of sports products and strategy at ESPN, told TheWrap. “So whether it’s a companion experience we build in the app, whether it’s some of the things that we’ve done alongside of the game, we try to find that balance of surfacing great fantasy information for fans who want it, and also making sure anyone who just wants to lean back and enjoy Monday Night Football is able to do that as well.”
A different viewing experience
New viewing habits have changed the way that sports are consumed. The increase of second screen viewing and a heightened emphasis on highlights and viral moments have altered the tried and true sports model by emphasizing TikTok-like clips that can easily be shared on social media.
Meanwhile, sports multi-viewing, originally popularized in bars with multiple televisions, had grown so popular that some avid sports fans previously bought two monitors for their own living room set-ups. Now with multi-view options on streamers like Peacock, Paramount+, Fox One and YouTube, watching several games simultaneously has become the norm.
YouTube first launched its multi-sports viewing in 2023 for March Madness and planned for it to be an early access feature for a select group of YouTube TV subscribers. After the demand for the multi-view increased, the platform made the feature available to all viewers days later. The platform then expanded the feature to its NFL Sunday Ticket in June 2023.
Peacock first tested their multi-view setup during the Olympics — last summer’s sports breakout moment for the streamer that proved largely successful. The Olympic games brought in record high revenue of $1.9 billion for the company, with average daily viewership of 31 million across the company’s linear networks and Peacock, an 82% increase compared to the 2021 Summer Olympics.
Paramount+ launched its multiview feature for the kickoff of CBS Sports’ UEFA soccer coverage on Tuesday. And ESPN has leaned into its multi-view offerings as part of its new app and streaming ESPN platform, but Marshall said the innovations are not meant to leave anyone behind.
“We never want to get in the way of someone who just wants to watch the game,” Marshall said. “We also want to make sure that that’s complementary to the viewing experience.”
Some stadiums have leaned into immersive fan experiences using cutting-edge technology. Chip maker Qualcomm has implemented augmented reality activations with Manchester United and virtual reality garage tours with the Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 team, giving fans an unprecedented view into the inner workings of their favorite sports.
“We’re talking to a TikTok-driven culture,” McGuire said. “We’re talking to a highlight-driven generation with an attention span of five seconds.”
While audiences are embracing multi-view, companies like Qualcomm are investing in the next wave of experiences.
“We can do a full live stream from a different viewpoint that people can engage with. We can do a virtual seat in the stadium … But also we can do some really cool stuff with highlights and deliver them in real time and create some really compelling experiences that map to generational behaviors.”
Gamification of sports
For ESPN, leaning into fantasy football and sports gambling has been essential for turning passive viewers into invested participants.
Fantasy football has been around since the 1960s, but in the era of mobile games, it is more popular than ever. Over the last 12 months, 28% of North Americans played fantasy sports or bet on sports, according to a July report from the Fantasy Sports & Gaming Association. Across both the U.S. and Canada, there are approximately 57 million fantasy players and 66 million sports bettors. The NFL and the NBA are the most popular leagues for fantasy sports players in North America, but the MLB, ESports and international and national soccer leagues follow closely behind.
ESPN, CBS, Yahoo, NFL and Sleeper all compete for the thumbs of fantasy gamers during the NFL season, with each hosting their own fantasy football leagues. Chris Jason, ESPN’s executive director of sports product, told TheWrap that capturing the attention of these fans leads to greater engagement across ESPN’s products.
“Fantasy players, and also bettors now, are the most engaged segments of users we have across the products,” he said. “We also know that fantasy players over index on all the high value activities that we would care about most as ESPN.”
With its new all-in-one ESPN app, the network has incorporated gambling access through external partners into the mobile experience, something the team and fans have been pushing for for years, the sports product director said.
“There were ways to do it, but they were filled with friction and kind of frustrating,” Jason said. “The ESPN bet app, I think, is one of the best things that you know sports bettors will get to enjoy this year that previously was not easy to do.”
For parent Disney, the move to online gambling was an about face for the family-friendly company when it first announced its betting platform in collaboration with PENN Entertainment in 2023. Over the last few years, leagues have become closely linked with legalized online gambling. Leagues have signed lucrative marketing deals with betting apps like FanDuel and DraftKings and use gambling to amp up fan engagement.
FanDuel has official partnerships with the MLB, NASCAR, NBA, NFL, NHL and the PGA. DraftKings is the official partner of the WNBA, and an official daily fantasy and sports betting partner of the NFL, NHL, PGA Tour, and UFC, as well as an official daily fantasy partner of NASCAR. These partnerships have become more commonplace as online sports betting is legalized nationwide. So far, 30 states have legalized online sports betting via either smartphone apps or websites. D.C. and Puerto Rico also allow online betting.
There are tradeoffs, though. A UCSD study from last year found 96% of sports gamblers lose money, and apps like FanDuel and DraftKings will restrict accounts once they start winning. The betting apps did not respond to TheWrap’s request for comment.
The sports gambling industry made over $70 billion in revenue in 2024, with $41 billion coming from online sports betting, according to data from Statista. In 2024, there were 137.9 million online sports betting users active nationwide, with that figure expected to grow to 181.3 million in 2029.
Social media playbook
Social media platforms and creators have become critical to how fans experience sports, not just during live games but also through highlights, pregame content and behind-the-scenes access. Leagues and teams actively collaborate with a variety of creators to reach new audiences, especially younger and more diverse demographics.
“Leagues and sports teams across the board are growing their awareness metrics half over half, year over year, over this long time scale,” CreatorIQ’s director of research and insights Alex Rawitz told TheWrap of sports’ growth in the creator space. “It is one of our fastest growing categories that we track, and we see sports in general as an up and comer within the broader creator marketing landscape.”
According to CreatorIQ, both social engagements and impressions for the NFL and NBA have increased exponentially since 2020. The NBA had over 74 billion social impressions in 2024, and the NFL garnered over 53 billion. Sports fans are consuming content on social media more than ever before.
YouTube, the exclusive home of NFL Sunday Ticket, has leaned into the creator model of sports consumption with the release of their “Watch With” feature. For the platform’s first NFL broadcast of the Chargers v. the Kansas City Chiefs game in Brazil, four YouTube creators – IShowSpeed, Tom Grossi, Robegrill and SKabeche – hosted their own Watch With streams. The feature operated like a Twitch live stream and allowed viewers to see the game through the eyes of a creator while also interacting with them through likes and comments.
“The foundation of our work with leagues began with clips and highlights around a decade ago,” Jon Cruz, global head of Sports Partnerships at YouTube, told TheWrap. “Fans of specific sports knew how to find what they needed on YouTube, but we felt that YouTube could be a good place to help leagues and teams find these fans, and draw in new fans, by leveraging their archives to deepen connection with them.”
The NFL launched its YouTube channel in 2015, and it now has over 15 million subscribers. In 2024 alone, viewers spent over 350 million hours watching official NFL content on the platform.
ESPN has even created its own TikTok-style vertical shorts tab “Verts” on its all-in-one app, allowing fans to rewatch ESPN highlights from the weekend’s games without leaving their platform. The push is intended to meet fans where they are: online.
In the age of social media, athletes’ job descriptions also transcend the field, the court and the ring. Athletes are influencers and brand identities all on their own. McGuire said that Manchester United has even invested in content creation inside the team’s training facility, the Charlotte Snapdragon studio, for athletes to film brand deals, podcasts and behind-the-scenes content. These tools are no longer a suggestion for athletes but necessary for building longstanding relationships with fans and the brands they work with.
“Some of the most effective drivers of impressions, engagements, earned media value … Those are often the leagues themselves, or in particular, the teams themselves,” Rawitz said.
Football teams like the Chargers regularly host influencers to give an inside scoop into the game and the perks that come along with it. Other teams like the Savanna Bananas have leaned into meme-able moments and viral trends to increase fan engagement with their content. Beyond clips, teams have realized the value of building a fanbase online as much as in the stadiums.
Though athletes have greater financial opportunities through brand deals, endorsements and partnerships, being online can take a toll on their mental health. Their name, image and likeness has become as valuable as their athletic capabilities, forcing them to become more internet savvy than ever, and also sparking a transformation in Hollywood talent agencies looking to support them.
“Athletes are as brand-conscious as they’ve ever been,” Rawitz said. “I think precisely because social media provides all those opportunities for them to build their brand, and the way that they understand doing that isn’t necessarily by being a spokesperson, pitch person in commercials – that still exists – but there’s also this new media element of actually being a little more unfiltered, a little more direct, and actually reaching fans.”
Take Jason Kelce, the Philadelphia Eagles power center turned podcaster turned ESPN commentator. The former NFL star and Super Bowl champion built a legacy on the field but has been able to captivate audiences beyond it with social media. Today’s athletes are content creators, influencers and brands in their own right.
As technology continues to reshape how fans watch, bet and interact, the game isn’t just being played on the field anymore. It’s happening on every screen.
More from GameOn: Check out TheWrap’s full series here.
