Key Takeaways:
-Younger fans aren’t watching games the old way: They prefer short, tailored content across platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and In-App vertical stories personalized to their interests.
-WSC Sports enables content personalization at scale: AI-powered tools help leagues deliver dynamic highlights, immersive experiences, and culture-driven storytelling.
– Owned platforms are a fan engagement goldmine: In-App Stories turn team apps into content hubs that drive data, loyalty, and monetization.
Altman Solon’s 2024 Global Sports Survey highlights a growing concern for sports executives: two-thirds worry about the declining relevance of live sports as younger fans shift their attention to highlights, behind-the-scenes documentaries, and bite-sized content from creators, teams, and players. This shift challenges traditional models of fan engagement but also opens up new opportunities for sports organizations to innovate and foster deeper connections with Gen Z and Gen Alpha.
With this shift, sports fandom is entering a new era, one where engagement isn’t just about watching games, but about creating lasting connections that transcend traditional media.
Meeting Fans Where They Are: Vertical Content Experiences
For younger audiences, particularly Gen Z, it’s all about mobile-friendly, short-form content that fits seamlessly into their daily scrolling habits. Platforms like TikTok and Instagram have set the standard, and now sports leagues must adapt. These videos are tailored to meet the preferences of younger fans: quick, optimized for mobile, sharable — and sometimes posted by creators instead of the rights owners themselves.
With WSC Sports, rights holders can instantly reformat horizontal broadcast highlights into 9:16 vertical videos — ready for TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube, YouTube Shorts, or any other vertical platform that prominently features vertical videos. Intelligent cropping keeps the focus on the action, so every clip looks native, not repurposed. And by making vertical content easy to produce at scale, WSC unlocks new surfaces for distribution, like Web Stories inside Google OneBox, turning highlights into discoverable entry points that drive app downloads, OTT subs, or incremental monetization.
Sports videos are dynamic, and applying this automated cropping while preserving the heart of the action is a significant value driver. By offering content that aligns with fans’ media habits, leagues and teams can build, retain, and grow deep relationships with their audience regardless of platform.
In-App Stories: Bringing Social Engagement to Owned Platforms
Social media has raised the bar for what fans expect from content: personalized, immediate, and immersive. At WSC Sports, this insight inspired the creation of In-App Stories, allowing teams and leagues to replicate social-style engagement within their owned and operated platforms.
These personalized app environments deliver vertical content experiences, like Stories, created by the league, team, or broadcaster within their own app. This gives fans access to mobile experiences they love, without needing to navigate to another platform.
Imagine a fan opening their team’s app to a personalized feed tailored with their favorite players, preferred play styles (dunks, assists, three-pointers), and post-game recaps. This level of customization deepens emotional connection and keeps fans coming back. With In-App Stories, rights holders can elevate game-day storytelling; from player arrivals and starting lineups to fan moments, manager reactions, and highlights curated uniquely for each user to transform how games are experienced.
The value of In-App Stories goes beyond engagement, it unlocks revenue opportunities. As fans engage and register within these apps, rights holders gain access to valuable first-party data, revealing fan preferences and behaviors. This data then powers smarter insights, more tailored experiences, and deeper fan journeys. By proactively ensuring younger and emerging audiences consume content on owned and operated platforms, rights holders build the trust and loyalty that makes them keep coming back for the content they want.
Capturing the Culture
Gen Z isn’t just interested in what happens on the court or field, they want to engage with the culture that exists outside the game. Fandom today extends beyond highlights and includes stories, personalities, and lifestyle videos that are part of a larger narrative.
Fans crave the shoulder content that helps them get to know their favorite leagues and players. These types of clips and programming delivers more context and richer stories — from player arrivals and locker room footage to post-game celebrations. These off-the-field moments forge emotional connections and transform fans from viewers to participants in the sport’s narrative.
Take the NBA, for example, where pregame fashion has evolved into a spectacle. Players like Jordan Clarkson have turned their entrances into viral moments. These clips, showcasing style, personality, and swag, generate millions of views and resonate with younger, fashion-forward fans.
Reimagining Nostalgia and Unlocking the Archive
For Gen Z, nostalgia is all about reliving personal memories; it’s about discovering legendary moments and legends of the game from a previous era. Tapping into an organization’s historical vault allows rights holders to breathe new life into archival footage with fresh engagement and monetization opportunities.
Imagine La Liga engaging today’s fans with highlights of icons like Zinedine Zidane or Roberto Carlos, reintroducing their magic to those more familiar with Jude Bellingham or Kylian Mbappé.
Powering the Future of Fan Engagement with Generative AI
While WSC Sports has been transforming how fans engage with sports content for years, its GenAI capabilities are taking that experience to the next level. Generative AI is no longer just “the next wave”, it’s here and already in use today. WSC’s GenAI technology is powering new storytelling formats, with even greater potential on the horizon.
With the NBA, WSC has helped to automatically create multilingual content to reach young fans across the globe. For Wimbledon, GenAI helped to skyrocket engagement and content consumption.
This emerging technology also holds immense potential, especially for pre-teens and teens. Imagine recap shows voiced by kids, for kids, or animated replays of iconic games narrated by AI-generated characters.
These gamified, personalized experiences blend storytelling with immersion, allowing fans to interact with content in entirely new ways. As generative AI continues to evolve, it will unlock fresh formats for storytelling and break the mold of traditional coverage.
Ligue 1, for example, is using WSC Sports GenAI overlays to refresh old content, like this TikTok with an anime style Neymar:
Actionable Insights
– Reformat for vertical from day one: Don’t treat TikTok and Instagram as afterthoughts. Create 9:16 content natively to unlock new surfaces like Web Stories and in-app distribution.
– Build emotional touchpoints beyond the game: Use tools like Around the Game to highlight culture, personalities, and behind-the-scenes access Gen Z values.
– Revive your archive: Automate the transformation of historical footage into mobile-optimized formats that bridge generations and feed today’s highlight economy.
