Why content is vital to bring Gen Z back to stadiums

There’s nothing quite like being surrounded by thousands of fans, knowing you’re sharing the same sense of joy, the same disappointments, and the same sense of belonging while watching your sporting heroes in the flesh. Yet according to a Capgemini study, younger generations don’t quite agree: It found that a striking 77% of Gen Z and 75% of millennials prefer to watch sports outside the venue. Instead, many have adopted watching sports games on their phones. 

After over 20 years in the entertainment industry, including time at the LA Clippers with Intuit Dome, San Jose Sharks with SAPP Center, and Apple, I can see why. Tickets cost far more than they used to, and broadcasts are more sophisticated than ever, with amazing statistics, replays and close-ups that bring fans straight into the action. The couch has never been more inviting.

Luckily, smart stadium owners can make their venues a central hub and draw fans back in with the right steps. From immersive LED systems to innovative spatial designs, below are my top tips for attracting young fans back to the middle of the action.

Avoid cookie-cutter solutions

My first piece of advice is to avoid building a stadium that’s just like everyone else’s. What’s right for one team isn’t going to be right for another, and your fans will notice if your arena doesn’t align with everything else you stand for. 

Many stadium owners are already taking this into account: Just look at all the buildings being built for the 2034 World Cup or the new NFL stadiums. Every one is unique, with different shapes, different roofs, different LED setups and even different construction materials being used.

Of course, the best way to ensure your stadium is unique is to meticulously plan your entire design, including which technologies you want embedded in your space, from the very start. If you’d like a unique wraparound LED wall, for instance, then it would be best to speak to video experts and get the right system in place during the architectural ideation phase. For large LED systems like these, a proper CMS (content management system) that can manage, schedule and distribute content is key. Real-time servers can then render the complex graphics and synchronise playback. Together, these tools determine what the fans actually experience, allowing you to give visitors something that they couldn’t get at home. 

Upgrade your halftimes

Another way to make games more attractive to younger fans is to turn matches into interactive entertainment events as opposed to just passive spectator sports. A great way to do this is to update how the LEDs in your stadium are used. Traditionally, these technologies have simply been a giant magnifying glass into the game, and weren’t really used to entertain fans outside of gameplay. But now, with high-performance media servers and visual control software, along with content engines like Unreal Engine, you can do clever things like display incredible real-time visuals or even gamified content on your LED screens during half-time to keep fans engaged.

You could then invite fans to influence the content via an app, or even by using game controllers installed into their seats. For instance, you could show a quiz game about your team, and have fans answer the trivia questions from their phones in order to win prizes. You could then encourage them to share those prizes and winning moments on social media, helping you to highlight a stadium experience that fans won’t forget. 

Projection mapping is another great visual technique to engage fans at halftime and reimagine your court or pitch as a canvas for immersive storytelling. Or, taking this one step further, technologies can now enable stadium owners to transform their entire floors into interactive surfaces that can inject additional excitement into half-time performances and fan entertainment. 

Embrace real-time data

When you think about a better stadium, everyone expects nicer seats, more restrooms, and better food. But to really engage a younger generation, fans need to leave the stadium feeling like they’ve had a unique experience each time to ensure they keep coming back. 

Using real-time data is a great way to do this. Stadium owners already have so much data available to them through sources such as ticketing, apps, and phone tracking. That data could be used to do things like track which person in which seat is making the most noise, then reward them with something like a free beer or recognise them as a superfan on the stadium’s LED screens. 

By using video playback tools that support data-driven content you can also enhance the action on the pitch by displaying player stats on your LED screen in real time, showing who made the most passes, or how many goal attempts there have been to keep fans engaged and let them get closer in on the action.

We can’t control what happens on the pitch or the court; only the team can do that. But we can control everything else: how we present the game and how entertaining it is. If stadium owners use that to their advantage, they can make sure fans come back again and again, even if their team loses.

Jason Lemiere, audio-video design associate at ME Engineers