The 5 Connections Behind Every Great Fan Base

Most people do not become emotionally invested in a carbon fiber boat.

That may seem like an odd way to begin an article about sports fandom, but it is a lesson that has stayed with me throughout my career. Years ago, while working with China's America's Cup sailing team, I found myself wrestling with a question that sports executives everywhere seem to ask: How do we build a fan base?

The answer is usually assumed to be marketing. More advertising. More content. Better social media. A new brand campaign. A bigger media budget. A better game day experience. Those things matter, but I have never been convinced they are the primary drivers of fandom.

The America's Cup is one of the oldest and most prestigious sporting events in the world. The boats are technological marvels. The budgets are enormous. The competition is extraordinary. Yet outside sailing circles, very few people can name a single sailor.

That is not because the athletes are uninteresting. Quite the opposite. The people on those boats have remarkable stories. They have spent years mastering a highly specialized craft, competing around the world, and sacrificing enormous amounts to reach the highest level of their sport. The problem is that most people never hear those stories.

Instead, the conversation often centers on billionaire owners, sponsorship deals, technology, and luxury. Those things may interest existing sailing fans, but they do very little to create new ones. People become emotionally invested in people.

That observation led me to a broader conclusion that has followed me throughout my career. Sports organizations often treat fan development as a marketing challenge when it is more accurately a connection challenge. Marketing creates awareness. Connection creates loyalty.

When I look across sports, I believe the strongest fan bases are built through five forms of connection: access, participation, geography, generational loyalty, and people. More importantly, the most successful organizations rarely rely on just one.

Access

The easiest way to create a sports fan is to allow someone to experience the product.

Most sports fans can remember their first visit to a stadium or arena. The field looks larger than it does on television. The atmosphere feels different. The anticipation is tangible. Those experiences create memories that often last a lifetime. Sports organizations frequently underestimate the importance of that first exposure. They spend enormous resources trying to convince people to care about a team before those people have ever experienced it. Yet fandom is usually born from exposure, not persuasion.

This is one of the reasons established leagues enjoy such a significant advantage. Their games are visible. Their venues are accessible. Their brands are embedded in everyday life. Emerging sports often face the opposite challenge. Events may be difficult to attend. Broadcast coverage may be limited. Venues may be temporary or inconsistent. In some cases, potential fans may not even know the sport exists.

It is difficult to become passionate about something you rarely see.

Participation

Participation remains one of the most underappreciated drivers of fan development. People support what they play.

Lacrosse provides perhaps the best modern example. Over the last several decades, the sport has grown dramatically across the United States, not because of massive television deals or billion dollar marketing campaigns, but because more young people gained access to playing it. Youth leagues expanded. Club programs multiplied. High schools added teams. Colleges invested in the sport. Participation created familiarity, and familiarity created fans.

The growth of lacrosse also highlights another important lesson. The sport's stakeholders were largely rowing in the same direction. From youth leagues to colleges, governing bodies, club programs, and professional organizations, most participants in the ecosystem shared a common objective: get more people playing the sport.

Many sports spend enormous amounts of energy competing with themselves. Organizations fight over athletes, facilities, sponsorships, events, and recognition. Growth becomes secondary to protecting turf. Lacrosse largely avoided that trap. The ecosystem recognized that participation was the rising tide that would lift everyone.

Golf offers a different version of the same lesson. For decades, the sport carried a reputation for being expensive, exclusive, and inaccessible. Programs like First Tee recognized that if more people were going to care about golf, more people first needed the opportunity to play it.

Rather than focusing exclusively on developing spectators, First Tee focused on developing golfers. Some participants became competitive golfers. Many did not. But almost all left with a greater appreciation for the sport. That is often enough.

Not every participant becomes an elite athlete, but many become lifelong supporters, volunteers, coaches, parents, advocates, and fans. Organizations frequently focus on spectator development while overlooking participation. In reality, participation may be the most effective fan development strategy available.

Geography

Sometimes fandom has very little to do with the sport itself.

People support teams because those teams represent where they are from. A club becomes a symbol of a city. A university becomes a source of regional pride. A national team becomes a reflection of identity.

As a New Yorker, I can tell you that sports fan or not, many New Yorkers will passionately root against anything Boston related. The rivalry often transcends the sport itself. It is not really about baseball, football, or hockey. It is about identity.

Honestly, it could be about pizza, lobster rolls, or whose accent is more annoying. The teams simply become stand ins for something larger. Supporting one side or the other becomes a way of expressing who you are, where you are from, and which tribe you belong to.

The same dynamic exists throughout the world. People often support teams not because they have studied the roster or understand the tactics, but because supporting that team feels like supporting their community. When people believe a team represents them, support often survives losing seasons, poor management, and disappointing results. The connection becomes deeper than the product itself.

Generational Loyalty

Many sports loyalties are inherited. A parent supports a team, so their children do the same. An older sibling wears a jersey, and before long the younger sibling wants one too. Long before children understand statistics, standings, or championships, they understand belonging.

I can already see this happening with my own daughters. They are eight years old, and whether they like it or not, Knicks and Giants gear somehow keeps finding its way into their closets. They may eventually choose their own teams, but their introduction to sports fandom is happening through the people around them.

This is one of the greatest advantages enjoyed by established sports properties. Decades of history create generational loyalty that is nearly impossible to replicate overnight. No marketing campaign can manufacture the experience of sitting on a couch with your parents watching the same team every weekend for twenty years. Those experiences become traditions. Traditions become culture.

For newer leagues and emerging sports, that presents a challenge. History cannot be manufactured and generational loyalty cannot be accelerated. It can only be earned over time.

People

The final pathway may be the most important of all. People follow people before they follow teams.

Sports organizations often believe fans connect with brands, logos, facilities, or championships. While those things matter, they are rarely where fandom begins. Fandom begins with human beings.

A child meets an athlete and becomes a fan for life. A family develops a relationship with a coach and begins following an entire program. A community rallies around a local player who represents something larger than themselves. The relationship comes first. The team comes second.

This is why I have always believed sailing missed an opportunity with the America's Cup. The athletes were there. The stories were there. The personalities were there. Yet too often the sport focused on the technology, the money, and the spectacle rather than the people behind the competition.

The same mistake occurs throughout sports. Organizations spend enormous resources promoting schedules, results, and announcements while failing to introduce fans to the individuals who make the sport meaningful.

Michael Jordan helped grow the NBA because people connected with Michael Jordan. Tiger Woods brought millions of new people to golf because people connected with Tiger Woods. Caitlin Clark has expanded the audience for women's basketball because people connect with Caitlin Clark. The athlete becomes the entry point. The team or league becomes the destination.

Of course, not every organization has equal access to this form of connection. AAA baseball clubs provide a good example. While major league teams often build fandom around star players, minor league affiliates frequently struggle because their most marketable assets are not entirely under their control. A player can be promoted, demoted, traded, or reassigned with little notice. Fans may buy a jersey one month only to discover their favorite player is gone the next.

As a result, many successful minor league organizations have learned to build connections in different ways. They invest heavily in the ballpark experience, local identity, community engagement, family entertainment, and traditions that are not dependent on any one player.

The lesson is not that people matter less. It is that organizations must understand which forms of connection they can control and strengthen accordingly. The strongest brands rarely rely on a single pathway. They build several at the same time.

There is, however, a trap that sports organizations frequently fall into. Once they see the impact a transformational athlete can have, they begin trying to manufacture the next one.

I saw this firsthand while working in China. Yao Ming's impact on the NBA was extraordinary. He gave hundreds of millions of Chinese fans a personal connection to the league. He was not simply a great player. He was a cultural bridge between two worlds.

The league benefited enormously from that connection, but Yao was also a unicorn. His combination of talent, timing, personality, and national significance was incredibly rare. After Yao's success, countless sports properties entered China hoping to replicate the same formula. Find a Chinese athlete, place them in a league, and a massive audience would follow.

It rarely worked.

The mistake was assuming that Yao created fans because he was Chinese. In reality, fans followed Yao because he was compelling, authentic, successful, and relatable. His nationality mattered, but it was only part of the story.

Connection can be created intentionally, but it cannot be manufactured mechanically. In some cases, forcing that strategy can actually damage a brand. Fans quickly recognize when a connection feels artificial.

The lesson was never "find another Yao Ming." The lesson was "give people someone they can genuinely care about."

Putting It All Together

These five forms of connection do not operate independently. The strongest sports brands build all of them simultaneously.

Ironically, one of the best examples may be the New York Yankees, and I am not even a Yankees fan.

The Yankees have access. Even non-baseball fans often describe their first visit to Yankee Stadium as memorable. They have participation. Baseball has been played by generations of Americans. They have geography. Supporting or opposing the Yankees is often as much about identity as it is about baseball. They have generational loyalty. Families pass Yankees fandom from one generation to the next.

And they have people.

Even non-baseball fans know the stories. Babe Ruth. Lou Gehrig. Joe DiMaggio. Derek Jeter. Most Americans have heard of at least one of them. Many know their stories. Lou Gehrig's farewell speech remains one of the most recognizable moments in sports history.

The organization has also understood that maintaining those connections requires effort. Programs like HOPE Week place players directly into communities, creating opportunities for fans to connect with the people behind the uniforms.

Those initiatives are acts of service, but they are also brand building. The athletes strengthen their own brands while strengthening the Yankees brand at the same time. The two objectives are not in conflict. At their best, they reinforce one another.

The Yankees are not successful because they mastered one of these elements. They are successful because they spent more than a century strengthening all five.

That may be the real lesson for newer teams, leagues, and organizations. They cannot manufacture history. They cannot create legendary athletes on demand. But they can intentionally build pathways for connection. They can improve access. They can encourage participation. They can embrace their communities. They can create traditions. They can elevate the people behind the sport.

No single element is enough on its own. A great athlete cannot compensate for a lack of community connection. A beautiful facility cannot replace participation. Geography alone rarely creates lasting fandom. The strongest organizations keep all five elements in play and allow them to reinforce one another over time.

That is how connection grows. And ultimately, that is how fan bases are built.