It’s safe to say 2024 is going to be the summer of sport with an Olympic year featuring alongside the many sporting tournaments which punctuate kids’ and teens’ calendars.
Darts, Women’s sports and Formula E have all reported an increase in viewership and you only have to look at the traction the Super Bowl garnered this weekend with Taylor Swift plane tracking on TikTok to Nickelodeon broadcasting the game with SpongeBob and Dora providing commentary to see that sport has gone mainstream. But will the eyeballs translate into participation?
At Beano Brain we believe it can and reveal the key things any brand or organisation should consider when aiming to drive sports participation.
Seasonality
It seems obvious but there are huge seasonal changes in young people’s lives. The rhythm of their lives is dictated by the school year, with family planning following a September to August calendar. School and homework activity dominates during school term time but especially the autumn and winter terms when typically, more than 50% of children in the US and UK tell us they did homework in the last week (rising to 56% of 11-14 year olds). This falls to fewer than one in five in July as the summer holidays approach. For sports that want to engage kids during term time, there could be merit in positioning it as a bit of brain relief and a break from the workbook.
Unsurprisingly, as the weather improves, we see kids getting outside more and more. In the winter months (January) 26% of kids are playing in their garden or yard, but this increases to 36% in the summer months (July). To the outside observer this doesn’t seem that high but harking back to July 2020, when children were often limited to their immediate surroundings by Covid, almost half (48%) were playing in their gardens/ yard.
Gardens are a great opportunity to get active and it seems that, whilst rediscovered during Covid, they are once again being forgotten as playgrounds literally on our doorsteps. Therefore providing kids and teens with easy ways to train or practice in their own outdoor spaces could be the first step to increasing participation.
The Gender Issue
Boys and girls have very different attitudes to “sport”. Our recent data shows that half (50%) of kids age 7 – 14 agreed with the statement “Yes – I love it (sport) and do it loads”. This rises to 56% of boys and 58% of boys aged 7-11. However, only 4 in 10 (41%) girls age 11-14 agree with the same statement.
But when it comes to getting active, both boys and girls like going for a bike ride and taking part in a game like tag. Both activities feature in the top five activities that kids take part in (41% for boys and 33% for girls).
So by reframing your pitch to girls from explicit sport to activity could help drive better engagement and ultimately kick start a passion that will lead to increased participation.
If you’d like to know about our quantitative study into sport, including the differences between kids’ attitudes now compared to when we last ran the study in Summer 2020 please get in touch. We’d love to tell you more.