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Post-Covid, we’ve had so many advancements in how you can walk around with sports on your phone. Now you can watch 4 games at once; we’ve moved away from having to go the sports bar."
Reimagining the future of the TV fan experience
Meeting fans where they’re at
Everyone has an opinion about sports. Good, bad, or uninterested, these opinions are usually strongly held for a myriad of reasons. You might avoid the football fan in your office, argue over the latest World Cup winner, or casually follow the Red Sox because your friends do. Whatever the stance, sports allegiances have even been known to make or break friendships.
For many people, sports are experienced in front of a TV. In-person games can be expensive, hard to reach, or simply less engaging than watching at home. Television offers something the stadium often cannot: the best seat in the house. Being at home allows you to cater the game to your needs, whether that’s analyzing a touchdown, skipping ahead, or watching replays. In the stadium — and especially from the “nosebleeds” — you may miss context or key moments.
Designing the “best seat” experience creates an opportunity to engage both fans and non-fans. In particular, it’s difficult for more casual viewers to engage how they want and they face a rising barrier for entry. It’s sometimes hard to know what to watch, when to watch, or which team to follow; there’s no easy guidebook for cutting through the noise. For an experience centered around rules and calls, there’s no rule book for being a fan.
Differing views, shared experience
It’s clear that no two fans want exactly the same experience across all sports. This creates a meaningful design challenge: how to support wide variation without overwhelming users.
The answer lies in flexible personalization. Shared features remain consistent, while customization stays optional and intuitive. By giving everyone features that can be customized, personalization feels more intentional and doesn’t overwhelm the user. The fan drives the experience, not assumptions from the platform, and because fandom shifts daily, systems must remain adaptive rather than fixed.
Watching through a mindset
Imagine this: the Olympics are your SuperBowl. You follow athlete updates, read behind-the-scenes coverage, and know all the human interest stories. You care about figure skating, curling, ski jumping, and even the biathlon. Yet your TV platform keeps recommending Sunday night football or unrelated athlete documentaries; content that is of no interest to you and takes you out of the experience of watching the Olympics for that set two week period every two years.
Profiles already personalize viewing by tracking preferences and habits; but what if we extended this personalization beyond identity alone, and transitioned into watching mindsets? Instead of a fixed profile, imagine a temporary mode such as “LA Olympics 2028.” This reflects what you want to watch in the moment, giving you a more relevant and responsive viewing experience. You don’t need to wade through content shaped by past viewing habits; you feel heard and catered to.
Multi-mindsets to prioritize fan experience
Fan energy is rarely spread evenly across sports; die-hard basketball fans might only be casual baseball viewers, and Premier League fans might only be semi-interested in rugby. The attention paid to sports shifts with mood and context. Some days call for background (or ambient) viewing, while others call for full focus and commentary. Fandom can’t be relegated to a ‘one size fits all’ model, it’s a set of modes users move between.
A platform that acknowledges the fact that sports fandom is ever changing is one that highlights prioritization. This could come to life in the form of allowing viewers to rank their interests or even use voice input to signal current focus. The platform could tailor the power of suggestion and surface games, events, or related content that’s at the correct and needed depth for each viewer. For the newcomers just shaping their fan identity, this is one of the more powerful ways to usher them into the system.
A multi-mindset platform would allow viewers to shape their experience accordingly, while retaining the core TV structure. Known features such as rails and banners would highlight sports-relevant content, while generic recommendations would be replaced by upcoming games, related documentaries, or timely highlights aligned to their interests.
AI as a team player
AI is already shaping how people experience TV platforms through translation, voice control, and real-time assistance. As with all AI-related features, they need to be intentional and genuinely helpful. AI should be an added content layer, not a replacement for the content that’s being watched. Viewers have high expectations and quickly judge anything that seems unnecessary.
Used well, AI can deepen a fan’s experience. Background noise filtering can focus attention on gameplay, new fans can ask ‘dumb’ questions, and plays can be analyzed on a more meaningful level. For experienced fans, it can provide commentary, strategic insight, and predictions that they truly find helpful; viewing can also be enriched by player stories and contextual information.
Over time, AI can learn a fan’s viewing pattern and help classify them automatically, acting as a guide rather than a ‘nice to have’ feature. As fans develop, so does the system that helps them.
Considering the extended experience
Second screens are now the norm; one screen might be watched for a more casual game, while another tracks the more high-stakes match. Key moments arise where these screens could meet in the middle, presenting an opportunity for us to think about how that experience may differ throughout mindsets.
The experience of simultaneous watching is thought about, but not as targeted from a design point of view as it could be. AI is the perfect bridge between screens, automatically highlighting key plays, adjusting audio automatically, or offering real-time analysis across games. This potentially married experience could be one that’s more responsive, unified and nuanced.
Evolving the fan experience to match the moment
A fan’s strong opinions will only develop over time; loyalties shift and shared moments develop. The challenge now is ensuring the viewing experience understands this and keeps pace. By centering design on mindset, personalization and meaningful AI support, platforms can transform passive watching into something more responsive and inclusive. The result? A fan experience that grows alongside the people it serves.