In almost every partnership conversation I have, the same question comes up sooner or later: what happens between games?
A fan who goes to a game spends about three hours with the team that day. Then there's the rest of the week: the commute, the lunch break, the group chat, the scroll before bed. Across a season, the game itself is a small share of the time a fan spends thinking about their team.
For a long time, sports organizations built almost everything around those three hours. Ticketing, sponsorship, content and the venue experience were all aimed at game day. Between games, the relationship was left to the broadcaster, the social platforms and the fans themselves.
That's starting to look like the biggest commercial opportunity most organizations aren't pricing, and the research explains why.
Fans don't switch off between games
In a survey of more than 15,000 sports fans, Deloitte found that 95% of fans have some form of interaction with their favorite team or league in the off-season. Sixty-five percent said they want some form of content or information at least monthly while the season is over.
Fans haven't drifted away. The relationship just moves somewhere else when the games stop.
Deloitte's 2026 Digital Media Trends shows where it goes. Across a survey of 3,575 US consumers, roughly half of fans said social media is the primary way they engage with their fandom year-round. When there's nothing new to engage with, Deloitte notes, "fans seek out fan-related content or make their own."
So fans keep showing up all year. The question is whether they're showing up somewhere the team can see them.
The off-season pays off in season
This is where it gets commercial. In the same Deloitte research, published in 2020, fans who engage just once a month in the off-season spend 40% more than fans who don't engage at all. More than 60% of fans said a great year-round experience would make them more engaged in the coming season, and 55% said it would make them more likely to buy a ticket in the future.
In plain terms, the time between games is when next season's ticket, merchandise and partnership revenue gets set. Treating it as downtime leaves that revenue to chance.
The detail matters too. Deloitte found that casual fans who engage daily in the off-season actually spend slightly less than casual fans who engage weekly. More messages isn't the answer. The right reason to come back, at the right frequency, for the right fan, is.
Why the old approach doesn't hold up
Most organizations try to fill the gap with content: news, highlights, social posts, a ticket offer in the inbox. That helps, but it has two limits.
The first is that content is something fans consume, not something they do. A fan who watches a highlight on a social platform has engaged with the team, but the team usually can't see it, can't reward it and can't build on it. The relationship belongs to the platform.
The second is that attention is getting shorter. A YouGov study cited by Sports Business Journal found that 34% of 18 to 24 year olds prefer highlights to full events, and only 30% watch entire games. The next generation of fans wants something quick and something to take part in, not just something to watch.
What 365 actually means
Year-round engagement isn't more posts. It's giving fans a reason to show up every week, in a place the organization owns, and making that participation count.
In practice, that looks like:
- Something to do, not just something to read. Predictions on the next signing, polls, trivia, challenges tied to what's happening with the team that week.
- Progress that carries over. Points and status a fan earns in the off-season still count when the season starts, so showing up in July means something in October.
- Rewards worth caring about. Access, experiences, merchandise and partner offers, not just a discount code.
- A reason to come to the building. Off-season engagement that leads to a first ticket, a return visit or a bigger seat.
Every one of those moments is also a signal. The team learns who's engaged, who's drifting and who's ready to buy, all from fans who chose to take part.
The commercial case
This is where year-round engagement stops being a marketing activity and becomes a revenue line. Three reasons:
More inventory to sell. A team that only engages fans on game day has a limited number of sponsor moments to offer. A team that engages fans every week has inventory all year, and partners increasingly want to reach fans when the stadium is empty too. That's new revenue from assets the organization already has: its fans' attention.
Better data. Every prediction, poll and challenge tells the organization something about a fan that a ticket scan never could. That's first-party data the organization owns, not data rented from a platform.
Stronger renewals, on both sides. Season-ticket and membership renewals happen in the off-season, and fans who stayed engaged all year are easier to renew than fans who heard nothing for five months. The same is true for partners: a sponsor who saw fans take part in their activation in June walks into the renewal conversation with a reason to stay.
Three questions for your team
- On a Tuesday in the off-season, what reason do our fans have to come to something we own?
- Do we know which fans engaged with us between seasons, and do we treat them any differently?
- How many sponsor moments do we have to sell when there's no game?
Game day will always be the heart of being a fan. But the organizations that win the next decade will be the ones that show up on the other days too.
Where we fit
This is what Clout Applications is built for: year-round engagement, loyalty and rewards that run in the team's own app, website or venue, with the data flowing back to the organization. Clout Engineering connects it to the systems the front office already runs on.
If your fans go quiet between games, we'd like to hear about it.