Fans Follow Players, Not Teams
I heard someone say people now engage with politics the way they engage with the NBA.
Not by rooting for the home team. By following their favorite player.
If you love LeBron, you follow LeBron. Cleveland, Miami, LA, doesn’t matter.
I can’t stop thinking about it, because it’s not just politics. It’s how people build identity now. And it explains why some of the most powerful “brands” right now aren’t brands at all.
Geography used to be a shortcut
For decades, where you lived told marketers who you were. Zip code predicted income, taste, politics, where you shopped.
So brands built around place. Regional campaigns. Local sponsorships. Home team loyalty.
That shortcut is broken.
People now form their identity online, but live wherever they can afford to live. Those two things don’t line up anymore.
The person in Ohio who shares your values has more in common with someone in Brooklyn than with their own neighbor.
Then someone figured out how to monetize the player
Look at what’s happening in sports betting.
The fastest growing bets aren’t on who wins the game. They’re on what one player does. Points, assists, goals.
During this summer’s World Cup, 65% of Bet Builder bets on Kambi’s betting network included at least one player prop, compared to just 25% in 2022. People who placed at least one player prop bet placed 3.4x more bets and wagered on 2.4x more matches, according to Kambi’s own tournament data.
That last stat is the whole story. Attach someone to a person, and they engage more, more often, for longer.
Sportsbooks didn’t invent this. They just found the most profitable way to package it. Fandom used to cost you a jersey. Now it’s a stake in every possession.
When people don’t feel represented, someone else will represent them
Here’s the darker side of “follow the player.”
When people can’t see themselves in the systems around them, they go looking for someone who sees them. And not everyone waiting there has good intentions.
Young men are the clearest example. A 2023–24 Gallup survey found 25% of young American men (ages 15–34) said they felt lonely “a lot” the day before, compared to a 15% median among men the same age across the other OECD countries Gallup surveyed.
Into that gap walks the manosphere. Influencers selling belonging, certainty, and a villain. Equimundo’s own research found fans of Andrew Tate and similar figures aren’t any less lonely than young men overall. About 55% say they often feel lonely, compared to 54% of young men overall. Statistically, that’s a wash.
Read that again. The community doesn’t cure the loneliness. It monetizes it.
Same with gambling. An Institute for Family Studies survey of 2,000 young men found 23% gamble daily, and another 12% gamble several times a week. That’s not entertainment. That’s a substitute for something missing.
Belonging vs. capture
This is where brands need to pay attention.
The manosphere and the sportsbook are running the most effective identity playbook out there. Find people who feel unseen. Give them a person to follow. Give them a stake. Keep them coming back.
Every brand that builds community is using the same tools. The question is what you do with them.
Here’s the test I use: does your audience leave better off, and can they leave freely?
Belonging makes people more capable. Capture makes them more dependent. One builds trust. The other builds churn dressed up as loyalty, until someone calls the bluff.
What this means if you’re building something
1. Represent a belief, not a demographic. “Women 25 to 40 in urban markets” isn’t an audience. It’s a spreadsheet. Write down the one thing your people believe that most of the world doesn’t. If a competitor could say it word for word, it’s not a belief yet.
2. You’re the player, not the team. If you’re a founder or solo business owner, people aren’t following your logo. They’re following your point of view. That’s not a weakness of being small. It’s the advantage big brands spend millions trying to fake with influencers. Show up as a person, consistently, in the same few places.
3. Give people a stake, not just a show. Betting works because watching becomes participating. You can do the ethical version: let customers name a product, vote on what’s next, get early access, see their feedback show up in what you make. People defend what they helped build.
4. Fill the gap before someone worse does. If your customers feel unseen by your category, they’ll find someone who sees them. Ask what’s missing in their lives that your category ignores. That gap is where loyalty gets built, or stolen.
5. Measure belonging, not reach. Followers tell you who’s watching. Replies, DMs, referrals, and repeat customers tell you who’s actually in. If those numbers aren’t growing, you don’t have a community. You have an audience waiting for a better offer.
The pattern
Geography stopped telling us who people are. Identity filled the space.
Sportsbooks and the manosphere figured that out first, and built empires on loneliness.
The brands that win next aren’t the ones with the biggest reach. They’re the ones people choose to follow, and are better off for following.
Sources
This is what we do at Between Minds, find patterns others miss and turn them into strategic advantage. I write about this every week in my newsletter. And if you're wrestling with a strategy problem that feels impossible to pin down, contact us. That's usually where the best work starts.
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