PLAYING THE LONG GAME
How brands turn sports fans into loyal customers
Fan Engagement Survey Report 2026
A fan checks the lineup before kickoff, argues with strangers who become friends by half-time, and is still replaying highlights long after the final whistle. Somewhere in that whole day, most brands manage to show up for maybe ten minutes of it.
That’s a lot of devotion left on the table.
We talked to 500 senior decision-makers to find out what’s actually happening to fan devotion today: where brands show up, where they go quiet, and what it would take to turn one moment of attention into loyalty that outlasts the season.
WHAT YOU’LL FIND IN THIS REPORT
- How the fan journey actually unfolds before, during, and after every match, and where brands are showing up quiet
- Ten moves that separate brands earning real fan loyalty from brands still paying for a logo
- The AI gap: 87% call it critical, but only 22% have the orchestration in place to back it up
- Real playbooks already game-day-ready from telecom, food & beverage, travel, and banking brands
- How TGR Haas F1 turned casual scrollers into a fan database, five trivia questions at a time
Sports fandom is one of the most loyal relationships a brand can tap into. This report is your playbook for actually showing up for it.
Infobip: partner of the TGR Haas F1 team
We help TGR Haas F1 turn race-day scrollers into fans who actually stick around, five trivia questions at a time. By Monza, fans were predicting tyre strategy. By Singapore and Austin, they were unlocking exclusive videos from the team principal. The result: a 74% quiz completion rate, a 76% engagement rate, and an 80% lower cost per conversion than their old single-channel approach. Turns out people like being talked with, not talked at, even at 300 km/h.
ABOUT THE RESEARCH
This report is based on a global benchmark study of 500 senior decision-makers working in marketing, digital, sponsorship, customer engagement, CRM, and related roles. Respondents came from retail, food and beverage, banking and financial services, telecommunications, and travel and hospitality, across five regions: NAM, LATAM, Europe, APAC, and MENA. All participating organizations already run sports-related campaigns, sponsorships, or digital activations.
The survey was conducted in May 2026, and the results were analyzed alongside the full response dataset and the accompanying presentation deck, giving a clear view of how brands are using sports to engage fans today, where the biggest gaps remain, and where the next opportunity is likely to come from.