For generations, Latinos in the U.S. have changed the way sports are played and enjoyed in the U.S. But despite their contributions on the playing field, a seat in the boardroom of a team, league or business partner has historically been hard to come by.
The Latino Sports Institute (LiS), a group led by several seasoned Latino sports industry experts (Xavier Gutierrez, Pedro Guerrero, Vianni Lubs and Mike Valdes Fauri), commissioned Nielsen to conduct a study to highlight commercial opportunities to engage with the community. The study explored Latino fan demographics across the most prominent leagues in sports, providing insight into how Latino fans consume sports, engage with sponsors and more.
The study aims to provide data to help realize those dreams and offer brands a waypoint on the roadmap for connecting with the youngest ethnic group in the U.S. “This report makes it clear that Latino passion and fandom has a direct commercial impact,” Guerrero said in an email. “Brands don’t need to look beyond the Latino market to realize a return on investment.”
While soccer is the most common slang term for Latino sports fans, the report makes clear that their interests are broader: In fact, they are more likely than the general population to be fans of the four major men’s leagues, MLS, and the WNBA.
“When you compare the overlap between where U.S. professional sports teams are and where Latino communities are growing, you see a lot of overlap,” Gutierrez said in a video interview. “If you think about the audience base in Los Angeles, Chicago, Las Vegas, Tampa, Dallas, this community is already there. They’re already part of the fan base. The question is, how do you continue to fully develop that fan base?”
“We want to be part of that conversation and also help them find the talent to help them figure out those strategies.”
The study also highlighted the bilingual dimension, with 68% of Latinos in the U.S. speaking at least some Spanish. This is evident as sports leagues connect with the diaspora by broadcasting games on Spanish-language TV as well as running Spanish-language digital campaigns. Stacey de Armas, Nielsen’s senior vice president of inclusive intelligence and innovation, noted that MLS has seen a 15% increase in English-dominant Latino fans year over year, while the NFL has seen a 9% increase in bilingual Latino fans.
“Part of it is because the league and the teams have really made a big effort to reach out to the fans because of the fans,” she said in a video interview.
Perhaps the most striking thing about the report is how young Latino sports fans are compared to the U.S. population as a whole: 72% of Latino fans are millennials or Gen Z, compared to 50% of the overall population. This isn’t surprising, according to de Armas, because the median age of Latinos in the country (30.0 years old in 2020) is more than 10 years younger than the general population (41.1 years old), according to the U.S. Census.
In sports that skew the average age towards the mid-to-late 50s, such as the NFL and MLB, two-thirds (67%) of Latino fans across both leagues are between the ages of 16 and 39. Even in sports with a younger demographic, such as the NBA, WNBA and MLS, Latino fans under the age of 40 make up at least 72% of the fanbase.
Brands involved in the sports world have extensive opportunities to build loyalty among this young consumer group, especially as they consume sports on youth-targeted platforms.
“One is that Latinos are about a quarter more likely to watch sports on streaming platforms than all others,” de Armas said, “but what’s really interesting is that they’re 38% more likely to use TikTok for sports news and sports-related content.”
“If brands are engaging with this demographic with sports-related content, they will see two to three times more results than if they were to target only Latinos with traditional social content, thanks to this young demographic that is not found anywhere else in the U.S. population.”
LiS and Nielsen declined to comment on which companies are cashing in well with this generation, but de Armas said there are several sectors that could do well with this age group. “Automotive, financial services and beverage/alcohol always make sense,” de Armas said. “Latinos are building their lives more than non-Hispanic whites because they’re a younger generation.”
For at least two decades, the industry has heard that the Latino population would explode in both population and economic power, and by and large, the industry has responded to that call with a more concerted marketing effort to attract Latino businesses.But the group believes the sports industry still has a lot of work to do in terms of decision-making, whether that’s actually fielding teams or building sponsorship opportunities.
Gutierrez is famous for being the first Latino CEO of an NHL team when he led the now-defunct Arizona Coyotes franchise, so his desire to see more talent like himself isn’t surprising: To him, Latino sports offers team owners, league executives and their partners a data point that shows them that continuing their diversity efforts makes good business sense.
“We’re trying to point out that there’s still a lot of opportunity,” Gutierrez said, “including having community representatives in the front office, league office, media executives and brands to continue to bring ideas of ‘how should we do it’ rather than just ‘should we do it?'”
