Channel Preferences Among Sport Consumers: Profiling Media-Dominant Consumers

How consumers decide to consume sport is a complex choice. Broadcast options have widened through new channels and content options while live attendance has improved through enhanced stadium quality and tailored customer experiences. Past research has suggested that consumers have strong preferences for one form of consumption over the other, including “media-dominant consumers” who rarely attend live. The authors present two studies to examine the channel preferences of sports consumers. The first is a large nationally representative survey that allowed us to profile consumption channel preferences and profile four distinct groups of sport consumers. The second focuses on more highly engaged fans—season ticket holders and explores the presence of media-dominant consumers for how satisfaction with core products is assessed differently by groups of consumers. The results suggest a need to tailor products around channel preferences and challenge the role of media consumption established in fan development models.