10 Trends in Fandom That Media and Entertainment Brands Must Track

By Amy Castillo — VP, Strategy and Innovation at Material

Fandom is the strongest defense a brand has against market volatility. Where casual viewers churn on price or convenience, fans are more likely to absorb the missteps, return after the off-cycles and drive organic growth through peer-to-peer evangelism. In a category where attention is the scarcest resource and every release competes against everything else ever made, that durability is the relationship worth building toward.

But fan behavior is moving faster than the assumptions most brands hold about it. Operating on an outdated read of how fans engage is its own kind of risk. Material has identified several cultural shifts reshaping how fans participate, what they expect and where loyalty actually comes from.

Trend #1: Fragmentation is narrowing the focus of fandom

There is no longer a collective experience of culture shared by the majority of people. The abundance of options available, in addition to algorithmic disruption, has fragmented the space. Now, hyper-niche communities, where fans may have deep knowledge of a sub-topic (like a specific character) but have minimal awareness of or interest in the broader franchise, are growing in popularity and changing the ways brands have to approach fandom.

Trend #2: Fans are defying algorithms and reclaiming agency

In a desire for greater control and the joy of discovery, some fans are breaking free to find content on their own outside of their existing bubbles. These fans take a much more active role in finding their next favorite IP, putting energy toward researching and exploring new content that the algorithm hasn’t served up to them.

Trend #3: AI skepticism continues to grow

While most fans expect AI to play at least some role in entertainment and content creation in the future, fans are becoming increasingly skeptical of AI-generated content — especially from brands — and are demanding authenticity from the intellectual property (IP) they love. Short of full transparency about how AI has been used in the creative process, fans will create a backlash if there’s any perceived hint that human effort was supplanted by AI.

Trend #4: The “Analog Revolution” is fueling the return to tangibility

After the industry moved the gravitational center of entertainment to online streaming over the past few decades, fans are increasingly showing “digital fatigue.” Instead, they are cutting subscriptions and returning to IRL experiences and physical media, as well as physical, limited-edition objects that prove a fan was at a specific event like a concert T-shirt or merch. These items serve as a badge of fandom, and their tangibility increases their value for fans.

Trend #5: Fandom is positively addressing the loneliness epidemic

In the American Psychological Association’s Stress in America report, 69% of American adults reported needing more emotional support in the past year than they received. Given the closing distance between creators and fans, some fans are turning to their favorite YouTubers, podcasters and content creators to fill that gap. Either through looking forward to regularly published content, engaging in Discord chats or directly messaging creators, fans are looking for friendship, connection and emotional support through their fandoms.

Trend #6: Peak moments reinforce the bonds of fandom

Fandom is emotional. And it is solidified during shared emotional moments, like a midnight album drop or live sports event. With so much of fandom happening digitally and asynchronously, these collective emotional events bind the fandom community together.

Trend #7: Fans are feeling psychological ownership of their favorite IPs

Fans pour so much of their time, resources and emotions into their fandom that they feel a sense of ownership over the characters, world and lore they love. Emerging academic research focuses on fans’ “sovereignty-like sense of responsibility and sustained commitment” as one of the psychological drivers of fan enthusiasm today. This has been fueled by digital platforms closing the distance between IP and fans and allowing fans to move from observers to active contributors. This growing sense of fan ownership is putting pressure on brands to not disappoint fans by deviating from how the fans see the IP.

Trend #8: “Fan-ancing” is changing the creator-fan relationship

Many independent creators have connected to the resources they need to bring their visions to life with the rise of crowdsourcing platforms. The flip side of this is that these patronage models have formalized the fan’s role as financier, with more “skin in the game” — and higher expectations of radical transparency. Fans now demand a stakeholder-level of influence in the development of new work, which can be cumbersome to the creative process.

Trend #9: Less discretionary spending available for fandom

Consumer spending is becoming more selective, with inflation and less optimistic expectations putting a crunch on Americans’ pocketbooks. Through our Consumer Pulse research, we’ve found that budgeting conversations increased 21.1% in the first half of 2026 compared to the first half of 2025. For many Americans, spending on fandom — whether through subscriptions, event attendance or collectibles — is often getting redirected toward paying for essentials like groceries or housing. And when long-term ways of engaging with fandom become too expensive, many fans are opting to cancel rather than substitute their fandom expenditures.

Trend #10: The dark side of fandom

“Cancel culture” is nothing new. But as digital platforms strengthen the bonds within a fandom, they also increase aggressive behavior toward rival fandoms or creators who seem to stray too far away from the canon. As passionately as fans cheer on their favorite IP, there have been a number of recent examples of diehard fanbases turning on franchises because they felt the movies (or series or games) had become watered down or hadn’t lived up to expectations.

Building Fandoms That Last

The brands that win in this landscape are the ones that read their fans accurately and act on what they find. That means understanding fandom as it behaves now, not as it behaved five years ago, and building the infrastructure that lets organic emotion take hold.

Material works at that intersection. Grounded in behavioral science and our M+ Brand Fidelity^TM framework, we help media and entertainment brands understand what drives their fans and turn that understanding into growth that compounds.

Curious how these shifts are reshaping your own fandom? Let’s talk.