New wave of Gen Z consumers ‘never’ watch sport

Despite the global sport industry’s ongoing growth over the last two decades, newly released information presented by Safe Betting Sites shows that the new wave of consumers from ‘Gen Z’ are about half as likely to watch sports regularly compared to millennials.

The new data shows that only 53% of Gen Z consider themselves sports fans compared to 69% of millennials.

With estimates that the sports industry grew by 40% from 2010 to 2018 to a valuation of a little over US$70 billion per annum, the survey of 1000 Gen Zers currently between the ages of 13 and 23 in August 2020 indicates that sport faces a serious challenge in keeping young adults as consumers.

When the survey is broken down by gender, the gap becomes even more significant. 75% of adult men identified as sports fans while only 58% of male Gen Zers surveyed identified as sports fans.

Decline in interest in sports reflected in viewing habits
50% of millennials and 42% of all adults surveyed indicated that they watched live sports at least once a week, while only 24% of Gen Zers indicated the same.

Gen Zers are also twice as likely to never watch sports as millennials, with 39% of respondents indicating that they never watch sports compared to only 20% of millennials. Another survey also showed that Gen Zers were less likely to identify as fans of specific sports and sports leagues compared to the rest of the population. In 24 sports or competitions out of the 27 included in the survey, the general adult population were more likely to identify as sports fans in 24 of them.

The NBA and esports are the only two competitions where Gen Zers had more fans than the general population while the interest level was the same for the UFC.

Notably, both esports and the UFC are relatively young in its history and are two of the fastest-growing sports in the world.

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Image: Fortress Melbourne.