News Australia looks beyond the live game as a new sports fan takes over

The next big battleground in Australian sports marketing may not be the live game at all.

News Australia has unveiled a new commercial strategy around what it sees as a fundamental shift in Australian fandom, with younger and more diverse audiences increasingly engaging with sport through personalities, social media, culture and participation rather than simply watching a match.

New research from News Australia’s Growth Distillery suggests the shift has reached a tipping point. The group’s traditional “fanatics” segment, long the audience around which sports rights, sponsorships and media plans have been built, has fallen by around 800,000 people over the past year.

In its place is a group News has dubbed “New Wave Fans”, which has grown by 1.2 million in a year to reach 7.2 million Australians, overtaking fanatics as the country's largest sports audience segment for the first time.

The commercial significance is not simply their size. It is how differently they behave.

Growth Distillery general manager Leigh Lavery told marketers at News Australia’s Sport and Entertainment Beyond ’27 event that new wave fans engage with sport as culture, personality and participation as much as competition.

News estimates 61% of their sports engagement now happens outside the live event itself, while around 60% of the content they consume is social. They are also increasingly valuable consumers.

According to the research presented by Lavery, traditional fanatics still account for an estimated $13.4 billion in annual sports spending, or around $2,000 per fan. New Wave Fans are already responsible for an estimated $12.4 billion despite spending just over $700 each.

More significantly for media companies, 31% of New Wave Fans are willing to pay for sports content, which News said was double the rate among fanatics.

“The money still sits with the fanatics today, but the new wave is closing in and paying up,” Lavery said. “The fanatic watches. The New Wave Fan participates. They spend on the experience, not just the ticket.”

The lives around live

The findings are driving what News Australia calls its “Lives, Not Live” strategy, built around the proposition that the commercial value of sport increasingly extends far beyond the whistle, siren or final score.

The live moment remains enormously powerful. In fact, News expects major sporting peaks to become even more valuable as audiences fragment elsewhere.

During this year’s FIFA World Cup window, average football page views per article across News Australia's network jumped 397% compared with regular football coverage, according to figures presented by the company.

But Growth Distillery's research found 54% of total time spent engaging with sport now occurs outside the live event.

“The event still matters, but the opportunity is expanding into the personalities, the rivalries, the recaps, the rituals and the culture,” Lavery said.

News Australia industry director for sport and entertainment Luke Haynes said the change challenges an industry that continues to concentrate much of its investment around increasingly narrow windows of live attention.

Around $1.5 billion is spent on sponsorship rights in Australia each year, Haynes said, placing dozens of brands in competition for attention around the same moments. For new wave fans, meanwhile, more than 60% of engagement is taking place outside that window.

“When there's so much action happening off the pitch, why as an industry are we so obsessed with being on it?” Haynes asked.

It is an argument that resonated with OMD Sydney head of media partnerships Kirsty Kapp, who said News was effectively challenging advertisers to rethink the value they extract from sports sponsorship.

“Interestingly, News Corp is positioning itself as a trusted ecosystem designed to engage deeply with fandom, challenging the competitive and cluttered sponsorship landscape,” Kapp told MARKETING-INTERACTIVE.

“By asking advertisers to shift its brand alignment from ‘presence to relevance’ they are encouraging brands to earn audience trust through consistent engagement in sports and entertainment culture.”

Kapp said the proposition challenges marketers to look beyond heavy investment in the live event and instead think about building longer-term relationships with fandom.

“This gives News Corp a platform to demonstrate how investment across its publications can help brands build stronger audiences,” she said.

Moments, Voices and Participation

Around this new thinking, News has developed an MVP Major Event Framework, built around “moments, voices and participation”, initially targeting the runway of major sporting events including the 2027 Rugby World Cup, LA 2028 Olympics and Paralympics and Brisbane 2032.

Brands can dominate the immediate event window through high-impact media and category exclusivity, then extend into live blogs, branded content, podcasts, social media and experiences designed to continue the conversation beyond it.

A second product, Access All Areas, is a social-first content franchise designed to take audiences into the lives of athletes, artists and talent, spanning CODE Sports, Vogue Australia, GQ Australia, news.com.au and Tubi.

News is also linking its SuperCoach audience with a new CODE Sports Creator Network, giving brands access to fantasy sports communities and creator-led content across codes including the AFL, NRL, EPL, NBA and NBL.

The wider strategy also reaches into retail media and commerce. Haynes outlined plans to connect sporting occasions with retail environments and use advertising formats that allow consumers to save relevant brand offers directly to digital wallets.

Participation forms the third part of the strategy, encompassing physical experiences, fantasy sport and potentially News Australia's advocacy platforms.

Haynes pointed to the six-year runway to Brisbane 2032 as an opportunity to use News Australia's existing Let Kids Be Kids advocacy franchise to encourage participation in Olympic sports.

News Australia chief revenue officer Lou Barrett said the shift ultimately comes down to brands recognising that fandom no longer begins and ends with a broadcast.

“The live moment is still powerful, but it's no longer enough,” Barrett said. “Fandom doesn't begin and end with the siren. It lives in the rituals around it, the conversations after it, the personalities behind it, the communities it creates.”

That matters particularly as the next generation of sports consumers establishes loyalties not only to teams and athletes, but to the brands that surround them.

“New Wave Fans are deciding right now which brands feel culturally credible and which ones only showed up for the big game,” Barrett said. “A marketing plan anchored solely to the live window is no longer a safe bet.”

Kapp did, however, see a gap in the proposition. Despite being billed as a sport and entertainment presentation, she said the case for applying the strategy beyond sport was considerably less developed.

"Outside of the link to peak moments and cultural fandom, the case for entertainment was less developed," Kapp said. "This was a sports focused presentation with entertainment very much an add on and it will be interesting to see how they close the loop on non-sporting cultural moments.

"The fandom element in the entertainment space is arguably more diverse and complex, and there was an opportunity for News Corp to demonstrate more clearly how brands could navigate the greater diversity and complexity of entertainment fandom."

For News, that shift creates an obvious commercial opportunity. It may not own the broadcast rights to every game or major event, but it believes its combination of sports journalism, lifestyle brands, creators, social platforms, fantasy sport, retail media and audience data can capture the considerably longer period around them.

As Barrett put it: “The biggest opportunity isn't owning the event; it's becoming part of everything the event creates.”