From Must-See to Must-Choose: Rethinking Sports Engagement in an Overloaded Calendar

More content naturally leads to more engagement – that’s a widely held assumption in sports right now. More games, more leagues, more global events and more platforms should, in theory, create more opportunities for fans to tune in.

But that belief is starting to show cracks as the volume of sports content continues to rise faster than fans’ ability to keep up. Access has expanded dramatically over the past few years, yet attention and time haven’t kept pace with it. Fans now have more ways to engage with sports than ever before, but they’re also navigating a constant stream of competing options, notifications, highlights and live events happening simultaneously.

The challenge is no longer discovery in the traditional sense, as most fans already know what’s available to them. The real challenge is deciding what actually deserves their attention in a given moment.

What Leading Sports Brands Are Doing Differently

This shift has meaningful implications for sports brands. Success is no longer just about getting in front of fans. It’s about creating experiences that feel worth prioritizing amid everything else competing for their time and attention.

Some brands are adapting to this reality, and patterns are starting to take shape:

1. Becoming the decision engine

Don’t just personalize. Help people prioritize.

The concept of prioritizing for the fan is far from new; it is an evolution of a challenge the NFL faced, that led to the launch of NFL RedZone. Faced with the reality of overlapping Sunday schedules, the league created a whip-around channel that eliminates the fan’s need to flip through broadcasts or manage multiple screens. By switching to live feeds the moment a team enters the 20-yard line, RedZone essentially acts as a real-time filter, ensuring fans never miss a scoring play or a high-leverage moment.

Today, this logic is moving beyond the television screen and into the palm of the fan’s hand. Platforms like the ESPN App allow users to set hyper-specific triggers, so they only receive a notification when a player they follow nears a scoring milestone or a favorite team enters a one-possession game in the final minutes.

By synthesizing live data with individual preferences, brands are no longer just providing access; they are helping fans maximize their return on attention in an increasingly congested sports landscape.

2. Re-eventizing live sports

If everything is live, you have to give people a reason to care about this moment

There was a time when “live” made something feel important. That’s less true now.

With so many games, streams and highlights competing simultaneously, fewer moments naturally break through on their own. The sports experiences gaining traction are often the ones designed to feel bigger than the game itself.

Major League Soccer, for example, has leaned into “Pub Partner” programs, where teams like the LA Galaxy partner with local bars to create official watch environments. In exchange for guaranteed game-day coverage, teams provide branding, merchandise and occasional player appearances, extending the experience beyond the screen while helping maintain local relevance among fans.

Elsewhere, mixed-use stadium districts, like those developed at The Battery Atlanta, are turning game day into part of a broader social ritual, embedding stadiums within retail, dining and public gathering spaces that fans engage with year-round.

You can see similar thinking in the growth of in-season tournaments, watch parties and alternative telecasts. The common thread is that leagues are creating more context around the game itself, rather than relying on the game alone to drive engagement.

That said, these additions only work if they enhance the core product. If the game doesn’t deliver, no amount of surrounding energy can fully compensate.

3. Turning sports into serialized storytelling

People come back for the story, not just the score.

Fans increasingly engage with sports the same way they engage with entertainment franchises: by following ongoing narratives, not just individual events.

The rise of Caitlin Clark is one of the clearest recent examples. Audiences weren’t simply tuning in for games. They were following rivalries, record-breaking performances, media debates and the broader transformation of the WNBA. Each matchup felt like the next chapter in a larger story, driving major increases in ratings, attendance and engagement across the league.

Netflix’s Drive to Survive accelerated a similar shift in Formula 1, training audiences to engage with the sport more like episodic entertainment built around characters, rivalries and momentum between races.

Fans aren’t just checking scores anymore. They’re checking in on what happens next.

4. Creating earned stakes through participation

People pay more attention when they have something at stake.

One of the clearest ways to hold attention now is to give fans some form of ownership in the outcome.

In a crowded environment, passive interest doesn’t always translate into sustained engagement. But when fans feel invested, behavior changes quickly.

Jersey Mike’s Subs’ collaboration with the National Hockey League is a strong example. Through a daily prediction game tied to loyalty rewards, fans earn points for picking game outcomes, turning what would otherwise be passive viewing into an ongoing habit.

For the NHL, the value extends beyond the promotion itself. The prediction game encourages fans to follow matchups beyond their local team, helps bring younger and more casual audiences into the ecosystem and sustains engagement during quieter stretches of the season.

Fantasy sports, betting integrations and other gamified experiences tap into the same dynamic. Once fans feel even a small degree of investment, they tend to follow outcomes more closely and engage more consistently over time.

The Bottom Line: Winning the Moment, Not the Schedule

Sports already produce more content than most fans can realistically keep up with. The challenge now isn’t generating more. It’s making certain moments feel easier to choose, more meaningful to engage with and more worth returning to over time.

The brands gaining traction aren’t necessarily the ones producing the most content. They’re the ones reducing friction, building narrative momentum and giving fans clearer reasons to stay engaged between games.

In other words, they’re designing around how people actually experience sports today, not how the industry assumes they do.

How Material Can Help: Designing for the Moment of Choice

The most interesting part of this shift is not just what fans are doing differently, but how they are making decisions in the first place.

• What makes something feel worth watching in the moment?

• What prompts someone to switch platforms or stay where they are?

• Where does intended engagement fall off?

These are the questions that ultimately determine outcomes.

At Material, we focus on understanding those decision points in detail, mapping how fans move between content, platforms and experiences, and identifying where attention is gained or lost. From there, the goal is not to add more into the system, but to make sports experiences easier to navigate and more compelling to return to.

Interested in how your sports brand can create must-choose moments and win over fans? Start the conversation today