Sports leagues race to capture Gen Z and Gen Alpha with AI, influencers and Italian brainrot

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CHICAGO (AP) — Trevor McOmber and his 14-year-old son, Tye, share a love for the Chicago Blackhawks. When Trevor was his son's age, he watched the Blackhawks on TV, caught highlights on ESPN and read about the team in the newspaper.

It's a much different experience for Tye.

“I go to YouTube with Snapchat, or Google something if I just have an idea that I want to know,” Tye McOmber said while sitting next to his father at a recent Blackhawks game.

Tye McOmber is on the border of Generation Z, born roughly between 1997 to 2012, and Generation Alpha, approximately 2012 to 2024 — a sprawling group of people with unique media habits and diverse attitudes on where sports fit into their lives.

Together, they form — potentially, at least — the next generation of sports fans, an almost constant topic of conversation in the offices of every major sports organization. And they have proven to be a tricky target.

According to a Morning Consult poll, 20% of Gen-Z adults identify as avid sports fans, compared to 33% of Millennials and 27% of Generation X. One-third of the Gen-Z respondents said they do not follow sports at all. Even among those who are fans, the touchpoints for teams and leagues are changing constantly.

"Something that we might have done two or three years ago to capture this audience is changing based on how they consume, the way they consume, the way that content is packaged to them as well,” said Uzma Rawn Dowler, the chief marketing officer for Major League Baseball. “And so we’re always constantly keeping up with the trends and of how we can continue to resonate with this audience in the right way.”

Mark Beal, a communication professor at Rutgers University, shows an image of a Zamboni during his presentations on Gen Z and Gen Alpha. He asks his audience what the Zamboni is, and after a while, he provides his perspective.

“That is a Gen-Z dream right there,” he says. “You put a Gen Z-er in that between period one and two of a game. By the time they get done ... they’ve live-streamed it, they’ve shot it, they’ve put it out on TikTok.”

In their own distinct voice, too, one that often appeals to a large audience. In the Jan. 28 poll, social media (53%) and streaming services (38%) were the top choices for the Gen-Z respondents when it comes to where they go the most for sports content.

Media consumption for Gen Z and Gen Alpha “is unprecedented,” said Beal. The challenge is finding those eyes, and staying in front of them. Especially when it comes to casual sports fans who are perhaps more interested in the latest celebrity post than highlights from games.

That means embracing unorthodox connections. Like kids celebrating basketball teams reaching 67 points as part of the “6-7” craze. Or the NFL's Buffalo Bills posting a video of its rookies identifying characters from Italian brainrot — a popular group of internet memes.

Gen Z and Gen Alpha gravitate toward personalities, so major sports organizations work with a group of creators to help spread their content.

The NBA is hosting more than 200 creators with a collective footprint of more than 1 billion followers for its All-Star festivities this weekend in Los Angeles. They are slated to participate in live broadcasts, in-arena programming and fan experiences.

Bob Carney, a senior vice president for digital and social content at the NBA, said the league uses an artificial intelligence-powered social media measurement platform to identify creators for its network.

“That’s only the first step,” Carney said. "Once the technology flags someone, our team still evaluates their creativity, authenticity, tone and how naturally they fit into basketball culture. So, it’s an AI-assisted process. The goal is to make sure we never overlook the next creator who is resonating with fans.”

The players, who often have their own social media followings, serve as their own network for their sports. The prospective audience matters, Dowler said.

“For our growth audiences, we partner with influencers in relevant adjacent spaces,” she said, “whether it’s food, fashion, other culturally relevant sort of spaces to reach that casual perspective fan to bring them into the baseball ecosystem through the side door and feed them that adjacent baseball content through the lens of players or influencers to then ultimately have them convert to be that core fan.”

Reaching and developing the next generation of sports fans is a collective endeavor.

Partnerships play a role. The International Olympic Committee announced a collaboration with Roblox in 2024 that created Olympic World on the popular online gaming platform. Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James and Los Angeles Dodgers slugger Shohei Ohtani are part of Fortnite, an online game. Major League Baseball also has a partnership with ABCmouse for baseball-themed learning activities for kids.

Youth participation also is a vehicle for making new sports fans, and it's a major reason why MLB has invested heavily in youth baseball and softball programs.

“We’re trying to fish where the fish are, quite honestly,” Dowler said.

The NBA has been experimenting with using generative AI to create more specialized content — think animation for a younger age group, something that wasn’t practical before because of the cost — but it's pursuing a particular look and feel on social media.

“On our league-run social channels, we are very deliberate about keeping the content grounded in the same native tools and formats that fans and creators themselves use,” Carney said. “That helps the ecosystem feel organic, authentic, and not overly produced. Where generative AI really comes into play for us is behind the scenes and in purpose-built experiences. We use it to solve problems at scale.”

The NHL's strategy for reaching younger fans leans at least in part on its NHL Power Players, a youth initiative that is in its seventh season.

The league uses an application process to create an advisory board of approximately 25 members ranging in age from 13 to 17. There are two virtual meetings every month, in addition to other conversations between the league and the teenagers.

“We’ve had people from everywhere from Nova Scotia to Hawaii and everywhere in between,” said Heidi Browning, the chief marketing officer for the NHL. “They’re not necessarily all in hockey towns, which is really incredible for us. And they advise us on everything from marketing to content to technology to social to creators to fan engagement.”

The NHL periodically revisits the insights it gleans from the youth board to see how attitudes and behaviors are shifting over time. Browning said she goes to all the meetings, underlying the importance of the program to the league.

“(We) are constantly thinking about how can we intentionally listen to the next generation of fans because they’re not just younger versions of our previous fans,” Browning said. “They’re actually consuming and connecting and engaging differently than the generations that are older than they are.”

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