Where’s Our Basketball Community Spending Their Money?
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Before we get into some hot new basketball data, we wanted to quickly recap this year’s electric March Madness Tournaments:
On the women’s side, viewers got to experience #2 Iowa go head to head against #3 LSU for all the marbles. LSU came out on top with a score of 102-85. Neither team would not have been the same without their record-breaking star players: Angel Reese from LSU and Caitlin Clark from Iowa.
The Men’s March Madness Championship featured #5 SDSU and #4 UConn. UConn dominated the court with a score of 76-59. UConn’s win gave them their 5th national title in program history. Despite having gone into the 2023 season in ranked in the AP poll, UConn blew through the tournament, beating almost every team by at least 20 points. Only 2.4% of brackets had UConn picked to win the national championship, and they swiftly proved how underestimated their squad really was.
Speaking of March Madness, we are going to jump into the data behind the scenes of this years March Madness tournaments: “Madness” is the perfect way to describe both tournaments. The men’s side saw major programs lose early while mostly first-timers & underdogs made up the final four. Schools like San Diego State University and Florida Atlantic University received a ton of great exposure for their whole school, courtesy of their gameplay. Meanwhile on the women’s side, in only the second year the NCAA started using the phrase “March Madness” for their tournament and having games aired on prominent networks, there were record viewership ratings. The women’s championship between LSU and Iowa brought in an average of 9.9 million viewers, the most viewed college sporting event ever on ESPN+.
While winding down from NCAA Basketball and preparing for NBA Playoffs, basketball as a sport is top of mind. The beginning and end of seasons are important for every sport to attract eyeballs, and basketball is not different. Our data shows that people often become basketball fans for the first time during the months of November and March, immediately after the NBA season starts and when the playoffs inch closer.
While our data suggests 2023 did not create as much new fandom as 2022, we still saw growth and something else very interesting from the basketball community. Basketball culture is spreading towards other sports, especially in golf. Based on our transaction data, we believe nearly 30% of our basketball community is also part of our golf community. With high-profile NBA players like J.R. Smith now as a college golfer and Stephen Curry’s golf apparel line, we aren’t the only ones seeing this crossover of fandom. The most original basketball culture piece out there, sneaker culture, is entering the golf world. While historically we might think of basketball as the leader in sneaker culture, golf has recently become the market leader; 23% of the golfer community has bought with companies like Flight Club & StockX.
*Our data comes from a random panel of 20 million credit & debit card holders in the United States from January 1, 2016 - April 5, 2023.
Basketball as a sport has done a great job engaging fans over the years and both the men’s and women’s games are poised to continue growing, domestically and internationally. Golf has a similar potential if it continues to dig into the cultural overlap of sports, entertainment, and fashion, which have helped propel basketball culture for decades.
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