The Evolution of Fandom - Episode 4: Loyalty, membership, & the modern fan journey
Loyalty used to mean a punch card. Now it means knowing exactly who your fans are, what they care about, and how to keep earning their attention, not just their next purchase.
In Episode 4 of The Evolution of Fandom, Comcast Technology Solutions' Kyle Eichman sits down with Oli Shawyer, VP of Marketing and Growth at Komo, for the series' first international conversation. Together they unpack why transactional loyalty programs train fans to wait for the next deal, why participation has become the real engine of first-party data, and why the oldest debate in sports marketing, retention versus acquisition, has been asking the wrong question all along.
What you'll learn:
- Why the shift from transactional loyalty to participatory engagement is reshaping how rights holders build relationships with fans
- How first-party and zero-party data, collected through participation, is replacing the databases that "went quiet"
- Why discount-driven programs are an acquisition problem in disguise, and what to do instead
- How to earn attention from Gen Z and younger fans who discover sport through creators and short-form video, not broadcasts
- Why retention and acquisition were never rivals, and what that means for measuring fan value
- What a "diehard fan who never attends a game" reveals about the limits of traditional fan scoring
- How fandom differs, and doesn't, across the U.S., U.K., and Australia
Please note that the views and opinions expressed by the individuals herein are their own and do not reflect any official policy or position of Comcast. These views and opinions are provided for illustrative purposes only, and Comcast makes no warranties, whether expressed, implied or statutory, regarding or relating to the accuracy of such statements.
Frequently asked questions:
Prefer to read? Here’s the full discussion:
Hi, I'm Kyle Eichman, sports market director here at Comcast Technology Solutions, and welcome back to "The Evolution of Fandom." Today, we're taking a closer look at the modern fan journey and how teams are creating personalized experiences that engage fans from their very first interaction to build real long-term loyalty. Joining me today is Oli Shawyer, VP of Marketing and Growth at Komo. Oli, thanks for joining me and we'll kick it off just like we always do and give us a brief overview of yourself and Komo.
Yeah, awesome. Thanks, Kyle. Thanks for having me. Yeah, it's appreciated different side of the world at the moment, so very different time zones. But look, yeah, quick intro about me. I've spent, well, showing my age here, about 16 plus years as a commercial marketer and almost all of that time in what I'd call discretionary demand businesses. So sport, entertainment, membership, tourism, live experiences. And it's probably only afterwards, but a common thread that these industries share is that they really only work when people actively choose them. So nobody has to support a team like you have to buy insurance or have a bank. People do it because they want to. They don't have to.
Most recently, I spent, I'd say the last four years leading marketing and digital at a national sporting body here in Australia. And before that, I was actually inside the country's top sports at both the HQ and actually club level as well. So I've got that understanding at club level. If we wanted to go way back in history, I actually cut my teeth in advertising and media, in agency land. I became obsessed with the study and I guess the understanding of behavioral science or behavioral economics, which is actually probably why I'm a little obsessed with why people choose what they choose. These days, as you alluded to in the intro, I run the Marketing and Growth at Komo.
I guess the simplest way to describe the space that we're in is in line with, you know, the evolution of fan engagement. So very loosely, it's gone from a pure reach broadcast, social advertising, shouting at the biggest crowd you can buy really, to data where everyone rushed to build a CRM or a database. And then most of those databases went quiet because I think, and we'll probably talk about it a lot today, a name and an email address isn't a relationship. And where it's landed now is what we've done and certainly what we're seeing a lot of is this idea of participation. So giving fans, attendees, members, shoppers, etc., many different types of audience nouns, but a reason to actively do something and be part of something, whether it be playing, predicting, voting, competing, being rewarded.
And I guess the moment that they take part, they tell you who they are and what they care about. And that's what Komo is. It's a fan engagement and data platform that's built on participation. In one line, and we've spent a lot of time kind of toing and froing over this, but we turn the audience as an organization can only reach into the ones they actually own, identified, understood and growing in value over the time.
No, that's awesome. And, you know, I have to chime in now. You said show my age and you said 16 years ago. I'm looking at myself in the camera going, "Wow, look at all that gray hair." And I guess I'm showing my age way more than you are, but anyway-
I dyed mine this morning, Kyle. I dyed mine. I got rid of my grays this morning.
No, that's great. That's great. So thanks for joining. And you're right, what's exciting is this is our first international conversation. Everything up until this episode has been North American-based companies. So that's kind of one of the things I'm super interested to dive into is what's the difference between North America and an international market or is there a difference? And you're right, we'll get to that and-
Good question.
Yeah. Yeah. And some of the other things too is when you look at the evolution of loyalty, membership, whatever you want to call it in the sports space, I think it's kind of what you mentioned before, right? It comes back to, oh, I want a name and I want an email and I'm going to build some kind of a reward engine around that. And then all you create, it's like in the gaming space, I was in Vegas for a long time and you create this points economy and you use everything and it's very transactional-based. And I know looking at your notes and everything, you kind of mentioned that everybody's guilty of creating these transactional-based systems and that doesn't tie back to participation.
I love the word, I love participation of that's what it is and everything, so that's great. So all that aside and everything, let's start out with a really simple question. So from your perspective and Komo's perspective, how do you think loyalty and membership over the last, I don't know, two, three years, five years, whatever timeline you want to do has evolved and changed in the pro sports space? And you can bend that internationally or however you want to, right? If there's differences between the two or three.
Yeah, look, your question about across the ditch, this side of the ditch, your side of the ditch, look, I think there are some cultural things and we'll touch on that shortly, but I actually think that the problems are very similar. It's just the ways in how they're ultimately pursued may slightly differ towards the nuance of the geography and the culture. But to your initial question about how loyalty and membership has evolved, it's probably one of those things that in hindsight, you look back and it's been evolving substantially over 10, 20 years. I think the last couple of years certainly feels like everything in the marketing space, in the sports space has gone so quickly and evolved so quickly, particularly with the likes of AI.
But look, I think broadly speaking, understanding and acknowledgement of fans and the spectrum of fandom has evolved quite substantially and loyalty and membership programs have had to. I think, again, at some point we may dive into it, but everybody's become aware that fandom is much more than just the fanatic. It's not just about the diehard fan. There is a broad spectrum of fandom, both in terms of those that identify as fans and those that don't identify as fans, but behave like fans. And did a wonderful big broad-reaching segmentation study many years ago that looked at the very different types of fandom on a spectrum and the motivations and reasons for why somebody would get involved in sport and particularly that at a professional or elite level and following clubs and athletes.
But look, from my perspective, I feel like it's probably moved through three core shifts. You nailed it before, Kyle. The idea of moving from transactional, so points and discounts, which I think quietly train audiences to wait for the next deal, if I'm being honest, but it has moved to that participatory.
100%. Absolutely.
Yeah. Yeah. And it's recognition-based now, right? I think it's also the other core shift to call out, and this is broadly speaking across communications in general, but it's moved from a one-way broadcast relationship that may have included a birthday card and a newsletter to an ongoing relationship. And it is that shift from, I guess, a subscriber mindset to a fandom mindset, from someone who passively pays or shows up to someone who actively takes part. And I think there was a big study that had come out recently that really talked about this idea of moving from subscribers to super fans. But most importantly, I think the third shift, and particularly in the world that I operate and have spent a career in, is from a marketing tactic to the mechanism that tells you who your fans actually are.
I think modern loyalty isn't about squeezing your diehards, it's identification. And I think loyalty programs were kind of the front door of this space for a long time. You know, taking emotional loyalty that already existed and actually turning it into relationships that you can see, that you can address and grow. And I think it's probably fair to say that the big macro driver behind all of this, behind the reinvention, is that third party data is fading. I mean, again, you talk last couple of years, this is a thread that we've seen for over a decade about the threat and the, I guess, diminishing return of third party data. But loyalty has quietly become the most reliable way to collect first-party data.
And I say loyalty not in terms of a human response, but in terms of a mechanic, that idea of collecting that data, that fan-volunteered data, the real reason every serious rights holder is ultimately rebuilding this program of work. And I think if you asked me to wrap that up, I'd go so far to suggest that loyalty definitely used to be a discount you gave away. And now it's about that relationship you build and that modern idea of recognition over discount.
Yeah, and that's spot on, I guess, from my perspective as well. And again, I'll liken it back to the casino industry. I mean, everybody that works in that space, we all got very good about with promoting the next transaction. And it was like you trained your customers to wait for the next comp or for the next point balance or the next free play or whatever it is. And that's not really loyalty, right? That's just like, "Oh, well, I'm waiting for the next offer. And if your offer's not as good as the guy down the street, then I'm going to walk down the street" because this is not a loyalty mechanism.
This is almost like a wait and see discount mechanism. Right?
Yeah. Yeah.
And for whatever reason, I think first generation sports, teams looked at that and said, "Well, that's a great model and that's what we're going to do." And I like what you said about squeezing every last dime out of your diehard fans. And that's what I think everybody's guilty of, right? It's like, well, I've got my season ticket member base. I've got my groups and run down the different ticket types. And everything was bent towards squeezing the most amount of money you could out of that group. And the mechanism was disguised as loyalty or membership or whatever term was in vogue at that point. And then you're right, you talk about, yeah, go ahead.
I was going to say, what you've just talked about, and again, that discount farming or the discount program farming that people jump on. And there's kind of two things I want to talk about. And rightly or wrongly, I think I do a lot of people in this industry a lot of pain because I bring a lot of learnings from my days in advertising. And in advertising, and Kyle, I'm sure you've been exposed and experienced it too, right? Is, from a brand perspective, you can understand the addictive nature of running price promotions, you know, because you see your revenues go up, but ultimately, and what's been highlighted over time is that you're actually, you're discounting for people that probably would've bought anyway.
So that idea of actually running a transactional-based program is not only kind of serving the passive candid nature of fandom, you're actually giving away margin. And then something, it might be quite telling, and I wanted to throw it up to you because of your question around the differences in markets, but here in Australia, there was a big study done recently, around 93% of people belong to at least one program, yet the average number of programs that they belong to has actually fallen to a decade low. And younger customers, or consumers we should say, sorry, have cut theirs by roughly a third in just a few years. And I think it's fair to say that people are joining more.
So there are more people in more programs, but they're actually caring about fewer. You know, I guess to our point earlier is, you know, a swelling membership list can hide weak engagement, but membership isn't loyalty.
Right. You know, another question popped in mind as you were going through that, and I'm going to focus on the younger consumer, younger fan or, you know, how you want to call them. And that's kind of the next, I think, big frontier. Everybody is looking at how do I grow my fan base? What do I need to do to attract the less avid folks, right? What does that whole thing look like? You know, and even we were, I was talking to somebody the other day and we were talking about Major League Baseball came in and have put new rules in place that speeds the game up because the younger generation is not going to sit in front of the TV and watch a four-hour baseball game, right?
And you look at what they did and now new fans and younger fans are coming into the ecosphere, into the ecosystem and consuming that content, and I think they did a really good job. So question for you, when you look at attracting a younger fan, what role or how do you see loyalty membership and everything playing a role in that? And then I'm going to flip it over to another question talking about retention versus acquisition, because I read your notes on that and that is super fascinating to me. so we'll do question one and then I'll pivot into that other great note thing that you gave me.
yeah. Well, question one, I think Kyle, if you and I had the answer, this would very quickly become the most popular podcast in the world because it's the question that everybody's asking, right, is how do you engage the new generation? Again, it comes back to that question and that topic we're talking about earlier is, and it will feed into the acquisition retention conversation shortly, but ultimately you need to replace your diehards, right? They all age out. And I think this is something that a lot of sports are dealing with is the reality of aging out. It would be wrong and remiss of me to talk about how fundamentally different the fandom of the younger generation is compared to say my generation or older.
There's a lot of theories about it and there's been a lot of work, but I think fair to say that every generation is different to the other, but their behaviors are quite similar when you zoom out. But yeah, I think that the idea of basic rewards and feeding ongoing engagement is the simple thing is regardless of generation or age is you've have to stop paying for attention and you have to start earning it. You've got to give the fan a role. And back to your point, not a rebate, not a discount. And I think if you look at how younger fans find sport now, that same generational study found nearly, I think it's half of Gen Z got into a new sport through athlete or fan created content.
And similarly, discovered a sport because of short-form video. Now, we all understand the role of channels and particularly that of social media. And there's a lot of theory how younger generations consume sport is by highlights and packages rather than whole games. I mean, to be honest with you, and I hope I'm not offending anyone, but four hours of baseball is like four hours of cricket. I don't think it matters how old you are. That sometimes can be a tough pill to swallow. But I think the reality is if they're active participants in the culture, a discount code isn't going to speak to that cohort. There's also a community dimension too, which I think is broadly speaking an evolving cultural element.
Fans want to belong. They don't just want to collect points. I think it's fair to say that the strongest brands, the strongest programs go out of the way to make participation feel social and shared. And I think that's really critical for the younger generation. Back to kind of what we were alluding to before, basic rewards, they are extractive. Points for spend and they work right up until someone offers more points. All those points that you collated over time become diminished or undervalued. And meaningful engagement is obviously what gives a fan something to do and it gets them recognized for it. And I think that's really critical for the younger generations.
A lot of the work that we also did in a previous life, and I think this is obviously where sports are at is, and this goes back to that spectrum of fandom, is acknowledging the motivations and the reasons why people might consume sport. And particularly in the diehard space and the real avid fans, their motivations and their connection to the sport is often very much aligned with what happens on the field or on the court. Whereas as I alluded to before, for younger fans, there is a social and cultural remit there. And actually it's an entertainment play. They're so accustomed obviously to the life and the demand economy of things like content that they're interested in.
And look, the social media algorithms are built for that. They continue to feed you stuff that you're interested in. And so that entertainment proposition for sport is really critical. And I think, again, the more that sports realize that there is a spectrum of fandom and that there are many different motivations and reasons for people to engage and attend professional sport or watch it on TV or watch it on their phones, obviously that has a big difference to how you package that up and take it to those audiences. So yeah, it's a big question. It's a good one. One that we're all still trying to figure out, I think.
Yeah, and I think if you look at every episode, it always rolls into there, right? How do you use this technology? How do you use this platform to attract and bring the younger fan in? And I think I really like, you use the word participation and role versus rebate or redemption, right? I think that's kind of a really nice soundbite to take away from that. So one more question on that piece. So from a participation or role perspective, are there a couple of examples that flow within the Komo platform that have been successful on the participation and role assignment side that the younger fans seem to gravitate towards?
Yeah, look, I mean, in terms of what we offer as a platform, the side of participation or the mechanic of participation is pretty much everything that it's built on. So that idea of getting people to engage with a brand, with a rights holder, even a sponsor of those rights holders is predominantly driven by their ability to engage and participate through the sport. So we have a deep level of, I guess you could call them gamification tools that are predominantly built around things that people are finding enjoying. And their entire remit of participation, and particularly in terms of that idea of being able to identify who them is driven twofold. It's first through obviously the questions or the insights that are gleaned through that process.
So if they're playing a team predictor or if they're building their starting five for basketball team list or there's obviously the questions we can ask them to derive that first and zero-party data that actually gives us an understanding of who they are and what their interests are. But then also through participation of the behavior itself, in terms of the types of games that they play or the types of activations that they engage with, we can actually learn more about them just through their actual involvement. So how regularly they engage, what they actually engage with, what content is of interest to them.
And again, this idea of kind of bringing that back up to a single view of the fan and building out that profile of that fan so that you understand and you've got a really good grasp in terms of what they're interested in, what are they actually motivated by, so that when it comes to a comms perspective or a proposition perspective, we're in a position where all the brands are in a position to be able to actually tailor comms that are relevant to them and built against the things that they're interested in.
I think what we've seen comparing to those that are more engaged to sport versus those that, whether they be a younger generation or they kind of sit on the edge of the fan spectrum and they're more casually motivated from an entertainment perspective, the types of content that they engage with is very different. An example, not from our world, but just kind of something that we're seeing a lot of in the space is when you start talking and transcending culture beyond the actual sport, so fashion and art and movies and entertainment, when you're actually in a position of bringing other properties into the sports space, we see that there's a lot more engagement from younger audiences because we're talking about them about the sport, but through a lens that they've obviously got more affinity or alignment with.
Yeah, I mean, that's interesting. And you look at, again, referencing the episodes we've done before, fan data, optimize fan data, more fan data, fan profile, learn your fan, understand your fan are all common themes and things that everybody talks about. So it's great that you dial it back to that too. And I was talking to a very large North American data provider, and what's interesting is they said the exact same thing you did, that it's like we can use an ID and we can build a profile using the sports-related data. But where they're seeing value, especially with a younger demo is exactly what you talked about. Bring cultural elements, bring fashion, bring food and beverage, bring entertainment.
All these things that they do outside of the fandom or the fan ecosystem just gives you that knowledge to create more participatory elements, more roles and things for them to do. And it kind of builds on that fan's entire persona. I know that's kind of a marketing buzzword, right? Oh, there's a fan persona. But if you build it out and you make it 360 and you make it well-rounded, then your programs and everything just become that much more powerful.
That's right. And Kyle, just to throw out another marketing jargon word, but yeah, there is something that I've kind of lived by and died by as a marketer and that idea of market orientation. I think when you're in an organization and particularly in a sport and you happen to be a fan of the sport or the team that you work for, as a marketer, it is your sole responsibility to remove yourself from the echo chamber and acknowledge that not everyone thinks like you do or thinks like the rest of the business does. I've been lucky enough to work with a lot of people that have also been ex-players. And again, our job is to bring the reality of how the market thinks and the market behaves rather than how we think or behave.
And that can be quite challenging in terms of acknowledging or accepting that there are people that might engage with the sport but not be so emotionally attached to it or emotionally driven to it, that they're coming and engaging with the sport, not because of the players and the elite level of professional athleticism that we see, but actually because of their personalities or because of a TikTok video that they did, which was a running trend. So yeah, I think that's the difference, right? And it is very awakening for sports organizations, for rights holders, for broadcasters to accept and acknowledge that the reasons why people used to engage with sport aren't necessarily, they haven't gone.
It's just they're a very different spectrum of people that want to engage in sport for different reasons and it's our job to figure out how to make sure that they're relevant.
yeah, no, that's great. I mean, yeah, perfect synopsis of that piece of the conversation. So now let's move over to retention versus acquisition. So this comes from one of the stock questions we threw out to you to mull over as we were prepping for the episode was retention versus acquisition. And you wrote some really insightful notes of your thoughts on that. And what I liked about it was, I think you said, and I'm not trying to quote you, but I think you said that they should not be viewed as rivals. And I think everybody's always guilty about that. Well, membership and loyalty is a retention tool. Membership and loyalty has nothing to do with acquisition and they don't cross over and they're not the same.
And you calling that out and talking about, I just thought was super fascinating. So I'm going to kick it back over to you and say, give us your insight or your opinion on retention versus acquisition.
Yeah. Look, I mean, how long have you guys got? But yeah, I think this is where I'd like to ensure that acquisition gets its due. As you alluded to, Kyle, my view is that retention and acquisition, they're not rivals. And if you were to ask me where growth actually comes from, it is acquisition. And empirically, it's been highlighted across multiple categories and multiple different industries that growth comes from penetration, not just retention. And I think again, that can kind of fly in the face of some belief systems or particularly in the sports world. But the reality is brands and even sports brands, that they grow by getting more customers, more fans.
And especially what we were alluding to before, the casual ones, what we would call light buyers rather than heavy buyers, because they're the future ones, right? You're not going to get growth just by squeezing the diehards. And I don't think there would be anybody listening to this that would disagree with that now. I think it has been proven. There is a significant role and remit for customer lifetime value, but there also needs to be an acknowledgement that a large base of people engaging not so regularly and casually makes up a huge sum financially compared to the small base of people that do engage and consume regularly, the idea of those diehards.
And from my perspective, loyalty and retention is the compounding on top of acquisition. It is the biggest growth challenge in sport right now. And again, we were talking about it with younger fans and particularly Gen Z. And it's just simply an acquisition problem in disguise. A younger generation that's harder to reach, I think that's fair to say. They are harder to reach these days. We have more channels than ever, but in terms of reach, And I'm not talking about just impressions, I'm talking about being able to actually take a moment where they acknowledge and to some extent build a memory of who you are.
And the less avid by way of the traditional means of attendance and buying merchandise, it's fair to say, as we were alluding to earlier, that how people engage with sport and the idea of what fanatic behavior looks like or diehard behavior looks like has changed. And I don't actually think that's just a Gen Z thing. So I want to give you an example. So my grandmother was a diehard fan of a local club in Australia for one of our sports. And I'm talking like diehard, Kyle, like had all the merchandise, would never miss a game, but would never go to a game. She would never go to a game.
And the reason why she would never go to a game is because the stress and the tension, and she just physically didn't enjoy being in the stadium, Albeit someone like me loves being in a stadium. But on a database, she would look like a very disengaged fan because she's not a reserved seat season ticket holder member. There's no ability to actually identify that she's bought all this merchandise. There's no way to know that she's actually watching every game on TV and then recording it and replaying it four or five times a week. And so that traditional idea of attendance and buying merchandise being the lead indicator of whether or not someone's a diehard fan is very different these days.
And like I said, probably always been different, but we haven't had the measures to understand or identify that. But the elegant part of all of this is the same participation system does both. So yes, from an acquisition perspective, it's the reach and identify acquisition mechanism and then a deepen and retain loyalty mechanism. The message isn't retention over acquisition. It's stop treating them as rivals and never let loyalty become an excuse to stop acquiring.
yeah. No, that's again, very interesting. And I had, just before I jumped on the podcast, I was having a call with another one of our partners and we talked a lot about what teams own and don't own. And I was going to put quotation marks around that. And he said, everybody in the space, it doesn't matter if you're a well-established league, startup league, small, big, large, whatever it may be, that teams are guilty of giving away their real estate, right? It's like we operate in rented space. And the next frontier is how do you take control of that rented space?
And I think things like retention, loyalty, membership, whatever you want to, we should probably rebrand that whole thing to something totally different now because you got that legacy terminology and everything in there, but I think your grandmother's a great use case, right? Old school data, old school thinking is, "I don't know anything about this person. There's no value there to me. I'm going to gravitate towards what I define as a diehard fan." And the old school definition of a diehard fan is going to be probably a season ticket member, right?
And they're going to look at their attendance and they're going to look at the food and beverage they buy and the merchandise and everything, and they're going to come back and assign some LTV lifetime value, whatever it is and say, "Oh, those are the ones we have to squeeze the hardest. That's where our biggest bucket is." Or you take it, you flip it and you say, "If I knew more about your grandmother, she would definitely go in the avid fan category." And when you look at merchandise and you look at viewing behaviors and things like that, her lifetime value, both from a monetary and emotional perspective is going to be maybe much higher than somebody that has gone to every game over the course of three seasons.
That's right.
So it rounds about, it goes back to data and a lot of teams are starting to say, "Okay, how do I control and manage the entire stream of everything? So the ecosystem and everything belongs to me. I'm not off-porting you to a merchandise shopping cart. I'm not off-porting you to a ticket partner. Everything is controlled and managed within my ecosystem, which then adds more power to a platform like yours to build out the participatory elements and assign more roles and honestly build data and expand fandom, which at the end of the day, that's kind of what everybody's talking about, right?
That's right.
Again, yeah. I love the whole retention versus acquisition. I think great conversation around that thing. So one of the last questions, I'm going to go right back to the North America versus everybody else. You are in Australia, it's an Australian company, deep roots down there. Are there differences? Are there similarities? How do you all view fandom internationally and maybe highlight some of the differences that you see or you don't see, right? I think that's just another super interesting talking point.
Yeah, look, it's such a great question. And I think it's particularly for an organization like ours where we actually have footholds in the US, obviously here in Australia, in the UK. And it's actually quite interesting because I've seen it cross industry too, right? So Komo doesn't just work in the sports space. We've got significant traction in a number of industries, including retail. Obviously, we've spoken about broadcast, but then similarly live events. And what I've noticed across industries and then also across markets is very often, the scale of the problem is what's different. The problems are very consistent. The scale of those problems are very different. And therefore, I think if I was to minimize what I see as the difference between markets, it's probably that of tactics.
I think tactics differ because the scale of the problems are different and obviously, there are cultural elements that can never be ignored. And that's not just kind of country to country, right? That's within country. We all understand and acknowledge that there are fundamentally different culture remits at play. But if I were to just kind of very loosely look at a couple different markets, like, so you look at European soccer, you know, it's mature, it's on a paid season ticket holder model. US leagues, and again, not to diminish or kind of as a throwaway comment, but just loosely suggesting that, you know, they've obviously got huge scale. But I think it's fair to say, you know, the impact of anonymous fandom and casual consumption given the amount of choice is at a different scale.
Smaller markets like Australia, and I might be biased here. In many instances, they feel sharper commercial pressure and hence often innovate earlier. So we're a very small market. We have a lot of sports. I know the US is very similar, but a lot of elite sports competing for the same discretionary dollar. And not just the dollar of fandom, but if you go the other side and the other terminology of participation is players, people playing the games, you know, that's really critical. But in Australia, we have a very particular strong membership culture, which is driven out of some of the sports which are built from a membership model, not in the framing of what we've spoken about, Kyle, by way of discount but ownership and belonging.
Right. Sure.
Yeah, that's a really core piece. And I think membership often gets bundled with a season ticket holder by way of framing, but the reality is that I think their meanings and their fundamental functions are quite different. It's not just a transaction for a reserve seat or be it, again, we still have the same challenges with how you get younger markets to purchase a membership, which once upon a time were anchored on access to stadium rather than everything else that we alluded to. But as I said, you know, the forcing function of all of this is global, you know, that idea that third-party tracking is disappearing everywhere and first-party fan data is the worldwide priority now.
It's not just a regional one. But yeah, I think the underlying problem is identical, you know, which is why there's a genuine global race to own the fan. You know, that generational shift, the younger fans following athletes over teams, discovering through creators, you know, fragmentation of the broadcast, you know, it is reshaping, you know, loyalty, personalization in every market at once. And I think whilst participation mechanics travel, the value exchange has got to be local. You know, what a fan will take part in, you know, what they want back, it differs by market and culture. And again, I think channels and habits to some extent too, you know, meeting fans where they actually live especially on mobile and messaging, you know, that matters more than any single playbook.
yeah. I mean, and you're right. We spend a lot of time here at Comcast talking about fan surfaces. Where do they consume content? How do you get in front of them and in whatever surface it is and how do you control that surface? Simon, you're spot on with relation to that. So great. That's fantastic. So last question, and I always throw this one out at the very end, is for everybody listening, what are your two or three words of wisdom or takeaways for everybody listening when everybody's sitting here thinking about "What do I do with loyalty? What do I do with membership? How do I engage my fans?" Give me a couple bullet points of wisdom that will make them think as they walk away from this little podcast.
Yeah, great question. Look, I think that idea of market orientation, so, you know, being where the fan is understanding the variation of different types of fandom I think it's critical for growth, right? You can't be all things to everyone but you can certainly mean a lot to a lot of people. And I think being really clear about, you know, who those people are, what they expect from you, how they engage with you is a critical piece of information. And look, for anybody working in marketing, that idea of, you know, being the voice of the market is your job. And so, you know, I think that's a really critical takeaway for all of us.
And particularly in a world that is quickly being overrun by the promise and the excitement of AI, you know, that human insight, that human understanding, it's just not replaceable. And again, you know, can only encourage as much understanding of fandom of the market as possible. And I think the other thing, and it's kind of in line with that trying to be everything to everyone is, you know, I was taught from a very young age that strategy is as much about choosing what not to do as it is what to do.
Right. Yeah.
I think there is, particularly in the world of copious amounts of information, copious amounts of tools is trying to do everything and actually, it's not a case of not being good at everything. It's just none of us are resourced to be able to do everything. So, you know, being really clear about the battles that you're going after and particularly ensuring that you've got best-of-breed tools to go after those battles is critical because, yeah, I think it's very easy for marketers and rights holders, particularly that are under huge amounts of commercial pressure, to keep trying everything and keep, you know, spreading ourselves too thin rather than actually getting any traction on things that we know are quantifiably valuable and worth the time.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, fantastic. I think great words of wisdom. I hope everybody takes it to heart and thinks about it. And you know, I want to thank you for joining and being our first international guest. I think that's a-
Thank you.
You know, that's a checkbox in our podcast. So thank you very much for-
I'm privileged. Thank you very much.
For joining us. Great. Thanks, Oli.
Thanks, Kyle.
Thanks for listening to “The Evolution of Fandom.” If you have any thoughts about what you’ve heard, we’d love to hear from you. Visit comcasttechnologysolutions.com/fandom to get in touch, learn more, or subscribe to the series.
