The Emotion Metric: Ben Valenta on Measuring Connection in Sports and Culture

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Description

In this fascinating episode of The Curiosity Current, hosts Stephanie and Matt explore the powerful social dynamics of sports fandom with Ben Valenta, SVP of Strategy at Fox Sports and co-author of "Fans Have More Friends." Discover why fandom is about more than just watching games, how sports create lasting social bonds, and why engaged sports fans are consistently the most active consumers across all media. Whether you're a marketer seeking to understand consumer behavior or curious about the science behind fan communities, this conversation reveals how sports fandom signals deeper social engagement and delivers surprising insights about human connection. Learn why the biggest sports fans aren't just passionate about games - they're more engaged in every aspect of society.

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Ben - 00:00:00:

I can predict your level of NFL fandom if I just ask you about your engagement with the NBA, MLB, college football, or college basketball. I will know within a couple of points where you are on the fan scale that we have developed. More trust in institutions, more trust in other people, more engagement in local community, higher affinity of brands, more likely to be a trusted word-of-mouth resource for people making purchases.

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Stephanie - 00:00:25:

Hello, fellow insight seekers. Welcome to The Curiosity Current, a podcast that's all about navigating the exciting world of market research. I'm Stephanie Vance.

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Matt - 00:00:35:

And I'm Matt Mahan. Join us as we explore the ever-shifting landscape of consumer behavior and what it means for brands like yours.

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Stephanie - 00:00:42:

Each episode, we'll get swept up in the trends and challenges facing researchers today, riding the current of curiosity towards new discoveries and deeper understanding.

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Matt - 00:00:53:

Along the way, we'll tap into the brains of industry leaders, decode real-world data, and explore the tech that's shaping the future of research.

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Stephanie - 00:01:00: So whether you're a seasoned pro or just getting your feet wet, we're excited to have you on board.

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Matt - 00:01:06: So with that, let's jump right in.

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Stephanie - 00:01:09: Today on the Current, we are joined by Ben Valenta, Senior Vice President of Strategy at Fox Sports, where he leads initiatives to enhance the fan experience with innovative strategies in data and consumer insights.

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Matt - 00:01:23:

Ben has a unique blend of expertise in sports strategy, fan engagement, and the integration of data-driven insights to create meaningful connections with audiences. He's also co-authored the book, Fans Have More Friends, which explores the role of fandom in combating loneliness and strengthening social bonds.

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Stephanie - 00:01:42:

In our conversation today, we are going to dive into how Fox Sports is transforming the fan experience. We're going to talk about the importance of community building in sports and how the insights from fandom can help businesses understand consumer behavior better.

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Matt - 00:01:58:

Ben, welcome to The Curiosity Current. We're so happy to have you on the show today.

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Ben - 00:02:01:

Thanks for having me. I'm glad to be here.

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Matt - 00:02:03:

Let's just jump right in. I think that this is a super interesting topic to both Stephanie and I. Your passion, your work has a lot to do with really transforming the fan experience, understanding the fan experience, what it can do for businesses, but, honestly, what it can do for people. I'm just so curious to hear more about where that came from. Can you walk us through your journey? How does this work play out for you?

Ben - 00:02:27:

Sure. Kind of embarrassed to say that I have been researching in this space for well before I started at Fox. I'm approaching my tenth year at Fox, but prior to that, I was a research consultant, brand strategist, working for a small agency, and we did a lot of work in the sports space. So clients like ESPN and Nike, the New York Rangers, the New York Knicks. And I spent a lot of time with sports fans and got to a fairly decent understanding, I thought, of what drove the fan experience. And even after landing at Fox Sports and that becoming my full-time job as understanding sports fans, it still took a little bit longer than I would have hoped to get to a complete understanding of what makes sports fans tick. And it all comes back to this fundamental insight that we had, which is to be a fan is to be a part of a community. And that was this underlying idea that goes back a long way for me personally, but took a long time to take shape and to fully realize the power of that statement. And so it was really just flying around the country, spending time with sports fans, hearing their stories, and always recognizing that when a sports fan tells a story about their fandom, there are other people involved. And it's subtle. The fan themselves, when they're telling this story, they are not even recognizing the primacy of those connections in driving their fandom. And it took a long time to see that pattern. But now that I've seen the pattern, I see fandom for what it is. And when I hear someone tell their story about being a sports fan, you can see the social connections at work in the subtleties of the stories that they tell. And these relationships that sports fandom helps to strengthen and anchor are deeply profound, wildly important to the goings-on of sports fans' lives. And it just has this profound effect on people's well-being. And putting those things together that took a long time to unpack, but once we got there, I think it helps shed light on why fans engage with the sports leagues, teams, et cetera, that they love.

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Stephanie - 00:04:26:

It really is. So, Ben, in your book, Fans Have More Friends, you know, that book really unpacks the powerful role that fandom has in creating social connection. I will say that, as a researcher, I don't know a lot about fandom. But as I was reading about and through your book, I was thinking about my own journey to sports fandom, which began during the pandemic when the NBA played in the bubble. I had literally never watched sports in my life, but here I was as a captive audience in the middle of a pandemic with the league that had chosen to take this approach. They were still playing. And fast forward five years, and I'm a season ticket holder now for the Mavericks. Right? Like, this is a huge part of my life, my family's life, and it has brought so much richness to our lives. And so I could really identify so much personally with what you're talking about from your own lens and, you know, the insights generated by talking to many, many fans over many, many years. What is it? What is that power of fandom that contributes so much to building those social bonds and creating that sense of belonging?

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Ben - 00:05:32:

So, come back to this idea: to be a sports fan is to be a part of a community. Right? That's what fandom's all about. That's a fundamental driver. That idea is nice. It sounds intuitively true. I think it is true, but people will tend to nod along with that notion and then sort of skip past it. And where we wanted to try and put some data behind this idea, we wanted to get to a testable hypothesis. So to be a sports fan is to be a part of a community is not testable. Right? There's no way to survey someone, and ask them a question that would get you some reliable data back about the power of community in sports fans. But we got to a hypothesis, which was if that's true, if this really is all about community and that's the fundamental animating force here, then sports fans will enjoy more active social lives. They'll have more friends. And that is a testable hypothesis. That is something that we can actually go and measure. We started to play that out in surveys. And what we find is that the bigger the fan, the more friends they have. The more they value those relationships, the more frequently they interact with those people. And the same is true of familial relationships as well. So another way to say that is the bigger the sports fan, the better their relationship, probabilistically, is with their mother, father, siblings, and so on. And so what's going on here with sports fandom that would lead to this explosion of social interaction? And really it comes down to sports create these anchor moments, these anchor things, these third things as opposed to a third place that facilitate connection. It's really as simple as that. So when we think about the act of being a sports fan, we often will focus on the action on the court or the field. Right? It's about these teams and these leagues and these players, and that's the animating force. That's the reason that we come and engage. When in fact, it's a necessary ingredient to the process, but it is not the most important piece. The most important piece are not the people playing the game on the court between the lines. They're the people sitting next to me in the stands, people that I share my fandom with. When you reorient your understanding of the fan experience through that communal lens, through that social lens, it changes then how you think about the entire fan experience. Because now we're understanding the true motivating force is something that is social, that is something that is happening between people, between fans, not between the team and the fan.

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Stephanie - 00:07:53:

Do you think that any of this is mediated through emotion? Because that's one place my mind went where I was thinking about how interesting it is that sports is so evocative of really strong emotion. Elation, just the cruelty of the disappointment when things do not go well, and that those are inherently emotions that are felt more in either you want to commiserate with other people or you want that joy can't really be maximized unless it's shared. Have you ever looked into any of that?

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Ben - 00:08:24:

That is what's happening. There is this highly emotional space that we share with other people. And the other people is the thing that gives it all meaning to why this matters. If you remove the other people, the wins and losses mean less. That's how that works. So you do need both ingredients. You need the game, like tipping off, kicking off, to anchor the interaction. But without the other people involved, the interaction becomes meaningless. It's recognizing these two variables at work, and also understanding that the way we think about the prioritization of those two variables needs to flip. Right now, generally, I would say, when people talk about the sports business at large, what I would call an entertainment lens on this thing. So in other words, this thing is compelling because of the drama, the emotion, the elation, the agony of defeat we are bearing witness to that's happening and unfolding on the screen, on the court. What actually is the most important thing, that stuff I just ran through, that is relevant to the conversation, but the most important thing again is who I'm sharing that with. I'm from Colorado. I grew up in Denver. The Denver Broncos, the Denver Nuggets, those teams, they are the anchor of many of my closest relationships. That's the reason that I talk to my father, is the Denver Broncos. And that the Broncos have a second-year quarterback that everyone's excited about is useful. Like, it creates some energy for us. The fact that I share that with my dad, that that's the thing that we talk about, that's actually what keeps me coming back. That's why I buy the tickets. That's why I buy the merchandise. From a consumer insight perspective, it's recognizing that framing needs to shift. In order to shift your thinking downstream of that, there are several decisions you have to make. If you have the right frame, you can get to the right decision because you understand truly what the consumer is doing. If you come into it with the wrong frame, then you end up making wrong decisions when you get downstream of the initial framing.

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Matt - 00:10:11:

That's all super interesting. There's this question I keep coming back to. My sports experience is very different. Being a proud resident of Columbus, Ohio, where you don't have a choice. You are a Buckeye fan regardless of where you come from, what you want to see, what you grew up with. I'm curious about the role, the importance of rivalry in this equation. To create these social bonds, to create this community effect that you're describing, maybe not rivalry, but tribalism, you know, is that critical to create the bonds, or is what's creating this emotional power transcendental of the actual teams, the regalia and the colors and the fight songs and all that? And it's more what happens when people just engage with the sport itself and they're just having the shared activity. Certainly, on the surface, I'm sure the rivalry is important, but, like, does it go beyond that?

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Ben - 00:11:08:

To answer your question just very directly, no. The rivalry is not relevant. So we cover the country. We've looked at international markets as well, so we can talk a little bit about that. When we look at a market-by-market comparison of sports fans, what we see is that there is no difference between big markets and small markets, traditional winning team markets or lovable loser markets. Markets where there is a clear and distinct rival, Ohio State, Michigan being a very good example, versus markets where there isn't that same distinguishable rivalry. This is happening because there is this shared experience that we share at a familial level with our friendship groups, at a community level, and even then where it is identity as we move throughout the world. It's true. It's the law of sports fandom. If you engage in this thing, you have this ability to connect with people. Right? That's the answer to your question. So I get this rivalry question all the time. And it usually goes hand-in-glove with the idea of love and hate. So there are these kind of twin ideas, detritus of old-school thinking about how fandom worked. So first of all, we've actually looked at rivalries. The reality is maybe on two hands you can get to clear, distinct rivals where a majority of each fanbase will recognize the other team as the rival. Rivalry is not very widespread. So we can think of so it's like, uh, Boston Red Sox, New York Yankees. Michigan Wolverines, Ohio State Buckeyes. LA Dodgers, SF Giants. If you ask Philadelphia Eagles fans, who's their biggest rival, I've done that, you cannot get to consensus.

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Matt - 00:12:40:

Is it—

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Stephanie - 00:12:40:

—not the Cowboys? Because the Cowboys hate the Eagles. I do know that.

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Ben - 00:12:44:

The Washington Commanders, they hate the Eagles. The Eagles have something with, uh, New York. Like, you will get these answers. Dallas is the same thing. We polled this exact thing. So this idea of rivalry, while important to the regalia of the fan experience, is actually not as widespread as we think it is. So that's just kind of one thing. And then there's this other idea that comes up in these conversations about sports fandom where we get to this notion of hate. But what about two rival teams who hate each other? Is that creating connection? Isn't that creating more disconnection and dislocation in society? And to that, I would say absolutely not. Because when we use the word hate in this context, it fundamentally means something different than when we use it in other contexts. So it's sports love, it's sports hate, it's all these things. So no. The reality is if you are an Ohio State Buckeye fan, talking to Michigan Wolverine fans is more fun than talking to USC Trojan fans. That's the reality of it. All these things kind of just get mixed up and then it becomes the conventional wisdom, but it's actually not true of the fan experience. If you sort of stop down and just kind of follow the idea to its logical conclusion, which is effectively, that's kind of what we try and do here. Then you start to realize, oh, that's actually not the critical thing. Hate is actually not the right way to think about this. And so you start to pull away what doesn't matter and what's not true to get to what actually is true about the fan experience.

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Stephanie - 00:14:04:

Getting to that, you're pointing out the universality of it. But I am curious because you mentioned lightly internationally speaking to any differences. I would love for you to unpack that if there are differences. I was also wondering just something I'm curious about is I think that we can look at different sports and identify I feel like an NBA fan is so different from a hockey fan. That's just being in the stadium is a completely different experience. Nevertheless, is this just universal across sports? It's really not. There aren't a lot of sports-specific differences.

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Ben - 00:14:35:

So we'll talk about international fan in a second. But to the second question, there aren't a lot of differences. And in fact, the idea, the framing again, like, that's a pet peeve here is, like, how we frame these different conversations leads us to getting to the right solutions, the right answers to questions. The reality is there really isn't, like, an NBA fan. It's the wrong framing for how we think about fandom in this country. The reality is there are fans. There are sports fans. And there are people who are more engaged in sports, and there are people who are less engaged in sports. And the more engaged among us are the most likely to engage in every sport out there. So I can predict your level of NFL fandom if I just ask you about your engagement with the NBA, MLB, college football, college basketball. I will know within a couple of points where you are on the fan scale that we have developed based on your answer to other sports in question. So the most likely fan of a local NFL team in each given market are the biggest fans of the local MLB team, and so on and so forth. Right? So all these things work together. So the idea that there are NFL fans and now do you guys know someone who doesn't really follow sports and loves tennis? That person exists. But, again, we're talking about probabilities here. So the way we view the world is through very simple segmentation, three groups: high, mid, low. The biggest fan of every sport, World Surf League. Who are the biggest fans of the World Surf League? It's your highly engaged fans, which are defined by their engagement with the NFL, MLB, NBA, so on and so forth. Any sport in question, the chart looks identical, and there's a stair step up as you—the bigger the fan of the other sports, the more likely they are to be fans of F1, NASCAR, international soccer, bull riding, tennis, golf. It always works the same way. And so we have this picture in our head of the MLB fan is one thing and that's a group of people and the NBA fan is another thing. And the reality is it's mostly just the same group of people driving the majority of engagement. And then around the peripheries where we kind of fill in, it balances out averages to look a little bit different. But that's actually not the clear picture of who's a fan today. That idea of the differences between sports, there really aren't differences between sports, and it's really the same people that we're talking about. So then the international side, I get this question a lot too. It's like, this is just a unique phenomenon. This idea that fans have more friends. We haven't really talked about the wellness outcomes that come from the additional socializing that fans enjoy. So not only do fans have more friends, but as a result of all the socializing that they do, they're happier, they're more satisfied in their life, they're more grateful, they're more confident, they're more optimistic, they're more likely to go to charity. Every conceivable wellness outcome that we've ever tested comes back the exact same. The bigger the fan, the more likely to enjoy that thing, to be less depressed, less lonely, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So we wanted to test that against the world. What we found is, in general, it works the same way. There's a relationship to your level of engagement in sports in whatever country you're in, and the amount of friends you have, and then your mental health as a result of that. So that's true. The difference though is we see a greater magnitude of difference between your most engaged fans in America and your least engaged fans or your non-fans in America. And really the way to think about that is we have a much more robust sporting infrastructure in this country than in other countries. So when you delve into think about, like, the rabid soccer fans in Europe, for instance. They exist. They're very engaged. That's their only sport. Like, if you're in the UK, maybe you're a cricket fan. You know, you watch Wimbledon. You catch a couple rugby matches. But there's really no other leagues to follow outside of the domestic soccer competitions in UK and then, like, your European Champions League, that kind of thing. Beyond that, that's sort of it. What we do here in this country is we move between seasons and there's always something on the horizon. There's always another sport. There's always the next thing. And that just creates this cycle of connection that then benefits engaged fans in this country more than their counterparts in other countries. So at its core, fandom works the same way the world over. And truly fandom of anything works in the same way. It's a social enterprise. But in this country, we enjoy these benefits because it's just a more robust sporting calendar, and there's more to pay attention to and more to engage with. And because the engagement leads to positive knock-on effects, we enjoy those things more.

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Stephanie - 00:18:57:

That is fascinating. So to get back to another question I had, so as established, fandom is about more than just watching the games. We need to get to the right framing, as you say. I'm curious in this framing of it being about the community and the connections with other people. Is there a role for teams, for broadcasters to cultivate that sense of community, or is it more about capitalizing on it because there's nothing that's needed to be done? It's a natural outcome. How do brands and, well, really, broadcasters, teams, how do they use this information?

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Ben - 00:19:30:

I think it's recognizing what is actually driving the engagement at its heart. So there are a couple of other things that kind of are relevant to this part of the conversation. One is you don't become a fan overnight. It's not an on/off switch. You become a fan over time because you are socialized into it. The majority of fans are socialized into it from their upbringing. So their parents were fans, and they become fans as a result of that. So that means that we are talking about generational timelines when it comes to cultivating more fans. One thing that is important for practitioners in the space, whether you're a team or a league or a broadcaster, is to recognize, a) the centrality of the human connection, because that's the thing driving engagement. And then b) the timeline at which that works and operates. There's a large duration. We talk a lot about the fan flywheel. And the fan flywheel is there are two variables driving fan engagement. You engage as a fan in some activity. And what results from that is positive social interaction. That positive social interaction incentivizes you to engage more, which results in more positive interaction, and so on and so forth. The flywheel starts to spin. You need a lot of spins on the flywheel in order to become an engaged fan. It's not one game. You can point. Like, fans will often point. It was the one game when my dad took me and I sat on grandpappy's knee and we watched the end of the Cubs. Yeah. We have those memories, but the reality is you became a fan over years and took a lot of spins on this flywheel in order for you to recognize the sort of deep-rooted nature of your engagement. And I think when it comes to the teams, the leagues, it's recognizing that this thing takes time and you need to put the fan first and put the social connection first. That's the most important part. So because I think one of my biggest criticisms actually of this space is most teams don't do anything to incentivize these things. Most teams actually just—they rely on the organic nature of this and then they extract the proceeds. Right? And they could be doing a lot more to recognize this connection. And then how do you facilitate those connections? And I think that's the unlock here for the sports business, especially on the team side, a little bit on the broadcaster side. But particularly when we're thinking about teams cultivating their fan bases, what can you do to facilitate these things? So I'll give you an example. I have a seven-year-old son. Loves basketball. He's just gotten into it. One of the teams here in the area, they sponsor the rec leagues. They give kids a ticket to a game. And it's an awesome program. They do a great job. It's working too because these kids are all wearing the local team's logo. They're all talking about the team. Great job by the team to recognize that this happens at a young age. Right? And you want to sort of cultivate these things. But here's the rub. The tickets that they were giving away to the seven-year-olds were all for Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday night games at 7:30 PM. So you did most of the right thing. You left it a little short. But I think that's partly because we're not thinking about it the right way. What we should be doing, if you're the team in question, is you want all the kids that are playing the sport to be coming with their friends to the games. And they want they come with their friends, win with their family. And you want to create a ritual out of that. What can you do if you put that as your North Star? How do I create a family ritual using the game and the tenets of the game and the team as the anchor? I highly doubt that there are teams that have actually framed the question that way. They've done giveaways. They want to sponsor these things. Yes. All of that is good, but you haven't actually gone the whole way to say, I want to become the ritual of this family. How do I do that? How do I facilitate that? And then I think it would change the outcomes that you would, you know, the tactics you would use because you're now thinking about it the right way. So I think that that's the important thing. But you have to understand, like, how fandom operates. You have to understand how it takes shape over time and just recognize these are long timelines that we're working on, and you're not necessarily going to get a return on investment next year. But if you can do this right over the years, then over time, you will grow the fanbase.

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Matt - 00:23:24:

MLS youth soccer camps spring to mind as, like, a really positive example of, I think, what you're describing. Right? It's like this way to engage kids young, but also give them a really meaningful experience that's supported by the brand. And then, obviously, they're decked out in the regalia and promoting from that aspect, but it's more of like a—there's some meaning behind giving a family a reason to get together and have some fun for a few days on a hot summer. That really jumps out.

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Ben - 00:23:49:

I think it's also just, like, one of the reasons that kids who participate in the sport will become—are more likely to become fans of the sport is because they've learned to utilize the sport, the team, for social ends. That becomes your group of friends. And what do you talk about when you're at practice? Taking a water break? Probably the local team. That's how this actually works and it takes shape. But, again, we need to frame it like that. Frame it as a social enterprise. Frame it as something that is only going to be propelled forward by social connections and vibrant, active social connections. So how do you foster and facilitate those things? The camps are great. I don't know much about the MLS camp specifically. It's a great idea. They should be doing those things. But can you think about that in terms of fostering community? Not just to bring kids in and give them jerseys, but rather use the team to anchor the interaction. The team becomes the most important part of the interaction. I think that's the trick here. If we can do that, then we can get a little bit further down the track of pushing in the right direction and actually providing momentum for that fan flywheel as opposed to just sort of, like, letting it spin and hoping it creates enough energy to mint the next generation of fans.

Stephanie - 00:24:52:

I think it's interesting too to think about—I'm going to use the platform of, like, YouTube, and I know all they're doing is letting videos be hosted there. But, like, I'm thinking, let me give you an example of Cooper Flagg coming to the Mavericks, and I have a ten-year-old who watches just YouTube Kids constantly. What is he watching right now? Cooper Flagg videos. And then what he's doing with his friends, though, is they're just, like, talking stats to each other, and they're—right? He is watching the video so that he can go and have these conversations in his social circles, and who knows more. And it's how they talk together. Right? But it is interesting to think about how even platforms like YouTube for Kids, they're meeting kids where they're at, even engender these same kinds of and facilitate the same kind of camaraderie between kids, or at least kids are finding it there.

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Ben - 00:25:39

And I think that's the important part. I—putting those two things together, like, I like what you did there by—the content on YouTube is grist for the conversational mill among our friends. The content on YouTube alone doesn't do much to cultivate fans. That can be perhaps lazy thinking on operators in the space is, oh, we have to have a social presence. Let's be on Twitter. That we're going to meet them where they're at by giving them TikTok highlights. That alone is not enough because what you actually want them to do is talk about the thing with their friends. If you get to the point where they're talking about the team, the league, the player, whatever, with their friends, that's when they're engaged fans. So I think it's, again, adding the step of connection to the process and recognizing that the end goal is not engagement on YouTube. The end goal is little Johnny talking to his buddies about Cooper Flagg highlights and stats and how they're excited for the team, because that's what leads to, I'm going to buy the jersey. And that's what leads to, hey, Mom, can we go to the game? And that's what—and that's where you actually recognize real value in this chain is when they get to that level.

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Matt - 00:26:41:

I think you really just answered the next question that I had, which was, are there elements to this discovery that you've made that are transferable outside of the sports world, just into industry in general, and how to develop some of these more meaningful relationships?

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Stephanie - 00:26:55:

And I—

Matt - 00:26:55:

—think you just nailed it head-on right there.

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Ben - 00:26:58:

Just to comment on that. I think that fandom works the same way no matter what we're talking about. It's just that many fandoms are in the long tail. They don't have expression in the mainstream pop culture. And that's what's unique about sports. So you and I can bond over our shared love of some things. I like to surf and ride bikes. Chances are you guys don't do that. But if you put me in a bar anywhere in Dallas right now, I guarantee you, I could gin up a conversation about the Dallas Cowboys. Guaranteed. And that just illustrates the scale at which we're talking about. Are there ways to apply this consumer insight outside of the realm of sports? And the reality is you can think of fandom this way, and it works the same way. The reason that people bought Taylor Swift's tickets last summer for the tour had more to do with who they were sharing it with than it did Taylor herself. So that is the right way to think about how fandom works, but the sad reality of Taylor Swift is at some point she's going to hang it up. Um, there's not going to be another tour this summer. Guess what? Dallas Cowboys are going to report to training camp in a couple of weeks' time. It's reliable. Right? And so I think that that's the important thing. Can you extract those insights? Yes. I think it can be helpful given the specific set of circumstances that you might have as a brand in question. The reality is, like, it's not going to work the same way because of the scale.

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Matt - 00:28:13:

That's a great point. There's a permanence with sports that doesn't necessarily transfer outside of that world. It's somewhat unique.

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Ben - 00:28:18:

Absolutely. It's permanence. It's scale. It's the reliable, recurring rhythm of sport that creates the social galvanizing power. That's what's happening.

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Matt - 00:28:28:

Not at all. What you just said kind of reminded me of another thing that I—I have often discussed and heard discussed. Is there something about the virtue of sport as well that plays into this? And what I mean by that is, you know, when you're watching football and a play takes place that disadvantages one team and there's a confrontation, there's replay, and there are officials, and there's replay after replay after replay, and then there's an analyst, and there's this whole litigation that can take place, and it's expected to take place, and it's understood. And there seems to me to be this sense around sport of fairness as a virtue that is not necessarily present in everybody's everyday life in other aspects. Is that something that helps compel us as well? Is there a little bit of an escapism into that idealism?

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[00:29:24] Ben: So I think it's part of the nature of the competition, and it's kind of what makes it compelling. And I think it's to protect that, that on-field product as it were, to make sure that it is sort of fair. And there are officials, and they're calling it, and nothing untoward and unsportsmanlike is happening. That is true. Is it one of the reasons we love sports? Yeah. It's part of it. But I think it's like protecting the sanctity of that is the reason that allows us to connect with other people using this thing as the anchor. Right? This thing was just kind of made up and didn't have that component. But at the same time, like, even as I say that, the WWE, wrestling, operates in the same way.

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Matt - 00:30:02:

But it's known. It's, like, part of the shtick at that point.

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Ben - 00:30:06:

It's known. It's part of the shtick, but it—like, fans of the WWE are connecting because they're doing it with other people. They're a social phenomenon. And guess what? The most likely fan of the WWE is the most engaged fan of other sports. That's it all kind of works the same way. So, but I want to come back to one thing because you used a word, and I want to just push back a little bit. It's all about how we frame things. The word "escapism" should be banished from this conversation. The idea that consumers are trying to escape something is the wrong framing for thinking about why consumers are in the space and transacting. And so the reason I feel this so viscerally is because I fly around the country and I talk to fans. And I talk to them about why they engage. And guess what? Every time I have a conversation, they lean forward, they get excited, the tenor of their voice picks up, and they start talking about things that they love about the teams in question. At no point, fifteen years of doing this, thousands and thousands of conversations, have I ever heard someone say, I do this to escape the drudgery of my life. I'm just trying to find a moment of quiet. They're just so plugged in, they're so engaged. The notion that people are trying to escape and that is some sort of an incentive, a driver of their behavior, it leads us to the wrong conclusions again. They are passionate, and they want to engage. They're not running away from anything. They are running to things that they love. Again, that framing of the consumer mindset here is really important because it gets us to smarter, more clear thinking down the line from that question.

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Stephanie - 00:31:29:

Oh, totally. Like, just thinking about approach motivation over avoidance motivation and how different they are. And not only to experience, but to capitalize on or try to move it all would be wildly different. That's so interesting.

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Ben - 00:31:41:

Because everyone talks about this in terms of escapism. I was actually just listening to a podcast the other day with the CMO of a prominent league, said that that was part of his platform was we're escapist content for the country. I think it's the wrong framing. It's just not getting to the heart of why consumers engage and love your idea of, like, approach versus avoidant. Exactly that. These people are coming to engage in something that they love, and they're not trying to avoid anything.

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Matt - 00:32:06:

I don't disagree with you, but I—I want your advice on this, which is I love the viewpoint that you just shared. How do you then respond to the pushback that, well, people don't know that what they are doing is actually escaping the drudgery of their life. So they—they can't articulate that to you. So how do you prove that story out?

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Ben - 00:32:28:

I guess it's less to me proving it out to be 100% accurate. Are there days that I get home from work and I'm just like, I just need to chill out and I need to turn my brain off? I've experienced that consumer mindset before. I would just say that one, that seems to not be the case for when fans are engaging in sports. Like if you're in the living room with fans, watching them watch sports, they're plugged in, they're dialed, they're leaning forward, right? Are they not thinking about other things, other problems they might have in that moment? Sure. This comes to framing. Right? They're not doing this to avoid this other thing. They're doing this because they love it. And the more we can talk about them loving the thing and why they love the thing, then we're going to be closer to the right answers for a whole host of other questions which we haven't even explored. For me, it's less like I need to prove to you that I'm right. It's me more saying, don't think of it that way. Think of it this way. This is actually the right approach to thinking about it because it will make you smarter for subsequent questions which we haven't even thought of yet.

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Stephanie - 00:33:25:

So I have what I think of as, like, the million-dollar question for you that really is meant to ask, like, how does this apply to businesses that are not in the world of not sport business? So your work does really have this really—this focus on the value of sports fandom and how it reduces loneliness, enhances well-being. Are there things that other types of brands and business can do to apply these same principles of social connection to their customer engagement strategies? Is there any replication or, like, borrowing of thought leadership that can be done in a non-fan-based industry? Or I'm trying to think like CPG or restaurants. Do we really think of people who go to restaurants as fans of restaurants? Maybe. Do we really think of people who go to restaurants as fans of restaurants? Maybe not. But that's the question.

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Ben - 00:34:13:

I don't know. I'm—I—I want to be open-minded here to think, yeah, there are things we could learn and apply. You know, I do think the notion of community and connection driving engagement is applicable beyond the world of sports. Right? So you'd come back to, like, Taylor Swift and so there are fandoms that grow out of this social connection, the social network, and the incentives, the—that fan flywheel. It can work beyond sports, and you could think of it that way. One example comes to mind is my son for a while was super into Star Wars. He'd never seen Star Wars. He just came home one day. He was playing like he was Luke Skywalker. And I was like, where did this come from? And he's like, oh, we were all playing it. It was a game somebody brought up at school. We were all playing in the schoolyard. I was like, buddy, let me—I'm going to blow your mind. You've never heard of Luke Skywalker. Check this out. And so he started watching, he, you know, voraciously consumes all the Star Wars—Star Wars content. And then he goes back and he plays. And he comes home, and he watches Star Wars content. And he goes back and he plays. That actually is the thing that generated—I spent, I don't know, untold hundreds of dollars on Star Wars Legos and lunchboxes. It all came from the social interaction. It was generated by the content. So I think you're in a content business. You can think that way if you're not it—it—where—where sort of the word fan applies, that you can think that way. There could be some useful lessons to extract there. And this is not really the heart of your question, but maybe adjacent to it. One way to think about this also is to—I've increasingly come to see sports fandom as a signal of engagement in society at large. So what I see is the biggest consumer of any media product is an engaged sports fan. So the people who watch the most CSI, engaged sports fan. People that watch the most local news, engaged sports fan. People that watch the most Real Housewives of New Jersey are engaged sports fans. Again, we think about these things as unrelated to one another, but there is, like, a group of people who are engaged and plugged into society, and sports fandom is a signal of that. Engagement in news is a signal of that.

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Stephanie: - 00:36:08:

Is fandom an archetype—just fandom more generally? Are there people who are just fans and then people who are not fans?

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Ben - 00:36:16:

Sports fandom is an archetype. I want to be careful because I'm—maybe you mean archetype in a very specific way. So if I think about building another business unrelated to sports, the target audience that I would have in mind likely is sports fans. Now it could be some segment of sports fans. Right? I want to talk to engaged female sports fans to sell something, some CPG product, but it's sports fandom. Right? Because that signals anxiety engagement with society. More trust in institutions, more trust in other people, more engagement in local community, higher affinity of brands, more likely to be a trusted word-of-mouth resource for people making purchases. We do this for our sales team. All the consumer attitudes and attributes that you would want to make a sale to Ford or Home Depot or Dove soap, it all comes back to the most engaged fans or the most engaged consumers of every other product. The most engaged consumers of all media.

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Stephanie - 00:37:07:

Well, then that's the—the takeaway. Yeah. And I have to say, I feel like I'm going to start adding a sports fandom question to all the segmentation work that I do now.

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Ben - 00:37:16:

You should.

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Stephanie - 00:37:17:

I don't—we don't always have to use it, but now I just want to look. I'm very, very interested in this effect.

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Ben - 00:37:22:

It kind of flies in the face, and this kind of comes back to the beginning of the conversation, like, where this came from. We have these cultural conceptions of sports fans. They mostly revolve around the idea, like, the face painter. It's like these crazy people or these, like, boorish bros who are, like, spilling beer in the field bleachers, making people uncomfortable. Those people exist in the world, but I'd fly around the country, and I'd have interactions with fans, and it was altogether wholesome. It was just people who were very engaged, very stable, very wholesome, and they were the ones who were plugged into sports. And it was just this picture of what I was seeing that ran counter to the conventional wisdom and the—and the stereotypes. You know, I encountered it in the halls of—of my day job today. They work in other, uh, entertainment, uh, content verticals, let's say, entertainment news, et cetera. Thinking about, hey. We're going to do a collaboration with the sports group. We should, um, we'll just put a jersey on it. That'll be enough to—to convert the sports fans. And what I'm trying to get them to understand is their audience already is comprised mostly of sports fans because they're the most voracious consumers of all media across the board, no matter the platform, no matter the brand in question. It's just like recognizing that this thing, a powerful signal for engagement in the world. And if you want to talk to people who are engaged in the world, which brands do, they should be talking about and thinking about sports fans.

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Stephanie - 00:38:32:

Ben, to close this out today, this has been an incredibly fascinating conversation, and I think something that Matt and I are going to be thinking about for a while. But one thing that we always like to ask our guests is, what is one piece of advice that you would offer to somebody who is just starting out in the world of insights or strategy?

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Ben - 00:38:49:

So it's fitting because my answer to this question on The Curiosity Current is curiosity. It's actually the number one hiring criteria that we have set out for our team years ago that what we're ultimately looking for and the thing, the trait that unlocks success in this world is being curious. And it's just this insatiable curiosity that we look for ways people demonstrate that in their lives. We look for ways to demonstrate that in their professional lives. But being curious and just following your nose and continuing to pull at threads and never really being satisfied and always asking questions, that's the most important thing. Now I think that's actually true for careers beyond consumer research and consumer insights and brand strategy in any marketing job. But I think in this space in particular, you have to have that thing. And if you don't, it's going to be really difficult to get to powerful insights that unlock real transformation in business. You're not constantly just sort of obsessed with this that comes from an innate level. It is really just driven by your curiosity and insatiable curiosity for insights in how people operate, what they think, how the world works, and always sort of rejecting the conventional wisdom to ask the tough questions to get to those answers. And if you don't have that curiosity, you're just not going to get very far down that track.

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Matt - 00:40:04:

Well, Ben Valenta, again, so lovely having you on the show today. Such great insight shared. We really appreciate it. You've given us a lot to think about, and, uh, we just really appreciate your time. Thanks for coming on.

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Ben - 00:40:15:

This was a fun conversation. Thanks for having me.

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Stephanie - 00:40:17:

Thank you. The Curiosity Current is brought to you by AYTM.

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Matt - 00:40:23:

To find out how AYTM helps brands connect with consumers and bring insights to life, visit aytm.com.

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Stephanie - 00:40:30:

And to make sure you never miss an episode, subscribe to The Curiosity Current in Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.