How a major professional sports league answered: player first, or fan first?
A major professional sports league wanted to reach children earlier. Before it could build the plan, it had to settle a question nobody internally agreed on: do kids become players before they become fans, or fans before players?
A sequencing question with a budget attached
Every sport says it wants younger fans. Far fewer can say how a child actually arrives. If kids play before they follow, the money belongs in grassroots participation. If they follow before they play, it belongs in content and fandom.
Getting the order wrong does not fail loudly. It quietly misdirects years of investment, and the shortfall only becomes visible a generation later.
Ask the children, not the existing fans
Surveying current young fans only tells you about children who already arrived. The league instead worked from kids’ own reported behaviour across the whole population: what they play, what they watch, which platforms they spend time on and which properties they already care about.
A second strand looked at where the sport could meet children on ground they already occupied, including preschool properties and public broadcast content, rather than expecting them to seek the sport out.
A strategy built on the actual order of events
The youth strategy team got a defensible answer on sequencing, and with it a clear view of where sustained engagement should start rather than where it traditionally had.
That fed a concrete platform decision: a dedicated kids channel on the video platform where the audience was already spending its time, planned for the following season rather than pushed into an indefinite future.
Every sport says it wants younger fans. Very few can tell you whether a nine-year-old becomes one by playing or by watching. That single answer changes where entire budget goes.
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