It’s hard to imagine now, in our post F1: Drive to Survive world, but in 2016, Formula One was still struggling to gain traction in the U.S. At the time, Austin’s Circuit of the Americas course was at risk of falling off the sport’s schedule after the Texas government cut back on its support for the U.S. Grand Prix. “I think we’re screwed,” COTA CEO Bobby Epstein said back then. “The big question now is, ‘Is the race coming back?’”
Enter Taylor Swift.
Epstein knew that having the megastar perform the day before the race would be viewed as an insult to racing purists, but since 80,000 people showed up at COTA’s Super Stage for the show, it has become clear that he pulled off a successful pivot. That weekend, the race set a local record with nearly 270,000 attendees overall.
Attendance dipped again in the following years, but stayed above 2014 and 2015 levels. Then Netflix helped push growth into hyperdrive. Last year, the event hosted a record 440,000 fans.
“We created something where if you are not a race fan, you are going to have something you enjoyed that day and gave you reason to go,” Epstein said in December.
Fans are now going to sporting events for different reasons than a generation prior, and their expectations have changed when they arrive. The game better be good, but the experience can’t end there.
“The fan wants these big events to be bigger,” NHL chief content officer and EVP Steve Mayer said.
Judging by this past weekend, sports properties are responding. The NBA All-Star Game featured about as many musical performers as there were Western Conference starters. The NHL brought its Stadium Series to North Carolina, turning a regular season matchup into a spectacle. NASCAR’s Daytona 500 started with drivers walking down a red carpet, and emerging on stage for individual introductions. Then there was the new (again) XFL, a league built to “bring entertainment to world-class football.”
To understand how we got here, jump back to 1980. That summer, Dodger Stadium unveiled the world’s first stadium video screen during MLB’s All-Star Game. Jumbotrons proceeded to appear in stadiums nationwide over the following years, as teams looked to offer the instant replays and close-up views fans had come to expect on TV.
But it didn’t take long for cameras to begin straying from the field, either. There’s no recorded date for the introduction of the Kiss Cam, though it was apparently already a regular tradition midway through the 1980’s. Stadiums also began showing simple racing dots on their boards to entertain fans between innings. By 1987, UPI covered “the MTV Age of American sports.”
Of course, those days seem quaint now. You could fit Dodger Stadium’s 1980 board inside SoFi Stadium’s wraparound video panel 80 times over. The Rams’ team in charge of programming the so-called Infinity Screen has two priorities: creating a home field advantage for the team, and putting together an entertaining event that leaves visitors satisfied, win or lose. In-game entertainment is no longer just about matching or topping what fans can get at home. Nowadays, it’s also about getting them interested in the sport in the first place. And that goes beyond offering the latest in jumbotronics.
A 2018 Deloitte report on stadium experience preferences found that Baby Boomer fans cared most about identifying with the team that was playing. Younger fans, however, were relatively more interested in everything around the game—live entertainment before events, alternate activities during the action, the other people they might meet along the way. And in many of those categories, casual fans expressed less than 50% satisfaction in what sports were currently offering.
It should come as little surprise then, that only 18% of Gen Z respondents to a 2022 survey said they attended a pro sporting event last year. In comparison, that cohort led all others in expected concert attendance last year, with 65% of 18-to-24 year-olds planning to go to a summer show, according to a different survey.
So it’s only natural that sports are taking a page or two out of other events’ playbooks. “Build it and they will come,” the (misquoted) line goes. But that’s outdated. Now you better program the heck out of it, too.
In search of new ideas, NHL executives went to two Florida music festivals ahead of the league’s own All-Star festivities earlier this month. It took another step forward with its Stadium Series Saturday by letting fans fill Carter-Finley Stadium’s end zones in Raleigh, aiming to recreate the infield feel of a horse racing event, and letting fans stand around the stage for pregame and intermission musical acts.
St. Louis’ new MLS team is in the midst of similar preparations, with the 2023 expansion team’s first tilt this weekend. Execs are thinking not just about hosting a slate of games, but programming “17 festivals.”
Later this summer, NASCAR will return to center stage to put another spin on the combination of music and sports. In addition to a new street race, Chicago will host a two-day, concert-filled festival in Grant Park, featuring The Chainsmokers, Miranda Lambert, and others. The organizers, led by event president Julie Giese, worked with a production group that had deep connections with Chicago’s Lollapalooza festival as it put the lineup together.
“It’s really about introducing our sport to new fans,” Giese said in an interview. “That is our priority and our number one objective here.”
