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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
From Wimbledon to Wembley: Alexandra Willis on Rewriting the FA's Digital Playbook
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The Football Association wrote the laws of the modern game.
It has governed English football for 160 years. And until this year, it had never had a Chief Digital Officer.
Alexandra Willis is the person who has taken on that role - and we joined her at Wembley Stadium, with the World Cup imminent and one of the most ambitious digital briefs in sport sitting in front of her. That brief spans the England men's and women's national teams, the FA Cup, grassroots football, and Wembley itself as a year-round venue.
This conversation covers what to consider when building a digital strategy for an institution of the FA's complexity - how you create meaningful fan engagement around a national team when there's no weekly game to anchor it, how the squad selector and the England app going #1 on the App Store on announcement day signals a fundamental shift from broadcaster-led to FA-led moments, and why the future of fandom might be less about reach and more about a genuinely personal, direct relationship with the fan.
Alexandra has spent 20 years moving through some of sport's most distinctive digital environments - Wimbledon, the Premier League, and now the FA - and her perspective on what each of those models taught her about fan engagement is one of the most considered you'll hear.
If you work in sport, media, digital strategy or fan engagement, this one is essential listening.
What you'll learn in this episode
- What to consider when your digital strategy has to serve a national team, a grassroots game, a cup competition and an iconic stadium - all at once.
- How the FA is approaching its fan relationships - building experiences like a squad selector and live blog that bring fans inside moments that once belonged entirely to broadcasters. On announcement day, the England app hit #1 on the App Store in the UK.
- Why fandom is fluid, not fixed - and what it means to move beyond direct-to-consumer to something genuinely direct-to-individual.
- Women's football is the fastest-growing sport in the world, but the commercial infrastructure is still growing. Alex draws on Wimbledon - one of the few properties with a genuinely even gender split across every platform - to explain what building properly for that audience actually requires.
- Why AI readiness starts with your data, not your tools - and why to consider not rushing in before the foundations are right.
Sport's greatest asset in an AI-saturated world is its unpredictability. Alexandra makes the case for protecting it.
Question
The FA is making a deliberate shift from broadcaster-led moments to FA-led ones - owning the squad announcement, the live blog, the app experience. Is that the right move for governing bodies? And what would it take for your organisation to make the same shift? Drop your thoughts in the comments.
What’s next?
Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts - and if this episode made you think differently about AI in sport, share it with someone who needs to hear it.
Useful resources
- Download the England App on:
The App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/the-official-england-app/id6759335403
Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.thefa.fanapp
- Connect with Miheer: https://www.linkedin.com/in/miheerwalavalkar/
- Connect with Alexandra: https://www.linkedin.com/in/willisalexandra/
- Visit https://www.livelike.com/
- Visit https://www.thefa.com/