The Passion of Local Sports Fans

Inside a modest, two-story home in the central Pennsylvania town of Bellefonte, three friends in their mid-20s/early 30s sit on the edge of a couch watching the Philadelphia Phillies play the Arizona Diamondbacks.

It’s the bottom of the second inning and the Phillies are up. There have been three walks, two singles, one strikeout and one pop-out. After the inning ends, a TV ad for a national pizza delivery chain appears and the trio decides to place an order.

As they wait, they notice ads for other national brands: a couple of beverages, a car insurer and a wireless services provider. They can clearly recite the TV ads they’ve seen just as they can recall every moment of the Phillies-Dbacks game.

In fact, a similar scene is playing out 2,300 miles away in suburban Phoenix.

These are local sports fans, a devoted, engaged and passionate audience that can sometimes fall off the radar for brands looking to maximize the value of their sponsorship dollars.

The local sports fan in a regional market is typically raised on a favorite team. They’re in the largest markets like New York, LA and Dallas, but they’re also in smaller cities like Buffalo, Salt Lake City, Raleigh and Sacramento.

And they carry their allegiance throughout their life and pass it down across generations. Consider the Cubs fan who lives to sing along to “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” during the seventh-inning stretch ... the Red Wings fan ready to toss an octopus on the ice at their next Stanley Cup Playoff Game ... or the Knicks fan who checks the Clyde So Fly Instagram feed before the game to see what flashy outfit hall-of-famer and broadcaster Walt Frazier is rockin’.

Their devotion to their teams is anything but fair weather. They’re watching every game, following their players, listening to every podcast and burning up their social media feeds. You’ll see them decked out in their lucky jersey or making their favorite game-day snacks.

And unlike more casual fans who maybe just want to keep up with playoff talk around the office, local sports fans show up passionately throughout the duration of the season. Every home run, every winning basket and every goal enhance their mood and change their outlook.

The true power of local sports really resides with local sports media distribution—how live, local games from MLB, the NBA and the NHL are seen in local regions. To understand that impact, you just have to look at baseball, where 22 of the 29 U.S.-based MLB teams were the top-rated programming in their market during primetime regular-season games. Last year alone, 13 baseball teams drew local TV viewing numbers that not only topped all cable programming during their primetime games—their coverage also beat all competing primetime programming, period, including the major broadcast networks.

But local sports media distribution—like all of TV—is evolving. For years, regional sports networks (RSNs) have broadcast a full slate of games to local audiences on cable. These RSNs have typically been owned by larger media companies like Sinclair, Comcast and Charter Communications. But with the transformation of TV, new models are emerging, including:

Team-owned media: Some teams manage their own distribution and networks, like Yes Network (New York Yankees) and New England Sports Network (Boston Red Sox).

Streaming: Streaming channels license games from teams (such as Amazon Prime Video showing Yankees games) that are also being broadcast on cable. This breaks the exclusivity of the cable bundle and lets streaming subscriptions be sold directly to consumers.

Broadcast stations: Everything old is new again, as teams move their live games to local broadcast outlets. Recently, the Utah Jazz did this with Sinclair Broadcasting Group, as did the Phoenix Suns with Gray Broadcasting.

League-managed: The leagues themselves have aspirations to handle more local games, but it is currently used on a case-by-case basis to ensure local fans have access. For example, MLB was able to spin up broadcasts for the San Diego Padres through its MLB.TV app when their games were dropped by Diamond Sports Group following a rights fee dispute.

Ultimately, all these models serve the loyalty of local sports fans. So, how can advertisers align with the passions of these fans and build sponsorships that are authentic to these audiences? Don’t let the pitch clock run out—scroll on to find out.

For too long, local TV sports has been considered too cumbersome and fragmented for national brands to consider.

Although the landscape continues to shift dramatically in the age of streaming, TV sports remains a center of value above other programming. While the audience for general local programming remains narrow, local TV sports is the last bastion of media that attracts large numbers of viewers at the same time, and does so on a nightly basis year-round.

Aside from the reliable block of engaged viewers, the ability to target specific geographic regions allows brands to connect with consumers when they’re most open to marketers’ messages.

The contextual relevance national brands can tap into with local sports programming is another win-win option. The association between the brand and the sports team is clear: Unlike national media buys, making a connection on the local level enhances the prospect of brand recall and, ultimately, a more positive brand perception.

As you think about this, it is important to understand how different sports reach local fans. Certain leagues—the NFL being a prime example—currently exist on TV only as part of a national contract. And while a team’s game may show up on a local station, that is actually the feed from the national broadcast (say, from a cable channel or streaming service) to ensure that local fans have access. But local sports media—with its focus on the longer seasons of baseball, basketball and hockey—delivers every game of their home teams to local fans and delivers the highest rates of engagement.

Overall, local TV sports viewing’s secret power is in how it builds incremental audiences. While national broadcasts attract a generic MLB audience, local TV sports markets can provide incremental viewership and exposure. Some fans prefer watching their favorite teams on local broadcasts with a familiar voice making the call, which provides brands an additional opportunity to engage with consumers who may not be reached through national advertising alone.

Consider this: National sports television broadcasts of hockey games are a lopsided contest, where only seven teams—the New York Rangers, Pittsburgh Penguins, Detroit Red Wings, Tampa Bay Lightning, Washington Capitals, St. Louis Blues and Boston Bruins—accounted for more than half of ESPN appearances. That leaves out fans of the other 18 U.S. hockey franchises that got only scant “game of the week” coverage.

Any single one of those points—matters of engagement, greater share of voice and broader reach—is reason alone why national brands should take a closer look at regional areas, especially markets that have historically been overlooked.

Among the underserved areas, midwestern and southern cities like Kansas City and St. Louis are full of baseball diehards. Charlotte, N.C. is a natural for hoops fans. For sports fans in markets like Salt Lake City, Portland and San Antonio, attention from brands can receive higher favorability in kind.

For national brands, this kind of local outreach can be part of a cohesive strategy that uses a high-impact platform that executes the same way across all teams or broadcasts.

Brands looking to increase their presence in neglected markets should factor a few things in first. There’s market size, team performance and overall viewership. Once those goals have been nailed down, finding ways to embed a greater local influence can allow national advertisers to build a lasting fanbase of their own.