The Year in Fandom: How Sports, Culture & Entertainment Leaders Build Fans

If you care about how fandom really grows, this year-end review is your field guide. We pulled threads from dozens of candid conversations across sports, Broadway, music, family entertainment, and venue operations to reveal seven clear themes that separate fleeting hype from durable community.We start with growing audiences: the U.S. Open’s free Fan Week proves sampling converts, while the Formula 1 Exhibition shows how taking the show to the city unlocks new audiences. That same logic challenges Broadway to think bigger than fixed seat counts, with live capture and streaming as discovery engines that feed the box office rather than compete with it. And we dismantle lazy assumptions about women’s sports with The Gist’s blueprint for reaching underserved fans by widening the lane, not narrowing it.Legacy, when handled with care, becomes a growth asset. PBS and Feld Entertainment explain how to honor nostalgia while delivering something new enough to belong to today’s audience. Opera lovers remind us what lifelong loyalty sounds like when a performance clicks and imprints for decades. On the artist side, the economics of touring and social access make fan relationships the main stage; from the GRAMMYs’ vantage point to music cruises built for connection, the artists who treat fans as partners build careers that last.Technology runs through it all, with AI emerging as the new discovery layer. The job now is to make your content machine-readable so it surfaces where people ask for it, while keeping tech focused on enabling human care. Hospitality over scripts is the mandate: Southwest’s trust-in-people approach, BroadwayCon’s simple meetups that turn strangers into friends, and D23’s daily listening across superfans show how authenticity scales. Finally, we go inside the venue: “street-to-seat” design raises expectations on speed, choice, and sensory experience, and local identity, like New Orleans pride at Pelicans games, turns moments into memories.Walk the lot. Time the lines. Watch the fans. That’s the habit we’re taking into next season, along with a commitment to keep the conversation practical, human, and loud. If this resonates, subscribe, share the show with a colleague who builds audiences, and leave a review to help more fan-first leaders find us. A big thank you to all of our guests, including Nicole Kankam, Jonathan Linden, Jacie deHoop, Robert Diamond, Alex Birsh, Ruthie Fierberg, Amy Wigler, Jim Moseley, Melanie Broussalion, Eric Bornemann, John Loken, Jeff Cuellar, Janette Roush, Andrew Recinos, Andrew Harvell, Melissa Anelli, Michael Vargo, Tina Heney, Elisa Padilla, and Mel Barry.Recorded December 2025Hosts: Damian Bazadona, CEO & Founder, Situation & Peter Yagecic, Founder, A Mind at Work Consulting