4 lessons Leaders Week 2025 taught us about the future of fandom
Last week, the Amondo team joined sports, media, and brand leaders at Leaders Week London. It was a busy few days of sharp ideas, honest debates, and one clear message for everyone in the industry: fandom is shifting.
Fans don’t just follow anymore. They expect to take part. They switch between platforms, creators, and moments that feel real. Athletes are becoming media brands themselves, and data only matters when it helps you connect.
In this post, we dive into four lessons we took away from Leaders Week and share what they mean for how sport can stay relevant in a world where culture moves faster than ever.
1. Your fans are the foundation
Across panels from World Netball to UEFA, one point kept coming up: growth depends on building genuine relationships with your fans. They’re no longer a passive audience. Knowing who they are, what they value, and how they engage is now your biggest competitive advantage because it underpins long-term commercial growth.
That’s why grassroots still matter. It’s where participation starts and lifelong fandom grows. The organisations leading the way stay close to their communities and encourage fans to create and share, and use those insights to guide global storytelling.
This came through especially strongly in conversations around women’s sport, which is reshaping fandom entirely. Research from Wasserman Collective found that 72% of women globally now identify as avid sports fans (up 10% in three years), and women drive 75% of household purchasing decisions.
For rights holders, that creates both an opportunity and a challenge. A growing audience with real spending power is emerging. But, they expect representation and relevance. The stories that resonate are grounded in real fan experiences: women attending matches, sharing their excitement, and showing what belonging looks like. When fans see people like themselves in the stands and on screen, they’re more likely to join in and invest their time, energy, and money.
When fans feel seen, they show up. They participate, spend, and bring new fans with them – growing the sport and its commercial value. Fan-generated content makes this connection tangible. It reminds people why they care, strengthens loyalty, and drives measurable revenue.
At Amondo, we see this every day. When rights holders and brands integrate fan-generated content into their storytelling, even simple CTAs (like linking to merch pages) perform better – with click-through rates far higher than on standard landing pages. That’s because people see themselves in the story, and they trust that investing in the sport is worth it.
2. Athlete storytelling is a growth engine
Our next takeaway from Leaders Week was that athletes are no longer part of the story – they are the story.
The Women’s Rugby World Cup proved this. Players’ voices and narratives went beyond the matches, creating connection and engagement that no campaign could match.
Fans connect with honesty and individuality. Seeing content directly from players brings them closer to the team and the sport. It breaks down barriers, showing athletes as people – relatable, driven and human. That relatability builds lasting loyalty.
And the numbers back it up. Athlete-led social media posts from the tournament generated over 219 million views, amplifying reach far beyond traditional broadcast.
These figures show that athlete storytelling isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s a growth driver. Rights holders that bring player-led storytelling into their owned channels see real returns – from higher engagement and ticket sales to stronger sponsorship ROI and deeper fan relationships.
3. Sport is competing for attention
We also learned that sport isn’t just competing with other sports anymore. It’s competing with everything – music, fashion, film, gaming and social media.
Holding someone’s full attention for 90 minutes is rare. People scroll, stream, and switch constantly. That’s not a threat; it’s an opportunity to rethink how sport shows up.
Panels from Manchester City, FIFA, and Unilever all made the same point: the smartest organisations treat sport as part of culture, not separate from it. They don’t expect fans to come to them. They meet fans where they already are. That means short-form stories, highlights, and behind-the-scenes content that feel natural on the platforms fans use every day.
When sport shows up in the same spaces as fashion and music, it becomes part of the cultural conversation. And when moments are shareable, they live far beyond match day.
At Amondo, we help our partners capture that energy – turning live moments and fan reactions into stories that keep the spotlight burning long after the final whistle.
4. From content to connection
The next big lesson from Leaders Week was that sport can’t rely on reach alone. It’s not just about getting fans to engage – it’s about owning where and how that engagement happens.
Too much of the fan relationship still lives on third-party platforms. Those platforms collect the data, control the interaction, and benefit from the insight that rights holders actually need. The result? They hold the value, while sports lose visibility over their own audiences.
The organisations leading the way are taking that relationship back. They’re building owned ecosystems where they control the fan journey (from discovery to conversion) and can see exactly what drives participation, purchase, and retention.
World Netball’s direct-to-consumer platform, NetballPass, was a standout example discussed at Leaders Week. It connects live content, storytelling and commerce all in one place – giving fans real reasons to subscribe and return. By owning that relationship, World Netball isn’t just generating revenue. It’s collecting insight that fuels better content, smarter partnerships, and sustainable growth.
Social platforms still matter for discovery. YouTube and TikTok are where fans often find the story. But the real value comes when you bring them into your own ecosystem – a space where you can personalise, reward loyalty, and build connection that lasts.
Sport’s next phase of growth isn’t about producing more content. It’s about creating spaces that fans choose to return to. And owning the data that makes those experiences smarter every time.
The future is human
Leaders Week made one thing clear: fandom is evolving fast. Fans don’t just want access. They want to participate, connect, and feel part of the story.
The sports and brands leading that change aren’t chasing numbers. They’re building meaning. They understand that growth comes from depth – from giving fans, athletes, and partners space to contribute, not just consume.
From grassroots to global stages, the opportunity now is to connect every layer of the fan experience. To turn fleeting engagement into long-term loyalty. To make sport feel as alive off the pitch as it does on it.
At Amondo, that’s what drives us. We help rights holders and brands capture the moments, voices, and reactions that matter and turn them into stories that live on their own platforms. Stories that fans see themselves in. Stories that last and drive commercial impact.
Because fandom isn’t about more content. It’s about connection that means something, both for your audience and your business.
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Sports brands & rights holders: 5 ways fan interaction powers the non-matchday experience
This article outlines five principles sports brands can use to activate fans between fixtures and capture real behavioural signals beyond matchday.
One of the biggest challenges for sports brands is the time between matchdays. Attention lapses, momentum declines, and performance becomes harder to uphold.
But non-matchdays aren’t a gap, they’re a unique opportunity.
When activated well, this period allows rights holders to drive meaningful fan actions such as signing up for memberships, purchasing merchandise, downloading apps, or planning future match attendance.
These moments reveal how fans actually behave, not just what they view or like.
By designing interactions around non-matchday moments — from membership sign-ups to buying merch — sports brands can uncover real signals of intent and preference, rather than relying on surface-level metrics.
So how do sports brands activate audiences between matchdays and turn behaviour into desirable intelligence?
We’ve identified five principles sports marketers should apply when designing content campaigns outside of matchdays to gain more insight into their fan base and drive commercial impact.
Tip 1: Design video to capture fan behaviour, not just fill inventory
Between matchdays, video is one of the most effective ways to keep fans engaged.
According to HubSpot’s 2024 video marketing data, short-form video is the most used format and delivers the highest ROI among marketers, with 83% reporting its effectiveness.
Short, bite-sized videos – such as fan-generated content, match clips, analysis, or behind-the-scenes footage – help extend the match narrative, fit naturally into modern attention spans and maintain momentum when there’s no live action.
Unlike static content, video demands time and attention. How long fans watch, what they skip, or whether they explore further are strong signals of interest that are far more meaningful than a like or impression.
The challenge is that this behaviour often lives on third-party platforms. This means that when a video is shared only on social media, most engagement insight remains inaccessible.
Putting video on your own website or app makes all the difference.
It lets you see how fans actually interact with content, so you can track and measure deep engagement, learning what drives fans to act, not just what they watched.
Takeaways
- Video keeps fans engaged between matchdays and creates clearer signals of interest than static content
- The real value of video lies in how fans engage with it, from what they watch, finish, and act on — not just who created it
- Hosting video on owned channels and websites helps brands see what drives actions like ticket sales, merch, and sign-ups
Tip 2: Encourage fans to contribute to unlock better insight
Wyng (formerly Offerpop) found that while more than half of consumers are willing to interact with brand campaigns, only 16% of brands successfully turn that participation into first-party behavioural insight they can act on.
The opportunity isn’t just to spark interaction, but to invite fans to actively contribute beyond matchday.
Sports rightsholders have some of the most loyal fan bases, and they want to stay involved between fixtures, sharing opinions, creativity and personal moments that reflect their connection to the club or brand.
By inviting fans to submit content, opinions or experiences, rightsholders move beyond surface engagement.
Every submission becomes a source of first-party data, revealing who fans are, what motivates them, which players or themes resonate most, and how different audiences behave outside of matchday peaks.
The result is non-matchday campaigns that feel more genuine and community-led because they feature real fan voices.
At the same time, rightsholders gain a clear view of how audience behaviour and what drives them, helping to shape content and partner value without increasing output.
For their “Run Your Way” campaign, New Balance used Amondo’s social gallery and Submission Tile to give runners a simple way to take part.
Participants shared photos and videos of their runs via race hashtags or by uploading content, which surfaced in a branded wall on the event site.
This allowed New Balance to see which moments people chose to share and how community content performed compared to brand content, all based on real behavioural data, not surface metrics.
Takeaways
- Fan participation drives intelligence, not just engagement
- Brands can create more value without creating more content
- This approach helps you to prioritise content decisions and partner activations based on behaviour, not guesswork
Tip 3: Create controlled content variation to generate behavioural insight
FC Nordsjælland used a deliberately different content perspective to observe how fans responded to a new format, topic and style compared to what they were used to for official club media.
In 2018, the club handed a GoPro camera to their intern, a 14-year-old fan. He interviewed players, including asking the club’s star striker why he wasn’t scoring goals…
By introducing a fan-led viewpoint inside controlled, branded formats, the club was able to compare behavioural responses – such as completion rates, replay behaviour and interaction patterns – against more traditional training and behind-the-scenes content.
This contrast helped reveal which types of storytelling drove deeper engagement from fans and sustained attention outside matchdays.
The value wasn’t the identity of the person holding the camera. It was the behavioural variation the format introduced, and the insight it generated into what non-matchday content actually resonates and holds attention.
Takeaways
- Fan submissions add authenticity and community value, but the real advantage comes from experimenting with formats and observing behaviour to see what actually works
- Varying content formats and access help rightsholders identify what drives non-matchday performance
Tip 4: Turn repeat fan behaviour into compounding intelligence
Non-matchdays aren’t only valuable because they create more content – they’re valuable because they create repeatable behavioural signals.
Using the same interactive formats over time encourages fans to return, making it easier to see clear patterns in behaviour; from content structures that drive deeper engagement andwhich access points prompt repeat interaction to which signals connect to downstream outcomes.
Over time, this behavioural data compounds.
Each activation adds context to the last, allowing brands to move from isolated performance snapshots to a clear understanding of what consistently works – and what to stop doing by proven behavioural drivers.
Takeaways
- Repeatable activation creates behavioural data that compounds over time
- Comparing signals across non-matchdays reveals what to scale, adapt or stop
- Intelligence grows by reapplying learning, not recycling content
Tip 5: Activate audience content through measurable interaction formats
During the Tokyo 2020 Olympics and the coronavirus pandemic, Team GB faced a clear challenge: fan support was remote, fragmented and largely invisible beyond surface engagement metrics.
Using Amondo, Team GB brought together fan-generated content, athlete stories and branded partner content into a series of Amondo Galleries designed for engagement, participation and activation.
Amondo’s Submission Tile invited fans and athletes to share photos and videos with messages of support, creating a continuous stream of authentic content throughout the Games.
At the same time, embedded Click-Through Tiles turned attention into action, converting passive viewing into measurable interaction.
App and newsletter sign-up CTAs were placed at moments of high emotional connection, enabling Team GB to grow its owned audience and capture first-party behavioural data. This gave the team a clearer understanding of who its fans were, how they engaged with Olympic content, and how to continue those relationships beyond the Games.
The result wasn’t just visibility – it was behavioural intelligence. A repeatable model for understanding and activating fan support when attention is distributed, and physical presence isn’t possible.
Takeaways
- Participation becomes intelligence
- Interactive formats convert attention into measurable action, capturing behaviour that social platforms don’t expose
- Behavioural insight enables long-term value, helping brands grow owned audiences and deepen engagement – even when physical presence isn’t possible
In summary
Non-matchdays are valuable because they allow sports brands to both publish more content and also create a repeatable opportunity to capture fan behaviour.
When fans interact with content through structured, portable formats, sports brands and rightsholders gain first-party behavioural insight into what holds attention, signals intent and drives outcomes between matchdays.
That insight compounds over time, replacing guesswork with clarity on what to prioritise, scale or retire.
The advantage isn’t fan-created content or curated feeds. It’s the ability to observe real behaviour, compare performance across formats and apply learning consistently as the season unfolds.
You can explore more examples in our case studies here.
Getty Images and Amondo partner to transform licensed visual content into actionable fan insight
This post announces Amondo’s partnership with Getty Images, showing how licensed visual content is activated to capture first-party fan behaviour and performance insight.
Content intelligence platform Amondo has partnered with Getty Images to give sports, media, and entertainment organisations a new way to display and activate licensed visual content. These experiences capture first-party fan behaviour and performance insight that other platforms don’t provide.
Getty Images is a preeminent global visual content creator and marketplace that offers a comprehensive range of content solutions to meet the needs of customers worldwide, regardless of their size.
Through its Getty Images, iStock, and Unsplash brands, websites, and APIs, Getty Images provides premium, licensed visual content that powers storytelling at a global scale. This content can now be discovered and activated inside Amondo’s platform.
Working with clients including Chelsea FC, Universal Music, Formula E, the International Cricket Council, and Live Nation, Amondo ingests brand, creator, and fan content and transforms it into portable branded formats across web, mobile, partner sites, in-venue screens, and OOH.
These formats capture first-party behaviours such as taps, swipes, depth, hesitation, dwell and QR journeys.
This behaviour connects to downstream commercial outcomes like traffic, sign-ups, purchases, ticket sales or conversions - creating an intelligence layer that reveals what content actually drives performance and why.
This means visual content is no longer just displayed; it becomes measurable, comparable, and optimisable based on how fans actually interact with it.
The integration allows organisations to connect their Getty Images account within the Amondo dashboard to add visual content from Getty Images to their Amondo Galleries.
"We’re delighted to announce our partnership and integration with Getty Images, enabling Getty’s visual content to be activated directly within Amondo. Many of our clients already use Getty Images, and this integration allows that content to be deployed in Amondo’s portable branded formats while capturing first-party behavioural insight into how audiences actually engage. The result is clearer intelligence on what resonates, how content performs, and what to scale next, moving clients from distribution to understanding what works and why.”
Charlie Bucker, Founder, Amondo
"Enabling our clients to work smarter and faster to showcase visual content that engages audiences across the globe is at the heart of our strategy. This is especially important during event-driven coverage, where Getty Images is relied upon as a core component of fan interaction. Our exciting partnership with Amondo streamlines the creation process through a native experience with content at customers' fingertips.”
Benjamin Beavan, Global Director Strategic Development, Getty Images
One of the first organisations to make use of the new integration is the British Olympic Association and Team GB around the recent 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing.
Team GB was able to access and display licensed visual content from Getty Images within daily Imprints showcased via the teamgb.com, official Team GB app and social media.
"The Getty Images integration with Amondo has allowed us to feature the high-quality and impactful photos that Getty Images is renowned for within our Amondo Gallery feeds — and in a fraction of the time it would take to do manually. We’re proud to have worked with Amondo in bringing the passionate support of Team GB fans into one central location, making it easy for athletes and supporters alike to feel the momentum behind the team from back home.”
Nicol McClelland, Head Of Marketing, British Olympic Association