The Growth Distillery today revealed Australia’s sports fan landscape is rapidly evolving with fans now spending more time with sport content across the week than the actual live game.
The Sporting Nation 2025: Beyond The Live research identified four new arenas of engagement away from live coverage that brands must embrace in order to build deeper connections with fans.
The Growth Distillery found the number of sports fans in Australia has grown from 13 million in 2021 to almost 17 million in 2025. The average fan now follows five sports, an 18 per cent increase since 2021. More than half (54 per cent) of fan engagement now happens outside of gameday coverage.
It also identified four new arenas for fan engagement. In the ‘Inform Arena,’ fans stay up-to-date by watching, listening and reading sports news. In the ‘Catch-up Arena’ they re-watch live action through highlights, replays and recaps. In the ‘Entertain Arena’ they listen to stories from around the game with podcasts, TV shows and docos. Finally, in the ‘Interact Arena’ they engage through fantasy leagues, betting, and tipping comps.
There are also three ‘tribes’ of fans: the Fanatics, those most engaged with sport core to their identity; the digitally-led New Wave Fans with a focus on local and global codes and The Followers, the casual consumers with interest centred around social occasions.
The Growth Distillery head of commercial, Leigh Lavery said, “To capture passion at scale in sport, brands need to move beyond a traditional focus on live games and embrace a multi-sport strategy that activates across four new engagement arenas.
“This is the key to unlocking passion at scale today, reaching not only the die-hard Fanatics but critically the rapidly growing wave of New-Wave Fans.”
