Influencers, trends and ‘Hokball’: How the AFL is keeping pace with Gen-Z
A new study has found the AFL is Australia’s favourite sports league, yet the challenge of keeping relevant with Gen-Z will determine whether it can retain the crown, SHANNON GILL reports.
The AFL remains top of the charts for Australian sports fans, yet all sports will face a very different challenge in staying relevant to Gen-Z, a new study has found.
Dentsu Sports Analytics and MKTG’s Decoding 360 Fan Receptivity and Profiling research has found that the AFL is the most popular Australian sporting league, with 39% of Australian sports fans saying that they were interested in the indigenous code.
65% of Australians have said they are interested in the code’s flagship Grand Final, which is good news for AFL CEO Andrew Dillon who this week predicted the match will be “the most watched Grand Final ever.”
Across major events the AFL Grand Final sits beside the Australian Open (65%), and leads Wimbledon (60%) and the FIFA Men’s World Cup (57%) among Aussies.
The younger generation have also anointed the AFL as king, for now.
Amongst Generation Z (born 1997-2012) the AFL is also on top with 43% being interested, however the world game of football is clearly growing its engagement with the younger generation. Among Australian sporting leagues and teams the Socceroos (36%) and Matildas (33%) sit just behind the AFL on the interest charts.
Martin Ansell, Strategy & Insights Director at MKTG, says there’s more competition for traditional leagues like the AFL from home and abroad than ever before.
“We know that Gen-Z follow more sports than Gen-X, with 13 global leagues having more than 30% interest among Gen-Z, compared to only one among Gen-X, which is the AFL (34%),” he tells CODE Sports.
“This is because the channels Gen-Z use are built around short-form content, allowing them to dip in and out of a range of sports constantly. By contrast, Gen-X commits more time to fewer sports, which is a bi-product of the longer-form content they consume most (like TV).”
Content preferences are what sports organisations will find most illuminating from the research. Here is where the distinct difference between the Gen-Z and Gen-X cohorts arises.
It may seem hard to believe for the more senior of us who don’t know how to use ‘rizz’ in any proper context, but the notion of sitting down and watching a broadcast of your favourite team is just not as important to the new generation in terms of fan credibility.
‘Fandom’ is taking on a different form - watching a Tik-Tok clip of a star player or buying a team cap may take precedence over watching the team play.
Television ranks as fifth most popular channel to consume sport by Gen Z, with just 35% using it, behind Instagram on number 1 (61%), YouTube and TikTok.
Television is still Generation X’s most favoured contact point (62% of fans).
“Gen-Z are the first generation to grow up entirely in a digital world, so physical events are only one lever in establishing interest in particular sports,” says Ansell.
It is for these reasons that the AFL has stepped up its presence on Instagram and Tik-Tok in recent times. If you visit the AFL app you’ll see a whole bunch of short highlight packages, formatted and edited specifically for use as Instagram and Tik-Tok stories.
The data says that Gen-Z is less enthused by marks, goals and the mechanics of wins and losses as they are by the light hearted and wholesome. The AFL has made a deliberate pivot towards promoting that kind of content, an example being Srey from the Marmalade digital content crew’s coin toss that went viral.
It also explains why non-footy Tik-Tok content creator Elle Ray was on the Brownlow red carpet this week and why Hawthorn’s ‘Hokball’ antics are so popular with that demographic.
Similarly the ‘best’ players are not necessarily the ones that fire the imagination most.
Patron saint of Hokball, Jack Ginnivan was not a Brownlow Medal contender but is among the most popular players with Gen-Z.
There has been a strategic move to highlight those types of players who appeal away from the traditional means of kicks, marks and goals.
And this is where sports marketers need to take note - what they might lose in the television dollar with Gen Z, they can make up elsewhere.
Gen-Z is much more connected to the influencer economy than Gen-X. They are more likely to follow athletes on social media platforms, and buy what the athlete endorses there.
“51% of Gen Z sports fans follow a current professional player compared with only 24% of Gen X fans, this highlights how athletes are so important in keeping younger audiences engaged in your sport,” Ansell says.
So like it or not, the commercial departments of the AFL and other sporting organisations will increasingly focus on Tik-Tok and Instagram stories rather than its traditional sources.
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