Resilience of the ‘fan spend’
The Resilience of Sports Retail: Why Fans Still Spend
Sports retail continues to outperform many other retail categories, even during periods of economic uncertainty. While discretionary spending tightens and consumers become more cautious, fans still turn up, still engage, and still spend. This resilience isn’t accidental, it’s emotional.
At its core, sports retail isn’t built on product alone. It’s built on identity, loyalty, and belonging. Fans don’t interact with sport in the same way they interact with other brands or experiences. A football club, a team, or an athlete often represents family tradition, community, memories, and personal values. That emotional depth fundamentally changes purchasing behaviour.
As the saying goes: “People don’t buy products, they buy meaning.”
In sports retail, that meaning is powerful.
I would add that cultural retail also displays this same emotional sentiment, but again, this links back to fandom.
The Fan Mindset: Emotion Before Logic
When a fan buys a shirt, scarf, or cap, they aren’t asking, “Do I need this?”
They’re asking, often subconsciously, “What does this say about me?”
Supporting a team is deeply emotional. Match days carry highs and lows, shared moments, collective joy, and disappointment. Merchandise becomes a physical connection to those experiences. Wearing it signals loyalty. Owning it reinforces belonging.
This aligns with a well-known insight in behavioural thinking:
“We are not thinking machines that feel; we are feeling machines that think.”
For fans, emotion comes first, logic follows!
Maslow’s Hierarchy: When Merchandise Stops Being Optional
This behaviour becomes clearer when viewed through Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, developed by Abraham Maslow.
Maslow famously stated: “Human beings are motivated by unmet needs.”
Most retail products sit high on the hierarchy, optional wants rather than needs. Sports fandom shifts merchandise into a different psychological space. Club colours, kits, and symbols tap into belonging, esteem, and identity, needs that are far more fundamental.
For fans:
Wearing club colours reinforces belonging
Owning official merchandise signals status and pride
Supporting a team strengthens identity
Maslow also noted: “What a man can be, he must be.”
For many fans, being a supporter is part of who they are. When merchandise reinforces that identity, it no longer feels like a luxury. It feels essential.
Why Fans Protect Their Spend
During tougher economic periods, fans don’t stop caring. They reprioritise. Spending elsewhere may reduce, but their connection to their club remains protected.
As one often-quoted insight puts it: “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
Sports retail works because it consistently taps into feeling, pride, nostalgia, hope, and loyalty.
A replica shirt isn’t just fabric.
It’s memory.
It’s belief.
It’s belonging.
Speaking to my son recently, I explained that there are two types of gifts: useful and memorable. If it doesn’t fit into one of those categories, it gets put in a drawer and is never thought of again.
Money becomes less of a focus when viewed this way. Buy a cheap memory and it can climb the poll of importance; spend money on something insignificant and it falls.
Authenticity Is Non-Negotiable
Because spending is emotionally driven, fans are also highly sensitive to authenticity. They can tell when a retail experience is built for them versus at them.
We often use language through POS around a store to ensure it connects with fans. I think of the Sunderland AFC club store, which uses Lads, Lasses, and Bairns instead of Men’s, Women’s, Kids.
For a Sunderland fan, this speaks their language, makes it relevant, and creates connection. Their shop. Their team.
When retail honours the fan, through storytelling, atmosphere, personalisation, and respect for history, spending follows naturally.
As one leadership principle states: “Trust is built in moments, not marketing.”
Sports retail succeeds when trust and emotion come before conversion and margin.
The Commercial Lesson
The lesson for sports retail leaders is simple but often overlooked:
Protect the emotional connection first.
KPIs, conversion, and basket size matter, but they are outcomes, not starting points. Emotional investment creates commercial resilience.
Sports retail doesn’t survive because fans are careless with money.
It survives because fans are deeply invested in what the brand represents.
Final Thought
Sports retail remains robust because fandom is robust. As long as retailers continue to respect identity, belonging, and emotional connection, fans will continue to show up, even when the world around them feels uncertain.
Not because they have to.
But because, to them, it matters.
Ali.