The Future of Fandom
In today’s digital world, engaging fans isn’t optional—it’s everything.
Future of Fandom is the podcast for sports leagues, broadcasters, and digital platforms who know that the old playbook for audience engagement no longer works. Hosted by the team at LiveLike—the leading enterprise engagement and loyalty platform—this series explores how the most forward-thinking organisations are using gamification, loyalty programs, and community-driven experiences to deepen fan relationships and drive real business results.
Every other week, we speak with senior decision-makers from global sports teams, media companies, and consumer brands about what it takes to turn casual spectators into loyal superfans. We dive into how enterprise organisations are rethinking digital infrastructure, leveraging first-party data, and adopting modular, API-first engagement tools to future-proof their fan strategies.
Whether you're a Head of Product, Digital, Revenue or Strategy, Future of Fandom gives you the insight and inspiration you need to move beyond passive content and into interactive, monetisable, and measurable fan experiences.
This isn’t about chasing trends—it’s about building the infrastructure of tomorrow’s fandom, today.
Subscribe now and stay ahead of the game.
The Future of Fandom
How to Build a Sports League, a Brand and a Fan Base All at Once
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Most women's sports leagues copy the men's playbook. The Netball Super League is writing its own, and it's working.
What happens when you have 3 million people playing a sport, but almost none of them are paying fans? How do you convert participation into fandom when your audience has never been taught to be sports fans in the first place?
Claire Nelson is the first-ever Managing Director of the Netball Super League. She's spent nearly two decades building commercial cases for women's sport, from rebranding Netball Scotland to filling the O2 Arena with 10,000 fans for a grand final on Sky Sports.
This conversation breaks down exactly how you build a league, a brand, and a fan base simultaneously, with no legacy infrastructure, no private equity shortcuts, and an audience that consumes sport on completely different terms. You'll walk away rethinking how fan engagement works when your audience is 80% female, 50% under 35, and overwhelmingly watches on catch-up.
If you work in sports business, fan engagement strategy, or digital fandom, this one's worth your time, especially if you're building for audiences the traditional sports model was never designed to serve.
What you'll learn in this episode
>> Playing a sport and being a fan of it are driven by completely different motivations, and assuming one converts to the other is the mistake most women's sports leagues make when building their fan base.
>> The Netball Super League deliberately avoided private equity investment to retain control of a ten-year professionalization journey, betting that building value first would put them in a stronger position later.
>> Traditional sports metrics like live viewership and stadium capacity may be the wrong yardstick for women's sport. The real commercial power lies in understanding the depth and influence of an engaged female audience, not just its size.
>> Nottingham Forest's decision to integrate a netball team into their football club ecosystem is quietly shifting culture, bringing new demographics into arenas and changing how men's sport fans engage with women's sport.
Timestamps
00:00 Claire Nelson on building a sport loved by everybody
00:32 Welcome to the Future of Fandom
01:15 Claire introduces the Netball Super League
03:08 From hospitality and PR to women's sport
08:40 Starting the league with almost nothing
15:06 Why women aren't used to being sports fans
16:15 Building a brand that's more than a logo
16:49 League structure: eight clubs, different ownership models
21:50 Converting 3 million players into paying fans
27:12 The entertainment product beyond the court
31:21 How league and federation fuel each other
33:35 Digital strategy, data, and understanding female consumption
38:05 Why catch-up viewing might matter more than live
41:24 Where younger audiences actually watch sport
43:08 What success looks like in five years
45:24 Why every man who watches netball loves it
Useful resources
Connect with Samuel Westberg and Claire Nelson on LinkedIn.
Visit the LiveLike and Netball Super League websites
Connect with the show
Follow LiveLike on LinkedIn for more conversations with the people shap