If your grandfather watched sports, then your father watched sports. And if your father watched sports, then you, likely, also watched sports.
“It was very seamless,” Anthony Palomba said. “It was an easy transition for a long time to pass team fandom across generations.”
Palomba is an assistant professor of business administration at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business. He’s also 39 and speaks from the perspective of a millennial – the generation of people born between 1981 and 1996 – as it relates to consuming athletic events on television.
Darden School of Business assistant professor Anthony Palomba is an expert in audience analysis, media innovation and firm competition, and entertainment science. (Photo by Matt Riley, University Communications)
The New York native continues to occasionally watch the Yankees, among his other favorite teams, largely because of family tradition.
Data suggests, though, Palomba’s generation could be the last of its kind.
While Sunday’s NBC broadcast of the Super Bowl between the New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks may indeed draw a large viewing audience – – network executives, those overseeing deals worth billions of dollars to show these games, remain uneasy about what these numbers could look like in the future.
In 2022, an Emory University marketing professor released a study that found only 23% of Generation Z (people born between 1997 and 2012) compared to 42% of millennials, 33% of Generation X (people born between 1965 and 1980) and 31% of baby boomers (those born between 1946 and 1964).
The average age of viewers watching primetime NFL games on broadcast television is 62.5, .
An ideal average viewership age, Palomba said, would fall between 30 and 35.
“If you ask my direct reports, what it is that’s keeping them up at night, if you ask me, it’s that,” ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro said in the Front Office Sports story.
