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Fans of professional and college sports attend the games and engage with their favorite teams on many media platforms. They also love to play the games and participate in other activities as “weekend warriors.” These fans choose radio as the medium to accompany them.

Local Sports Insights, a sports research service, reports professional sports fans tend to be slightly older than college sports fans, with average ages of 50 and 46, respectively. This difference is likely the substantial number of college sports fans who are alumni as well as those with children at those schools. Similarly, college sports fans have a larger average household income at $79,800 than professional sports fans at $75,300.

Correlating the Local Sports Insights’ sports fans profiles with data from five representative 2021 consumer/market surveys conducted by The Media Audit shows the favorite activities of these sports fans who are heavily exposed to radio (180+ minutes during an average day).

The Media Audit data reveals sports fans who are heavily exposed to radio over-indexed, on average, in these five markets, for all seven outdoor activities. Among professional sports fans, boating/sailing was first at an average index of 133. Although some under-indexed in a few activity categories, the indices are very strong throughout the table.

“The combination of the Local Sports Insights and The Media Audit data indicates radio is where sports teams and advertisers can target fans who are physically active and have the disposable income to buy the equipment, apparel and shoes they need to enjoy those activities,” said Tony Ott, Vice President/General Manager, Local Sports Insights.

The second table below reveals a somewhat different set of indices for college sports fans who are heavily exposed to radio and their favorite physical/outdoor activities. On average, they over-index the most for biking/cycling at 153. Some college sports fans in some of the five representative markets under-indexed significantly, but these may be regional variations and older college sports fans being a bit less physically active.

Whatever the differences among professional and college sports fans’ preferred physical/outdoor activities, radio can effectively and efficiently reach these audiences when they’re cheering their favorite teams or competing as a “weekend warrior.