Next Turn Informed: What Happens After the Map

Providing the fan with a map is progress. Meeting them with purpose is the next step.

Last week, I wrote about the fan who’s everywhere all at once, trying to find her way -

• Catching highlights between meetings

• Listening to podcasts on the daily dog walk

• Watching the statcast on an airport runway (refreshing to see if Texas locked in the SEC baseball title)

This person might be loyal to a team and/or athlete, but not always to a channel. She isn’t lost. She’s just learning how to navigate a fragmented system.

Now, sports organizations are learning to navigate it too. The map for fans has been created. The once-murky picture of fan behavior is coming into focus. We’re no longer guessing which platform they’re on or when they tend to watch. The map is clearer. The question now is what we actually do with it. They need directions.

From visibility to usability

Better fan data has made it easier to understand how people engage. We can see the patterns - when someone watches, what format they prefer, and how often they return. There’s real value in that visibility because it gives teams a more accurate view of the journey fans take across devices, logins, and platforms.

This doesn’t guarantee a great experiences. In many cases, fans are still receiving irrelevant messages or being asked to engage in ways that no longer fit their habits. The strategy hasn’t caught up to the insight. Knowing the path is helpful. Designing for it is what actually makes a difference.

Personalization should mean more than segmentation

It’s easy to say a fan is “high value” or “engaged,” but those labels don’t reflect context. A fan who only watches highlights during a morning commute may not buy a season ticket package, but that’s not a sign of disinterest. Maybe they aren’t close enough to deal with the commute, or feel that there is value in the product on the field.

The goal isn’t just to know what fans are doing, but instead, why they are doing it. If someone consistently skips live matches but consumes post-game content every week, the play is not to spend heaps of money to get them to attend or watch live. If you can slowly improve the behavior through a map, with directions, they might actually slowly shift their approach.

True personalization isn’t about nudging people toward a one-size-fits-all goal. Someone (my dad) may have been a fan of a team from childhood, but did not attend a game until later on in life. That doesn’t mean that that person is not a true fan, or contains value, but just that geography may have gotten in the way.

It’s about recognizing the different ways fans show up and building with those differences in mind. When the moment comes at the peak of their fandom by attending a live event, we have to make that moment count.

Designing with intention

Fan behavior is rarely static. Someone who attends every game one season might switch to streaming the next. Someone who watches alone today might be introducing their kid to the sport next year. The map will keep shifting. What matters is whether our systems are flexible enough to adapt alongside it.

That means creating experiences that feel cohesive across platforms. It means communicating in a way that reflects attention patterns, not just availability. It also means resisting the urge to treat fans as categories and instead treating them as people in motion.

This requires frameworks that help us make smarter decisions with the information we already have.

The map isn’t the destination

Getting a clearer view of the fan is progress. It helps teams understand where and how engagement is happening. That being said, visibility alone won’t build stronger relationships or better outcomes. That requires intentional design and understanding of the data in context. Creating these types of experiences respect how fans move, what they care about, and how much effort they’re willing to give in a given moment.

A map only matters if it leads somewhere. Otherwise, it’s just a reference point. The opportunity now is to take what we’ve learned about fan behavior and build toward something more useful, more aligned, and more human.

That’s where strategy lives: not in the insight itself, but in what we choose to do next.

As always, thanks for reading.