In a new survey report called Who Is Listening? produced by Manchester-based Sport Social Podcast Network, in cooperation with UK’s Mindfield Research, the mission is to better understand the lives of sports listeners. That includes their demographics, income, home ownership stats, purchasing habits, and their passion for sport and exercise. The survey group was largely middle class, with 33% earning incomes between 50,000 and 100,000 British Pounds (about $65,000 – $132,000).
Podcasting is the content delivery pathway explored here, unsurprisingly. We learn about podcast ad responses and attitudes, listener profiles, involvement in non-podcast media, and comparative ad responses across delivery channels like Facebook, YouTube, and Tik Tok.
This project is really two surveys:
- One conducted by Sport Social Podcast Network with Mindfield Research; all respondents (197 in total) assumed to be network listeners.
- A second survey produced by Kantar Media Base, plumbing the intelligence of 24,000 participants between April 2023 and March 2024. Participants had listened to any sports podcast within a year.
One slide illustrates a sport social listener profile, revealing what they shop for, and how they respond to podcast ads:
A preference for podcast advertising over print and radio is illustrated by comparing podcasts to a couple of newspaper brands and a radio brand:
We also learn that sports podcast listeners are more likely to pay attention to ads in podcasts when the host reads them, compared to newspaper readers and radio listeners.
Further, , sports podcast listeners are more likely to trust podcast ads the most and pay the most attention to podcast ads when compared with legacy media consumers.
As always, the source deck contains more than can be reviewed here. Downloading is recommended; do so HERE.
