Live sports still command the biggest communal audiences in media, but the way fans experience a game has evolved. Fans are no longer passive viewers; they are tapping on fantasy lineups in fantasy sports apps, voting in real-time polls, chatting, checking on next-gen gaming stats, betting, and shopping, all while the game broadcasts. Amazon Prime overlays real-time data and insights right on top of Thursday Night Football. YouTube TV’s Fantasy View lets NFL Sunday Ticket subscribers track Yahoo or NFL Fantasy teams without leaving the game, while Multiview allows up to four live feeds at once. These are not experiments; they’re sticky behaviors that raise sports fan engagement, unlock new monetization, and build first-party-based fan profiles at scale.
Meanwhile, the audience is shifting to streams and younger cohorts. Thursday Night Football on Prime continues to set new streaming records, with a notably younger audience profile. Fans increasingly demand on-device, interactive context: most use their phones in stadiums and expect the same replays and stats in-venue as at home. Their message is clear: if your team’s experience doesn’t embrace the second screen experience, fans will assemble their own, and you will lose control over it.
Connected Experiences Live on the Second Screen
Forget what you know about numbers, “second screen” does not mean secondary. More and more fans’ second screen is their companion screen, it is their door to game interactivity, connected experiences, and your door to deeper fan understanding and monetization. The most engaging fan experiences will treat phones as the control surface: pick your camera, summon a stats tile, trigger a replay, drop a prop prediction, or redeem an offer; all synchronized to game timecodes.
And what would have been impossible a few years ago is becoming table stakes in sports content for fan engagement. Like integrated data overlays instead of dashboards, showing live probabilities and projections metrics inside the user’s feed. Or experiences like YouTube’s Multiview; F1 Premium’s multiview, onboards, and live timing; or Thursday Night Football games, which are also streamed on Twitch, enabling chat-driven watch-along communities and alternate commentary. This is where you will find younger fans are hanging out—and where your sponsor’s value will multiply via fan interactivity. Your sponsors will appreciate more opportunities to engage with the fans, and now you can make them available.
For one of our major sports league clients, using our Globant Sportian Performance platform allows them to generate relevant game and player stats which they then feed to be shown side-by-side with live game transmissions. Having ready access to real-time data and low-latency connections to broadcasting and streaming services can enhance the viewing experience for fans and the revenue streams for teams and leagues. The league unlocked extra sponsorship opportunities via a partnership with a cloud hyperscaler.
More Engagement. More Insight. More Profit.
The power of second-screen experiences lies in hyperpersonalization. When delivered through a team’s app, they should never be generic. Knowing the logged-in fan through first-party data, organizations can tailor the companion experience with different overlays—fantasy-heavy views for fantasy players, tactical lens for superfans, social-first for co-watchers, and kid-safe or educational modes for families.
Second-screen engagement keeps fans interacting longer, creating a steady stream of first-party actions (views, taps, polls, picks, shares) that build richer gaming insights and fan profiles. These profiles fuel smarter offers, higher conversion, stronger sponsorship deals, and ultimately more revenue. Interactive elements, polls, branded replays, “presented by” stat cards, are measurable and can be sold by audience segment, not just GRPs. Shoppable overlays (merch, concession pre-order, seat upgrades) and fantasy or betting tie-ins (where allowed) enable instant conversion in the moment of peak interest.
With streaming audiences surging year over year, every league and governing body must evolve fast, or risk being left behind. Fans are already on streaming, and sports need to meet them there.
It’s as easy as 1, 2, 3.
- Start by instrumenting every moment and marry them with data from the game. Map the game to moments (pre, in-game, post) and assign a micro-interaction to each: pick ’em, poll, trivia, stat tap, replay request. Wire every interaction into your organization’s CDP.
- Launch a lean second-screen module in your Fan App that does three things exceptionally well from the get-go: a live stats tile, an ongoing game-long challenge, and a community feature (e.g., chat or emoji-only reactions). That is exactly what our Game Hub allows our clients to create for their fans: mini-game integrations, live play-by-play commentary integration, head-to-head player comparisons, personalized notifications, and AI product recommendations based on fan behavior etc.
- Close the loop with Fan Identity. Using Single Sign On (SSO) and progressive profiling powered by AI, tie these events to a unified enriched fan profile, like the one you can create and manage with Globant Sportian’s Minds, and trigger marketing journeys within 24 hours of the last fan interaction to keep the connection alive.
- Choose a few key commercial levers and track them, such as sponsorable overlays (measured by CPM or CPE), lead capture (changes in consent rate tied to interactions or qualified consents per 1,000 viewers), or offer conversion (upgrades or merch, offer CTR and attach rate)—so you can validate performance or adjust as needed.
Simple in theory. Powerful in practice. That’s what we do.
Second-screen behavior is already the default for your fans. The opportunity lies in capturing, enriching, and leveraging that behavior on your platforms, with your data, and your sponsorship model, rather than letting it drift to someone else’s app. It’s not an issue for the lab; it’s a systems issue across broadcast, apps, data, identity, privacy, and commercial and marketing ops.
If you want a concrete plan (tech, data, and monetization) tailored to your league or club and a second-screen MVP your fans will actually use, reach out to us at Globant Sports. We will bring the required product stack, experience, and playbook to get you back in the game and win the second-screen engagement on your terms.
This article marks the second in a series on technology-enabled fan engagement and gaming experience. Stay tuned for more gaming insights in the coming weeks.
