SVG Sit-Down: What Makes Gen Z, X, and Y Fans Tick? Dave Gavant of WSC Sports Goes Inside the 2025 Fan Engagement SurveyThe study offers insights to help broadcasters and leagues connect with fansBy Ken Kerschbaumer Thursday, December 11, 2025 - 8:00 am
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WSC Sports has become an important partner for sports networks and leagues looking to deliver content and connect with fans on various digital and social-media platforms. In addition to its experience, it undertakes research to better understand sports fans, demographic shifts in technology use, and much more. It's latest? The 2025 WSC Sports Fan Engagement Study. Chock-full of insights and learnings, it can be downloaded by clicking here. WSC Sports Content Executive David Gavant (a multiple Emmy Award-winning producer) sat down with SVG to explore the study and offer some deeper insights.
WSC Sports' David Gavant: Fans respond to timely content that feels relevant to them. When that relevance comes from an efficient workflow, personalization becomes sustainable and helps reduce churn.
Your report says that Gen Z feels more connected to athletes than to teams. How can teams leverage that? Should they help athletes create content?
The age of we cannot do that' is starting to crumble, as a panelist said at our Madrid Huddle. For a long time, athlete-driven content struggled to move forward because the instinct was to control the message and keep everything tightly aligned. That mindset is shifting, and teams and leagues now see how much stronger the fan connection becomes when athletes can show more of themselves.
Teams can lean into this shift by giving athletes room to speak in their own voice and by offering tools that make content creation easier and more consistent. Gen Z gravitates toward personalities who feel close and unfiltered, so support that helps athletes share their routines, reactions, humor, and point of view goes a long way. The goal is not to script them but to remove friction and let them publish at the pace fans expect.
This works best when teams treat athletes as collaborative creators rather than marketing channels. That might mean help with filming, editing, and distribution or access to fast-turnaround tools like automated highlights or ready-to-post clips. It keeps the team visible in a landscape where fan loyalty moves quickly and personality drives attention.
Your report says fans cancel streaming services because of weak personalization. How can WSC help lower costs, and how granular should personalization get?
Personalization becomes expensive when every clip depends on manual work. Automation solves that by taking on the volume. LALIGA is a good example. In a single season, they create more than 260,000 match highlights automatically through WSC Sports' AI-powered platform, which drives engagement without adding headcount. At our Athens Huddle, Esteban Gonzalez, 3 3 digital content senior manager, Fiba, captured the value well when he said, I manage 50 people. Without the right tech, I'd probably need 200 because we have 150 events a year. Automation gives organizations room to personalize at scale without overwhelming their teams.
Granularity should follow real fan behavior, not theoretical segmentation. You do not need hundreds of variations. Focus on the patterns that matter, like player affinity, storylines, and key match moments. Fans respond to timely content that feels relevant to them. When that relevance comes from an efficient workflow rather than a heavy production lift, personalization becomes sustainable and helps reduce churn.
Creators influence how younger fans follow sports. How important is it for traditional media to build relationships with them? Should those relationships be exclusive?
Traditional media gains a lot by bringing creators into their universe instead of trying to compete with them. Creators offer speed, tone, and connection that younger fans trust. When media groups invite them into studio formats, social series, or alternate broadcasts, they expand reach and add flavor that fans recognize immediately.
Exclusivity often limits the upside. Creators thrive on wide distribution, and their value comes from cultural familiarity, not containment. Thinking of them like modern distribution partners works better. When media groups build open, recurring collaborations, they create a broader pathway for engagement and keep pace with the fast-moving creator ecosystem.
The barrier to scale for alternate angles and broadcasts is collapsing. What does this shift mean for traditional linear broadcasters and streamers?
The shift takes away one of the long-standing advantages linear broadcasters relied on. When production becomes flexible and affordable at scale, the real differentiator becomes the experience built around the content. Broadcasters who move quickly can turn this moment into an advantage by offering richer feeds, more ways to watch, and formats that feel right for different groups of fans.
For streamers, this is a clear opportunity to experiment with speed. They can try new angles, voices, and storytelling styles without the old production limits. When you can offer different angles or voices, the moment something happens, fans notice. It feels modern and aligned with what they expect.
YouTube is the common ground for fans. How can a rightsholder without YouTube distribution still build presence and relationships there?
Rightsholders should aim to show up on YouTube because it is where fans of every generation spend time. When an official presence is not possible, creators become the most effective way in. They already operate at scale on the platform, they understand its pace, and they know how to speak the language of the audience. Supplying them with fast, flexible highlight packages,
