From Stadiums to Streams: What Attracts Die-Hard Fans in America Today
Key Takeaways
Sports are most likely to inspire die-hard fandom among U.S. adults across a number of entertainment categories, followed by musicians.
Gen Z adults are more likely to participate in fandom-related activities than the general population. For example, Gen Zers are 15 percentage points more likely than U.S. adults to say they follow fan social media accounts.
Two other groups stand out for their fanatic behavior: users of Twitch and Discord, often overlooked when discussing social platforms, also participate in fandom-related activities at higher rates than other social media users.
As die-hard fans increasingly shape entertainment and impact business decisions on what gets greenlit and what gets canceled, entertainment and entertainment-adjacent brands need to know which fanbases can provide further areas of opportunity for messaging and outreach.
Americans like to be entertained, and the options can feel endless. Whether they’re watching a Saturday afternoon game or listening to a new podcast, Americans are seeking out lots of entertainment, both online and offline.
However, not all consumers are created equal, and a small subset of entertainment fans has an outsized influence on culture, from what gets adapted for the big screen to which athletes brands partner with, die-hard fans are increasingly shaping these decisions. New data from Morning Consult’s latest partnership with Axios reveals what entertainment categories inspire the biggest fandom.
Sports are most likely to inspire die-hard fans
Across the general population, sports is the category most likely to have super fans, with almost one-fifth of U.S. adults (17%) calling themselves die-hard fans of sports leagues, teams or athletes. After that, it’s an even split between musicians/bands and intellectual property such as TV shows, books or movies.
Almost one-fifth of U.S. adults say they are die-hard sports fans
Interestingly, though celebrities drive so much cultural conversation and media coverage, our data shows that influential individuals — actors, social media influencers, and others — are much less likely to inspire die-hard fandom. And while podcasts continue to excite the chattering class — and may have been a key contributor to the 2024 presidential election — they rank last.
Generational data provides further color. Gen Z is much more likely to say they are die-hard fans of musicians and influencers than others (more on them in the next section), while older Americans are simply less likely to say they are die-hard fans in general, though sports are still ubiquitous.
Millennials’ fandom interests reflect a happy balance — the shares who call themselves die-hard fans across our tested categories are more evenly distributed than they are for any other generation. This could be that millennials were among the first to be able to participate in fandom online, which greatly enabled new ways to be a fan (fanfiction, anyone?). That first of its kind online participation helped open the floodgates to fandom across all topics and hobbies, a behavior that they still exhibit today.
Gen Z adults, Twitch users, and Discord users are very active with fandom
While Gen Z’s interests are more skewed to certain categories than others, past Morning Consult research shows that these young adults are still developing their tastes and will shape up to be a very big fandom-driven cohort.
When asked about fandom-related actions, Gen Z adults are much more likely than the average U.S. adult to say they’ve done most of them, including following fandom-related people and accounts on social media and purchasing merchandise.
Twitch and Discord users are super engaged fans
That said, there is plenty of opportunity to bring more young people out and about: The last-ranked activities that Gen Z said they’ve done are the IRL events, both official events (like fan signings and sports games) and fan-only events (like meetups and conventions). We know the generation is desperate for connection, and in-person fan events, whether officially sanctioned or not, could be the playground for community-building. At the same time, many in-person events are pricey and Gen Zers are grappling with poor financials, so lowering the barrier of access would be crucial for viability with this cohort.
Aside from Gen Z, it’s also worth quickly spotlighting two other cohorts that don’t come up as much in conversations around trends on social media and fan engagement: those on Twitch and Discord. If Gen Z adults are the big fans among their generational peers, so too are Twitch users and Discord users among social media platform users.
For example, 10% of Instagram users would call themselves die-hard fans of actors, but that percentage is 17% for Twitch users. And similar to Zoomers, Twitch and Discord users are also much more likely to say they participate in fandom across various activities. Even for less-popular activities such as going to fan-only events, the shares of Twitch users and Discord users who said they go are almost double-digits higher than most other social media platform users (i.e., Reddit, Instagram, YouTube).
In the age of digital saturation and consistently too many new things trying to court consumer attention, it’s clear that some topics can unify fanbases across demographic lines, and ones that may appeal much more to one group than another. Knowing the topics that really activate specific fanbases — and where people are willing to put energy and money into — will be crucial for brands to better plan messaging and outreach.
Amy He leads Industry Analysis at Morning Consult. Prior to joining Morning Consult, Amy served as the executive editor at eMarketer, and was a China reporter for many years. She graduated from New York University with a bachelor’s degree in journalism and East Asian studies. For speaking opportunities and booking requests, please email [email protected].
