July 6th, 2020, YouGov
Do Australian sports and teams do enough to address and support key social issues in Australia? Should brands and partners get involved? And with such a heavy cluster of issues where does sport even begin to identify what sports fans truly care about? Fortunately, our latest YouGov Profiles dataset has these questions covered for you.
“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced”
Do sports properties and teams do enough to support social issues?
Based on our latest data from Profiles just 34% of sports fans agree that ‘Australian sports codes and teams do enough to address and support key social issues’. A further 41% of fans remain neutral and 25% disagree.
Should Brands and Sports Partners Get Involved?
The latest numbers from Profiles tells us that 38% of Australian sports fans are more likely to support and purchase from a brand if it is involved with a sport on tackling social issues. As a market size brands are looking at close to 5.7 million fans who fall into that belief. Undoubtably there is a real opportunity here for brands and partners to leverage this, but the challenge remains; what social issues do fans even care about?
What Social Issues Do Sports Fans Care About?
Climate change (19%) is the clear stand-out fans rate as the most important social issue in Australia right now with around 1 in 5 fans recognising the importance of our environment. Mental Health also rated highly for 1 in 10 sports fans (10%).
Diving deeper into the environmental data amongst fans revealed that 69% believe that brands should consider environmental sustainability when putting on events, 53% care about what their carbon footprint is and 46% of fans try to only buy from companies who are social and environmentally responsible.
While sport has inarguably made strong in-roads to address environmental concerns amongst fans, it is also important to recognise that there is still a long way to go towards achieving high levels of sustainability and environmental friendliness at events. The other key concerns are to recognise that different sporting fans can have different attitudes and fans can quickly change what issues they perceive as ‘most important’. Sporting bodies must therefore continue to monitor and keep on the pulse of the ever-changing attitudes in the sporting landscape. Using YouGov Profiles enables our clients to achieve this.
Photo by Emily Morter