Millennials and Gen Xers are more likely to binge-watch TV than attend a live event, according to a new online survey from Euclid.
Never before have there been so many high-quality, easy-to-access experiences at the click of a button right from your couch. Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime Video provide visual entertainment; Spotify and Pandora have all the music you could want.
With so many choices right at the fan's fingertips, enticing consumers to get up and leave the house to attend a live event is becoming more and more challenging.
Euclid, a company that provides fan data to retail outlets and venues, conducted a study to determine how venues can go head-to-head with the on-demand service, focusing on millennials and Gen X. The survey was conducted online and studied 1,500 consumers.
"We’re living in the golden age of ways to spend our time," said Brent Franson, Euclid’s CEO. "For venues and arenas, competition is no longer confined to just different live events like other concerts and sporting events. Now it’s Netflix and DoorDash delivery. The competition is everywhere."
Case in point: The survey revealed that millennials are far more likely to spend their time binge-watching TV shows at home than regularly attending live concerts and sporting event. Sixty-five percent said they binge-watch while 24 percent said they attended a live concert or sporting event once a week or more.
Franson said that in today's landscape, where "consumers simply have so many high-quality, convenient options to spend their time and dollars on," venues need to fine-tune their thinking if they want to get those people out of the house and into a venue.
The deal-breaker for most? Cost. Sixty-four percent of those surveyed indicated interest in attending an event but said that high ticket prices made more frequent attendance a no-go. Forty-three percent said getting to event locations was simply too inconvenient.
Fans were in agreement that discounts are, by far, the most powerful motivator to get them to buy a ticket. Twenty-five percent of those surveyed said they bought a ticket after seeing a discount available, which suggests that targeted marketing featuring a price cut is a vital tool for getting to those consumers.
Twenty-three percent of the respondents bought as a group, underscoring the emphasis on having fun with family and friends.
Convenience is the second most powerful tool in the venue toolbox, according to the survey. Fifty-six percent said that priority seating selection, priority entrance and dedicated parking spots all motivated them to attend.
The main event is not necessarily the prime draw for those surveyed. Only 31 percent said they went to a live event to focus solely on the event itself.
Interactive experiences with a digital component are a must-have. Fifteen percent said they share on social media. Twenty-six percent of millennials and Gen X eventgoers surveyed ranked Wi-Fi access as vital; 21 percent said premium suites and lounges were a draw.
Apps are gaining popularity, with 67 percent saying that they use venue apps to find locations throughout the facility. Sixty-five percent use an app to order concessions or buy merchandise.
An interesting conclusion of the survey was that while men and women regularly attend live events, women are still being underserved.
Fifty-two percent of the women surveyed said they attended a sporting event in the past year, and 64 percent attended a concert, but 44 percent of women said they were unlikely to purchase concessions.
"Stadiums and arenas need to know who is coming to their live event more than ever before," said Franson. "They’ve likely coasted on assumptions around their attendees and, in turn, have underserved audiences like women."
Franson suggests that creating in-arena experiences based on the monolithic targeting of large demographic groups is no longer effective or useful.
"That big, broad brush just won’t allow venues to cater to the Amazon crowd in the way they expect," he said. "Today’s consumer wants a degree of curation and personalization that was previously unthinkable."
The appeal of streaming services is driven by their personalized recommendations and convenience, he said.
"In contrast, 43 percent of those surveyed said venues and arenas are simply too inconvenient," Franson said. "Another 36 percent were content to watch the event at home.
The study concluded that the biggest takeaway is to give the fans what they want — a good deal, integrated digital experiences and convenience.
"Venues need to play to modern consumer preferences for personalization and convenience while exploiting their one clear advantage: the live experience itself," Franson said. "By providing unique, socially shareable experiences that can’t be replicated at home, venues can guarantee an experience worth the time, effort and cost of getting off the couch and to the event."
The survey was conducted via a panel sampling that involved recruiting members from an affiliate site, where they are asked to register and confirm their interest in taking multiple surveys over an extended period of time.
Panel participants are then invited by email to take those surveys based on qualifying demographic and psychographic characteristics, including caliber of survey response, length of time on the panel, shopping habits, vacation preferences and other attributes. The survey sampled 1,503 people in the U.S. The margin of error is plus or minus 3 percentage points with a 95 percent confidence interval.