Attention spans are getting shorter and expectations are going up in sports and entertainment. Even for the most raving fan out there, it’s hard not to be distracted by your phone, a conversation with a friend, your kids running around or anything else that might also be nagging in the back of your mind.

What does this mean for sports?

Your sports team/event/product should be entertaining and about more than just the athletes on the field/court/pitch. That’s a controversial thing for many in college sports to read, I know. Keep the sports aspect front and center, but here’s an example: I was scrolling through my streaming device last night and noticed that there are a TON of live sporting events to watch at all hours of the day and night – LIVE sports to watch at all hours of the day. Yes, you still need to be available via various forms of media, but if only the fan’s true love of the sport mattered, why would they pay any more than a monthly subscription fee to go to a venue to watch a game? It’s silly to pay a ton of cash to watch a live football game or futbol match if all that matters is the game itself – you can watch any number of games every day of the year if that’s all that mattered. Make the live event experience worth spending money on! If your product that requires tickets and time consuming transportation is not better than $15/month for an internet subscription, then its time to figure out why people attend your events. I see fandom often taken for granted and I’m constantly surprised at the lack of effort put forth by teams who despately want more fan support but don’t invest in the entertainment aspect of their live event presentation. With so much pressure on athletics departments and teams to justify their campus support or generate their own revenue to support their enterprise, it make sense to invest more in giving people more of what they want and expect at your events. If you don’t know what they expect or want, ask them! Then comes the hard part, actually doing it.

What does this mean for entertainment?

Your fans adore you and want to have a great time escaping their current reality because you make them feel good and give them hope. Many forms of entertainment are an escape for people to forget about the hard times and reminisce about the good times. Live events give people a chance to connect with like minded individuals and give us confidence and hope that better days exist. Often most of us will love the same songs from our childhood our entire lives – especially the ones that seemed to be with us when we were sad, depressed, angry or scared. I see this all the time with bands that have been around for ages and still seem to sell out stadiums and arenas. These groups owe it to their fans to provide a live experience worth spending money on – and if they do, the fans will gladly pay any price to relive their glory days. If they don’t, they’re giving tickets away for free…or worse. The good thing is, many of those medium, large and XL events put on a great show – lights, video boards, smoke, lasers – and think very tangibly about incorporating the five senses – sight, smell, touch, taste, hear. The smaller ones do their best too with stage props or other things to make the set more visually attractive. The difficult part is not oversaturating the same markets too often, not shooting too high or too low on venue size and ticket price, and actually figuring out tour routing that works for everyone involved.

All in all, its difficult work, but worth every ounce of effort. Tell the people in your audience how your sports and entertainment events solve their problems and offer your events as the solution. Tell them that you’re going to offer more of what they want. Give them the promotions, halftime entertainment, mascot dances, dazzling video displays and whatever else they asked for. Doing so will show your fans true service and endear them to your brand for a lifetime or more. Go Forth.