Fans & Content
Fans don't wait for match day. Neither should your content
Sam Cherry
Founder
,
2403 Group
8
minutes to read
KEY TAKEAWAY
Sponsors are increasingly buying the attention that exists between events as well as during them. If you publish every day, in formats fans already watch, you've got more inventory to sell and more proof to show. Volume without a plan is just noise, though, so build series a partner can own.
What do your channels look like on a day when nothing's happening? For most rights holders the answer is not much, because content still gets planned around the fixture list: something happens on the pitch, the stage or the gallery floor, and the team scrambles to post about it. For a long time that was fine, because that was when the audience showed up.
It isn't fine any more. Fans now pick up their phones every day, whether or not there's a match, and the brands that sponsor you know it. They're moving money towards whoever can hold attention on a Tuesday afternoon in the off-season. That's why the quiet days matter so much now, and why it's a problem that so many clubs, festivals and venues still go silent on them.
57%
of UK adults watch short-form video at least once a day
YouGov, 2026
$37bn
projected US creator economy ad spend in 2025, up 26% year on year
IAB, 2025
+10 pts
potential brand awareness lift from branded content
Nielsen, 2023
Where the hours actually go
YouGov's latest UK survey found that 39% of adults watch short-form video multiple times a day and a further 18% watch it once a day, so in total 57% watch at least daily. Among 18 to 24-year-olds, 64% watch short-form content multiple times a day. That's a daily habit, and it doesn't pause between fixtures.
Sport follows the same pattern. Deloitte and Google's research on Indian sports fans found that fans spend 20% more time on non-live content than on live sports events, and one in two people started following a sport after encountering it online. Live rights still matter, of course. But more and more of the hours now go to clips, explainers, behind-the-scenes footage and the conversation around the event.
That changes what you're selling. If your audience only meets you on match day, a sponsor gets a handful of moments a season. If you publish every day, the sponsor gets a year-round relationship with the fan. And every empty day is a day that audience spends somewhere else.
Brands have already noticed
The IAB projects that US creator economy ad spend will reach $37 billion in 2025, a 26% increase on 2024 and about four times faster than the media industry overall. Nearly half (48%) of ad buyers now consider creators a 'must buy', behind only social media and paid search. That 48% is the figure I'd watch, because it suggests creators are now part of the core plan for a lot of buyers.
Creators win that money for simple reasons. They publish constantly, they know their audience and they make content people choose to watch. Branded content works for the same reason: Nielsen found it has the potential to lift brand awareness by 10 percentage points, with an aided recall rate of 81%.
This is the bit that should sting a little. Many rights holders own better stories than the creators winning those budgets, because they have the athletes, the artists, the access and the archive. What they often lack is rhythm.
A sponsor will ask about your Tuesdays, because that's where most of the year happens.
How to publish daily without burning out
Publishing every day doesn't mean publishing everything. The rights holders who do it well run a content calendar built on repeatable series: a weekly training-ground format, a matchday countdown, a fan question show, an artist rehearsal diary. Each series has a fixed slot, a format and a clear audience, so fans know when to look for it.
Series are also what sponsors buy. A one-off post is hard to put a value on, but a season-long series with a named partner, a consistent audience and monthly reporting is a product. It renews more easily too, because you can show the partner exactly what they got: who watched, how visible their brand was and the metrics they care about.
The trick is to plan volume around capacity. A few formats your team can sustain every week will beat an ambitious plan that collapses by mid-season. This is where smaller rights holders can win, because consistency matters more than budget.
Worth pausing on
If a sponsor asked what you published last Tuesday and who watched it, how quickly could you answer? And how many of your current formats would a partner actually want to put their name on for a whole season?
Three Key Steps
Get the rhythm right first, then the formats, then the product you sell to partners.
1
Map your quiet days
List every day in the next quarter with no fixture, show or opening; those are your gaps. With 57% of UK adults watching short-form video daily, an empty Tuesday is attention handed to someone else. Fill those days first with low-cost, repeatable formats, and save the ambitious ideas for later.
2
Build a handful of series
Pick formats your team can produce every week without heroics, and give each one a name, a slot and a target audience. Test them for a month, let your viewing data tell you which ones fans actually stick with, and drop the rest. Consistency is what builds the habit, and the habit is what sponsors pay for.
3
Package a series for a partner
Turn your best-performing series into a sponsor product, with naming, integration and reporting built in. Brands already treat creators as a must-buy channel, with 48% of buyers saying so. Show a partner the audience, the cadence and the results, then value it as a season-long asset rather than a single post.
A sponsor will ask about your Tuesdays, because that's where most of the year happens.
The Gulf's creators aren't waiting either
Few audiences are as connected as the Gulf's. DataReportal counts 38.6 million social media user identities in Saudi Arabia, equal to 111% of the population. YouTube's ad reach in the Kingdom is 27.5 million users, or 79.2% of the population. In other words, the audience you want is already scrolling, and the question is whose content it finds.
Creators have moved fast to fill that space. YouTube reported that the number of Saudi channels earning seven figures or more grew 40% year on year, and more than 95% of watch time for UAE-based channels comes from outside the country. Those creators are competing for the same attention as your club, festival or museum. They also show how far regional content can travel when it's made well and made often.
It's the same story in Asia. Deloitte and Google found that Gen Z fans in India engage with their favourite sports even during the off-season. For rights holders across the region, the lesson holds: own the daily habit in your market before someone else does. That means local language, local faces and a rhythm fans can rely on.
Questions for your Monday content meeting
Bring these to your next content planning meeting, with your commercial and partnerships leads at the table.
How many days last month did we publish nothing at all?
Which of our formats go out every week, without fail?
Could a sponsor own one of our series for a full season?
Do we actually know who watches us between events?
Are we working with creators, or competing against them?
From 15,000 AED a month
Timeline
Monthly
Think of content volume as the shelf space you sell to partners. The rights holders who publish every day are building habits, data and inventory all at once, and they're doing it on the days everyone else ignores.
If your calendar still follows the fixture list, start by filling the quiet days with a few series you can sustain. And if you'd rather have a team run it for you, our Content Studio managed service produces highlights, social series and partner content every month.
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